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Unilever is folding collectively its sustainability and exterior communications departments, months after scaling again its environmental targets as the corporate shifts its sustainability technique.
The maker of Dove cleaning soap and Cornetto ice lotions, which is in the course of a wide-ranging restructure and cost-cutting programme, will mix the 2 beforehand separate roles of chief sustainability officer and international head of communications and company affairs into one position, in keeping with an inside e mail to all employees seen by the Monetary Occasions.
Since chief govt Hein Schumacher got down to flip round Unilever’s efficiency final yr, the corporate that was as soon as seen because the poster youngster for moral and environmental points has taken a extra “reasonable” strategy to sustainability, with fewer targets.
“Given the growing extent to which the exterior coverage setting impacts our industrial and sustainability ambitions, I’ve determined to carry company affairs, exterior communications and sustainability collectively beneath one management position,” wrote chief govt Hein Schumacher within the replace final week.
Chief sustainability officer Rebecca Marmot, who has a background in company affairs at Unilever, will tackle the accountability for exterior affairs from Paul Matthews, international head of communications & company affairs, who has stepped down from the enterprise. The departments will even merge.
“Company affairs has to place the pursuits of the corporate first, and can due to this fact at all times spin accordingly,” stated Jonathon Porritt, who suggested Unilever on sustainability points for 28 years, till March this yr.
“Sustainability, as a operate, ought to at all times be as conscious of the pursuits of the world and its individuals as of the corporate. No firm critical about sustainability ought to search to carry these two features collectively,” he added.
Unilever declined to remark.
After 2015’s Paris Settlement, scores of firms set bold local weather targets and sustainability grew to become extra distinguished in company communications, with teams appointing chief sustainability officers with company affairs backgrounds to supervise the fast-growing operate.
Many client items teams have a devoted CSO position, together with Mars, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. Others mix the position with company affairs, corresponding to Reckitt and now Unilever, or with provide chains, corresponding to Diageo.
One advisor aware of the corporate stated that whereas it was not a nasty thought to merge the 2 features, the brand new position needs to be a part of the corporate’s govt committee. “In the event that they don’t have a seat on the desk, then they aren’t impacting, simply executing,” they stated.
In a recent interview with the FT, Schumacher stated Unilever was shifting its focus away from sustainability advocacy to “execution”, including that scaling again its ambitions was not an possibility given the rising environmental reporting necessities.
The sustainability technique now could be “inform, not present,” he stated. “I feel it’s extra in tune with the fact,” he stated.
Unilever, which has for over a decade set an instance to its friends on sustainability points, has drawn criticism for its new agenda, which campaigners have warned units a nasty precedent for different corporates tempted to again monitor on their ambitions.
The buyer items large announced in April that it was introducing a extra “targeted” technique after the chief govt concluded a few of the targets set by his predecessors weren’t achievable. The modifications included extending deadlines and decreasing the size of environmental targets, corresponding to its use of virgin plastics and round packaging.
Schumacher advised the FT that the corporate’s spend on sustainability had elevated yr on yr.
“We haven’t taken any greenback out. It’s generally reported that it’s turn into much less necessary as a result of we’re placing extra emphasis on revenue . . . our spend on sustainability yr on yr is up, not down,” he stated, declining to share numbers.
Unilever shouldn’t be alone in reassessing its inexperienced agenda. Corporations from Walmart to Shell have dropped or missed their emissions targets and different sustainability targets. Simply this month, Coca-Cola drew fireplace from environmentalists after watering down its reuse and recycling targets.
At Unilever’s capital markets day final month, when Schumacher set out his motion plan for the subsequent 5 years, he additionally unveiled a brand new firm objective, “to brighten on a regular basis life for all”, to interchange the earlier tagline, “to make sustainable dwelling commonplace”, which was established by former chief govt and company sustainability champion Paul Polman.
Schumacher stated that Polman “created consciousness like nobody else” however that the targets he set have been unachievable. “ what? He did the best factor, as a result of he put the bar so excessive, even when we have been to satisfy 80 per cent of that concentrate on, we might have by no means come to date if he hadn’t carried out that,” he stated.
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