Purpose is part of the package at Unilever Canada

Nicole Bloom’s mission in life is neatly summed up by her surname: she wants to be the light that helps others grow and bloom. It was a realization arrived at in a perhaps unexpected place – a two-day training session made available by her employer, Unilever Canada.

Bloom, a category and shopper insights manager, recalls the session as “one of my favourite trainings I’ve ever taken.” Employees from across Unilever were brought together for a series of “vulnerable” conversations to unearth what motivates them and what they want to do in the world.

For Bloom, the session prompted her to get more involved in the company’s business resource groups, have regular coffee chats with interns, become a mentor and join the group of Unilever employees who attend university and college career fairs. Her goal at the company is to become a senior manager who can be a supportive force for those on her team.

“Obviously there are times when your career isn’t 100 per cent aligned with your purpose, but Unilever does try to find ways to help us live our purposes,” she says.

The Canadian division of the consumer packaged goods behemoth is known for a host of mission-driven brands: from Dove’s drive to support young people’s self-esteem and combat social media influence on body image to Hellmann’s commitment to help consumers reduce their food waste.

That ethos extends to Unilever’s corporate culture, says Martin Payant, Unilever’s vice-president and chief customer officer. Payant began his career at Unilever 26 years ago and says the “strong sense of community” and mission is what has kept him at the company.

“The young people coming in these days want to change the world, and we want to be the place they can do that,” he says. “If your purpose is to help a charitable foundation and they have a meeting on a Wednesday afternoon, it’s totally fine to leave the office and go do that.”

Payant took the purpose workshop as well. In addition to considering what motivated him, he says the sessions have another unexpected benefit. “We learn about each other too. By sharing those parts of our lives, when someone needs to leave the office we understand why,” he says. “It helped us understand each other better.”

His own mission is evolving: initially, he says, he wanted to bring his natural passion and energy to leading his team. After recovering from cancer, some of his focus is now on giving back by holding a board seat at a local cancer research institute.

The company itself is committed to making an impact through charitable giving efforts, including annual donations to Make-A-Wish Canada and food banks across the country, and organization-wide sustainability initiatives around reducing food waste, using plant-based ingredients, offering recyclable bottles, and more.

Every year in September, the company also gives employees a day to give back to their community. Either on their own or in groups, Unilever employees have volunteered for clothing drives, donated blood, cleaned up garbage and worked at food banks. This year, Bloom was part of a big group who “spread sunshine” to senior citizens with handmade cards.

“It’s a fun way to meet people you haven’t met before, be more creative and make someone’s day,” she says. “It was really special.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Greater Toronto’s Top Employers winners, published December 3, 2024 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

Unilever Canada puts its trust in young employees

After meeting Unilever Canada employees during a career fair at her university, Julia Boccadoro had a sense that her co-op placement as a sales analyst with the company would be an exciting professional experience. But she didn’t expect that she’d be able to present her work to management, or have her insights influence an important customer meeting.

Boccadoro had conducted an analysis of the market share of Hellmann’s in Canada that found the mayonnaise’s light variant did exceptionally well in Québec. When she shared the finding, her manager used it to sell more of the product to a major grocer.

“You have a lot of autonomy up-front, even in entry-level roles and internships – you’re leading projects end-to-end and there’s so much opportunity for learning,” says Boccadoro, who’s now an associate brand manager for Dove and has been with Unilever for six years. “Everyone here – whether they’re upper management, your mentor or someone at your level – is cheering you on.”

Unilever Canada Inc., the Toronto-based Canadian division of the global consumer packaged goods company, puts a significant effort into talent development and support for early-career employees, says Harsh Pant, a senior brand manager in Unilever’s foods business. Pant also leads internship recruitment for that group.

As part of the company’s flagship summer internship program, young talent is treated more like full-time employees and trusted with important responsibilities, with plenty of support from managers, Pant says. “I always tell the people we hire that we put young people in big roles.”

The company also runs the Unilever Future Leaders Program for new graduates. The program typically lasts three years and gives participants multiple placements throughout the company within their area of interest, to give them on-the-job training and help them develop their capabilities as leaders.

When he lived in India, Pant himself went through the Future Leaders program after his first internship with Unilever. The program took him through a series of stints in Unilever’s trade, marketing and factory divisions, as well as a few months in a rural village to learn more about a core customer segment. At the end of the program, he was given the opportunity to lead Unilever’s beauty and personal care business in the New Delhi region.

“I was fresh out of school, but it was based on talent and trust,” Pant says. He adds that the Future Leaders program imbued him with confidence. “When people tell you that you are a leader right now, not that you’re going to be one someday, and you realize you’re on that track, it changes your mindset. Every day you’re working to get better.”

Employees also have plenty of opportunity to build their careers within the company, Boccadoro says. The company has a comprehensive on-boarding process when someone begins a new role and a wide range of training programs. It also offers tuition reimbursement to employees interested in furthering their education.

“It’s easy to move around and gain a lot of experience in one company,” she says. “You don’t necessarily know what you want to do once you graduate. You might think you do, but if you decide the role wasn’t what you thought it was going to be, you have the ability to change.”

Last year, when Unilever launched a brand ambassador team to send employees to university campuses to recruit young talent, Boccadoro put up her hand to be part of it.

“I knew that when I was a student, I wouldn’t have known all the brands under Unilever,” she says. “I had a desire to make sure students know who we are, what we stand for and the awesome culture we have here.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Top Employers for Young People winners, published January 21, 2025 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

Unilever’s sustainability efforts have deep roots

Bruce Bugden is happy that Canada moved from plastic grocery bags to reusable ones — but now, he says with a laugh, everyone has more reusable bags than they can use. So, Bugden and other members of the Sustainable Living Team, an employee resource group (ERG) at Unilever Canada, came up with a creative solution: bins at the company store in Unilever’s Toronto head office now invite employees to take a bag if they need one or leave one if they don’t.

“It’s working really well,” says Bugden, who is a customer business development manager at Unilever. “You can get rid of some bags, and we don’t have to produce more bags for the store.”

The Sustainable Living Team, led by Bugden, is one of Unilever’s most active ERGs. Its members put on events and initiatives aimed at making a positive impact on the planet and educating colleagues about how they can do the same. Events have included lunch and learns on environmental topics with raffle giveaways of sustainable products, trash cleanups at parks and beaches, and clothes donation drives around the holidays. The group also made the Toronto office plastic cutlery-free.

“It’s rewarding, because you feel like you’re making an impact on others — even that little impact of thinking about, ‘should this go in the recycling bin or the garbage?’ or ‘maybe I won’t buy this product because of the wrapper it’s using.’”

Unilever itself has long been committed to sustainability and made it a core part of its business strategy and growth plans, says Catherine McVitty, sustainable business manager. The Canadian division of the multinational consumer packaged goods company has four major sustainability goals: to achieve net-zero emissions, create resilient and regenerative natural and agricultural ecosystems, end plastic pollution, and ensure a decent livelihood and living wage across its value chain. McVitty says she appreciates the company’s rigour in not only setting ambitious goals but mapping out realistic plans to achieve them.

“We have something called a climate transition action plan, of how we’re going to get to the net-zero target, with interim targets along the way, and it has looked at everything from sourcing raw materials to how we distribute them to how consumers use our products, and made sure we created a plan that’s achievable,” she says. “I’m proud of the level of science and research that goes into all of our sustainability goals.”

McVitty joined Unilever in 1992 in a role that involved working with local environmental organizations to get their input on the company’s sustainability strategy — leaving an early career in politics for a private-sector job that she hoped could positively impact the climate.

Today, her tasks are a mix of keeping employees up to date on the company’s strategy, working with external stakeholders and managing Unilever’s regulatory compliance with new federal and provincial rules around packaging and plastics.

She says the company’s unwavering commitment to sustainability has kept her there for the past three decades.

“I admire that regardless of what’s going on in terms of public sentiment, Unilever has stuck to its sustainability priorities, knowing that over the long term, it makes us a more resilient company,” McVitty says. “It helps us to manage our costs and our supply chains. It’s the reason why I stayed — regardless of sentiment, they’ve continued to push forward with ambitious environmental goals.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Greenest Employers winners, published April 22, 2025 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.