These achievements reassert the intrinsic strength of Unilever and uphold the company's innovative, creative and pioneering spirit in human resources development and transformation process for the sustainable development of the business and its employees.

A bunch of awards

The Vietnam HR Awards, holding a core mission to enhance the strategy and value of human resources, is organised by Talentnet, in collaboration with the Labor and Social Newspaper - the mouthpiece of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs.

This year’s awards offered six completely new, relevant and creative categories to bring about influential HR policies, thereby introducing exemplary and typical human resource strategies for the business community in Vietnam.

After three rounds of competition, starting from April 2022 with rigorous evaluation by a jury of eight leading experts in the field of human resource and corporate management, Unilever Vietnam has excellently placed in all six categories: Excellence for Employee Wellness; Excellence in Organisational Capability Improvement; Excellence in Organisational Development and Design; Talent Management Strategy; Best HR for Sustainability; and Best HR Leader.

The business also becomes this year’s Best Winner. This is the third year in a row that Unilever Vietnam has achieved this.

Firm commitment, strong action

Technical infrastructure, organisational structure, and people skills are huge challenges for every business, which have become even more challenging with the impact of COVID. Therefore, Unilever Vietnam has committed and taken action to implement practical and innovative HR initiatives continuing to raise current standards and set new ones in many areas.

Employee Wellness has always focused on integrated and impactful approaches to care for employees’ wellness, including physical, mental and emotional health, financial health, and purposes in life.

Unilever Vietnam initiated programmes to guide and inspire employees about purposes in life, a healthy lifestyle of mind-body-spirit, set up and implemented Agile ways of working before COVID-19 and quickly moved operations online when the pandemic broke out.

The company has also implemented a support programme, a health hotline and an internal volunteer network to take care of the health and safety of employees, their families and all partners in the value chain during and post-pandemic.

Unilever also maintains special employee benefits such as extended health insurance, retirement programme, emergency assistance, etc., along with useful activities to help employees stay attached to the company and cope with stress and challenges at work and in life.

Organisational Capability Improvement, and Talent Management Strategy in a digital transformation-oriented approach to lead the future have been implemented and promoted by Unilever Vietnam since 2019. Along with restructuring the company and focusing on digital transformation to increase business efficiency and growth, the company has launched the spirit of “lifetime learning” to foster innovation and creativity.

The company has designed training programmes and activities to update knowledge about information technology, automation, digitisation, data and analysis, category development, e-commerce, etc., for different audiences groups and encourage employees to adopt and take initiatives. Thanks to this, employees are equipped with the knowledge to develop themselves and feel confident to step into the future.

The HR Department has been transforming its main activities from fixed to flexible. For example, the company focuses on planning and creating resources for businesses with diverse, cost-effective and effective human resource solutions, deploying work from home, creating favourable conditions for employees to work flexibly, developing themselves according to their needs. The HR Department has regularly updated and promptly caught up with changing external trends to offer pioneering solutions to help the business and employees develop.

HR for Sustainability is Unilever Vietnam’s strategy, integrated into its human development roadmap to create opportunities for all employees to participate in realising the corporate mission to “make sustainable living commonplace”. The HR Department plays an important role in raising employee awareness and calling for action on sustainable development, connecting employee engagement activities with sustainability programmes to create a greater impact.

Best HR Leader is a special recognition given to Trinh Mai Phuong, vice president of Human Resources at Unilever Vietnam, for her outstanding contributions to the company's development, Unilever's HR Department and the HR industry in Vietnam.

During the past four years, she has accompanied the company in starting the digital transformation, building capacity for the future and increasing employee engagement. During the pandemic, she was an important member of Unilever Vietnam’s Pandemic Prevention Committee, always providing timely human resource solutions to help the company maintain production while ensuring the employees’ safety.

Phuong said, “I am truly grateful for the appreciation of experts for Unilever Vietnam’s innovation efforts, creating many positive impacts for employees and society before, during and after the pandemic. Looking back on the past journey, I strongly believe that people are the decisive factor for success, and I am very proud that Unilever’s leadership has always been consistent with the mission of developing people from the very first step we put in Vietnam."