People

Reduce workplace injuries & accidents

Our safety record has improved steadily since 2007 and we are well on track with our Safety Programmes to ensure we meet the Unilever global target of reducing the total recordable accident frequency rate in our factories and offices by 50% versus 2008.

Healthy workforce

Our Vitality Wellness Programme has reached 2,000 of Unilever South Africa’s permanent employees and 500 contractors. In partnership with Discovery Health and Vitality Assist the programme covers aspects of medical health, nutrition, physical activity and stress and resilience. Wellness Days are run on-site and these include assessing employee physical health, online wellness questionnaires, eye screening, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and HIV testing as well as providing information on exercise programmes and diet plans.

The aim of the programme is to reach our entire permanent and temporary workforce to ensure that the personal health and wellness of our employees is enhanced by the end of 2011.

HIV & Aids Employee Roadmap

Unilever South Africa’s HIV /AIDs Employee Roadmap is anchored in the Government’s strategic HIV /AIDS framework and forms an integral component of our occupational health strategy.

The Roadmap addresses the needs of individuals at key stages of prevention and treatment and also encourages the building of joint programmes within local communities.

We are committed to improving the percentage of employees who conduct voluntary HIV /Aids testing year on year through continued internal awareness programmes and peer educator support. In 2010 our goal is to have 80% of all employees tested for HIV /Aids.

Unilever South Africa’s biggest investment in dealing with HIV /Aids has been through the Thokomala Orphan Care Organisation which provides a loving home to 120 children through 20 homes around the country and outreach to a further 3,000 children in the surrounding communities. In partnership with Child Welfare South Africa, other NGO ’s and local and international funders the programme aims to provide HIV /Aids infected and affected children with the best possible chance of leading a normal family life.

Increasing diversity

We are dedicated to creating a working environment that enables all people, especially women, to become future leaders and role models. Our gender representation levels are ahead of industry norms, particularly at senior levels within the organisation, compared with local (JSE listed) and state-owned enterprises. We aim to have 50% female representation across management in our business by 2015.

Since 2005, Unilever South Africa has partnered with SA WomEng, a non-profit organisation, which seeks to address the issue of gender inequity in the South African engineering field. We will continue to strengthen our relationship with WomEng to further the development and advancement of women in engineering.

Unilever South Africa is committed to the Department of Trade and Industry’s imperative to support transformation in South Africa through the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE ) programme. In 2010 we achieved a BEE Level 6 verification certificate. To improve this we will focus on leveraging our expertise in the skills development and procurement arenas and optimising our employment equity and enterprise development programmes in to the future.

Learnerships

In line with the Skills Development Act (SDA, No. 97 of 1998) in South Africa, Unilever South Africa embarked on a national Skills Upliftment Strategy to introduce a Learnership Programme at our manufacturing sites. 750 employed and unemployed learners have been upskilled over the last 3 years. As a result Unilever South Africa is seen as a key contributor of skills development in the country, positively impacting the unemployed by playing a role in learners achieving a credible qualification, relevant wherever their career-path may take them.

By 2013 our intention is to have our entire shop floor across our nine factory sites achieve a National Qualification Framework (NQF) qualification. Beyond this achievement, Unilever South Africa will continue to contribute to the upliftment of skills in the country by assessing the need to continue with the implementation of learnerships for unemployed learners.

Community involvement

Annually we run a volunteer week which enables employees to have one day’s paid leave to spend doing volunteer work in communities. Since we started the programme in 2008, 52 charitable organisations, reaching thousands of disadvantaged individuals, have been touched by this initiative. Our aim is to roll out this scheme across all of our sites reaching even more community organisations.

As part of our charitable giving programme we distribute all of our good obsolete food, home and personal care products through FoodBank South Africa. In 2010 we donated the equivalent of R10 million worth of products and FoodBank SA saw that it reached over 1,000 beneficiaries across the country. We will work with FoodBank to provide logistics and distribution support and to explore further opportunities with them to improve food security in the country.

Education

Education is a key priority for South Africa’s Government to increase the skills level of the country and in so doing reduce unemployment. Unilever South Africa has contributed to the Mandela Rhodes Foundation which provides a post-graduate scholarship at universities within South Africa in perpetuity.

We also provide bursaries to disadvantaged children across the country through the OMO Bursary Trust Fund which ensures that these children have the opportunity to attend school, buy books and school necessities to get the best education available to them. We will continue with our commitments to build and strengthen the OMO Bursary Programme over time to achieve our education investment aspirations and thereby give each child on the programme a fighting chance against poverty.

Reduced employee travel

We have installed telepresencing facilities in to our head office with the aim of reducing international travel and in so doing our carbon footprint.

We are introducing a flexible working programme which will encourage employees to integrate home working into their regular work patterns which will significantly reduce their travel.

Reduced energy consumption in our offices

We will be reducing energy consumption at our head office by installing occupancy sensors, energy efficient light fittings and control gear. This will reduce the green house gas contribution from our head office by 20%. We have utilised natural light where possible and will adapt our working space through the installation of transparent roofing sheets at our factories and lighter wall paint in our offices so that this is more achievable in the future.

We have plans in place to optimise the utilisation of our PCs, airconditioning units and other equipment through the installation of an auto-switch programme to alleviate unnecessary running. This together with an employee energy saving training programme will ensure the further reduction of energy consumption at our sites per employee.

Reduced waste in our offices

As a result of internal awareness programmes as well as an effective Green IT initiative we have reduced paper usage at head-office by 72%.

We have reduced our office general waste by 32% and increased recycled waste by 7% through on-site awareness and waste minimizing initiatives, including a waste separation programme and the use of recyclable materials where possible. Our aim is to continue to reduce the total waste generated by head office reaching atarget of 45.5% by 2015.