#66 Unilever ANZ proves you're never too big to B Corp

Hey, Kia ora and welcome back to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. And with me today I have got Cameron Heath from Unilever. G', day Cameron. How's it going?

Chiara team, good morning.

So, Cameron Heath, Unilever. Beyond that, who are you? What do you do? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

So it's a bit of a daunting question when someone asks who are you?

Yeah.

Feels like you're rich deep into your soul. Yeah, I think as you mentioned professionally, I work with the Unilever business in New Zealand as managing director. I think most people probably don't know Unilever as an organization or may not know Unilever, but leader as an organization. But most of your listeners will have one or two of our brands sitting in their kitchen or their bathroom. So we're the business behind brands like Persil Magnum, Ben and Jerry's, Dove, Rexona and Continental. So quite a broad portfolio and we've been operating in New Zealand for over 100 years. So a long history working alongside and serving Kiwi, some of their favorite products.

And I guess from a not so professional standpoint, in my personal life, I, I like to see myself as a bit of an adventurer. I like anything that kind of gets the adrenaline going and kind of pushes the boundaries a little bit. So love a bit of snowboarding, trying to enjoy as many of the great hikes in, in New Zealand and a bit of the nature and outdoors here and love to travel. So kind of seeing as much of the world as I can. And I guess on the other side I'm a bit of a die hard ice cream fan as well, which helps in, helps in this job, I think I tell people one of my favorite parts of the job is that it's completely acceptable to be sitting around the boardroom, T a Magnum or a pint of Ben and Jerry's. Digging into that while, while you're discussing some of the big business topics of the day.

So it's thoroughly encouraged. Yeah, my dad absolutely in the advertising and marketing industry in the sort of 60s, 60s and 70s, he was very much like the Mad Men and he worked a lot on Rothman's and Dunhill cigarettes. And hey, you know, if you weren't smoking 60 a day, you know you were, you were going to be thrown off the, off the campaign because you weren't committed to the cause. So it's good to see that we're moving forward and providing other options for people to live the brand. And so are you originally a Kiwi? Originally or are you from somewhere else?

No, I grew up in Sydney, so I'm a New Kiwi. I moved across around 18 months ago, so I visited New Zealand many times for travel in the past, but it's the first time I've been. I've been based or living here.

Excellent. And have we welcomed you? I say that we. I'm. I'm. I'm equally an import, an imported Kiwi myself, originally from the uk, but yeah, has New Zealand welcomed you? Because obviously for international listeners there's normally a bit of tension between Australia and New Zealand. There's not always love lost between the two countries, particularly when it comes to sporting endeavors.

But, yeah, I was going to say I find that mostly in the sporting world, but, yeah, absolutely feel welcomed. I think there's a bit of a brother sister relationship between the two countries and it's been great to spend a bit more time. I think the only part that's been unwelcoming has been the Auckland weather, which has made the last 12 months a little interesting and a bit hard to do. Some of the outdoor stuff I would have liked to have done a bit more of. Uh, but other than that, it's, yeah, been really welcoming.

Yeah, it's. I guess. But yeah, again, for people outside of New Zealand, Auckland weather is traditionally four seasons in one day. Yes, you. Yeah, you can walk out the door and it's 20 degrees. Even in the middle of winter, it's a 20 degrees Celsius day. And then next minute it's, yeah, hail, snow, rain. Yeah, you just don't know what you're going to get. Oh, very cool. And so, yeah, how did you get into Unilever? Were you like straight into Unilever after uni? Because obviously, I mean, I worked for Johnson and Johnson when I left uni. Well, about a year or so after university, I went and did a bit of a gap year. But, yeah, graduate training program. Big companies tend to recruit smart people quite young. Was that your background or how did you get into the Unilever machine?

Yes, from a Unilever perspective, it's a little bit longer and more convoluted than that. But I finished university after graduating a Bachelor of Commerce and kind of focusing on marketing and management. And I think back then I was really intrigued by big global businesses that had big brands that you were able to create impact at scale with. And that drew me to my first role out of university, which was a graduate role at Procter and Gamble. And I worked with P and G for eight years. I remember the first job they put me in was a sales representative for the pharmacies on the northern beaches of Sydney. And after studying kind of three or four years of quite intense degree on business and management, I always found myself sitting on the floor dusting shelves of pharmacies and installing hair color trays. And I thought, is this really what I've got myself into? But as I.

That wasn't in the brochure.

Yeah, no, that was not in the brochure. But you know what, as I reflect on that later in the career, it was such a good training ground to really get the fundamentals for the sales, for how a product, you know, represents itself at a store. How do you engage with shoppers, how do you create relationships? Had a bit of resilience as well. So I spent eight years at P and G and then. And then kind of got drawn into unilever back in 2015. And I think, you know, what kind of drew me to make the change was this ethos of, you know, the purpose of the organization is to make sustainability commonplace. And from the initial discussions I started having with the team at Unilever in Sydney, it was just so apparent that that was fully embedded through everything that they did. And it was a journey that I kind of wanted to jump on and see the impact I could make as part of that. So I moved into Unilever, started in Sydney, and then it's been a bit of a whirlwind adventure. I've worked in roles in Sydney and moved across to Prague in the Czech Republic and spent four and a half years working on the Czech and Slovakian business, and then took a role working out of Riga in Latvia, looking after their business across Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and now most recently, back to New Zealand. So it's. It's been an incredible journey with lots of. Lots of diverse experiences and really enjoying it.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, I guess that is always the benefit of working in large corporates is there's. That there's opportunity to travel, you know, you're kind of taking care of. There's opportunities for that. Is. What was it like? Yeah, Latvia and Prague. A culture shock from Sydney.

Yeah, absolutely. It's. It's funny the, you know, the idea of. Of it before you leave, to the reality of standing, you know, in the city of a completely different country where everyone's speaking a completely different language and looking at you in a little bit of a strange way every now and then. And it's quite different that the idea versus the reality. But it was. It's Been such an incredible experience. As I said earlier, you know, what really drives me in life is this sense of adventure and getting the adrenaline going and, you know, having the opportunity to really scratch the surface of somewhere so different and so unique, or so many places that are so different and unique, you know, more than just a couple of days on a trip. But really get to know the people, know the culture, you know, experience the land. It's been an incredible opportunity.

Yeah, I think that's the key. Yeah, I'm the same when I go. I lived in Australia for a year and I left the uk, went to Australia for a year, and everyone else who I knew from the UK who was either in Australia or been to Australia, it's like, we're going to Sydney, we're living in Bondi with a bunch of other palms. We're going to get a job in a call center with some palms, and we're gonna go hang out with some palms. And I'm like, you could go to Edinburgh and have the same experience. You know, you go to the other side of the world. Why would you go and live with British people? So, yeah, I made a real effort. I ended up living in Brisbane, didn't know anyone in Brisbane. Ended up getting a job working for Canterbury Rugby in one of their stores in the Myers center in Brisbane. Made some. The guy who hired me, Tyson, he's like, now my brother from another mother, you know, he got me the job. He connected me to all his friends. Suddenly I'm living a true Queenslander lifestyle. Didn't meet another British person for a year. And I've got some great Aussie friends. I ended up living with an Aussie family for a year. And, you know, they're like my adopted Aussie mum and dad. So shout out to the Tolhurst. Thanks for putting up with me for a year. And yeah, you get that depth of connection and understanding of a culture rather than, like I say, just skimming across the top. And.

How do you feel? How does a company like a Unilever balance that tension? I guess, between obviously at scale and even so at scale for profitability and revenue, but also at scale for impact and sustainability? You need to sort of homogenize and be able to know that we can produce something with minimal environmental impact or with a sustainability. Sustainability program behind it. But how do you then sell the same product in Latvia that you sell in New Zealand and in Sydney? Is there a tension that you feel within the company for balancing that local with the scale and impact that you can have globally?

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's always a healthy tension from multiple different avenues when it comes to what it means to be a sustainable business with sustainable operations and sustainable brands and products, to what's expected of you from some of the stakeholders in your business. And that's an ongoing tension that we need to continue to manage and continue to fight the good fight behind.

There was an article written about Unilever a couple of years back which just talked around the purpose journey that we'd been on and said, how can a jar of mayonnaise have more purpose than just being a delicious condiment that you put onto a sandwich? And that's the type of rhetoric and feedback that we're constantly faced with as B Corps and as, you know, organizations on a journey to do better. Is this kind of attitude around, does business performance correlate to being on a sustainability journey and making priorities behind being a better business? And that's what we need to continue to strive to prove, is that sustainability, it's not an either or versus business performance, it's actually an enabler to business performance. And we need to show that through big organizations, through small local organizations, through established businesses, to startups, that sustainability is a business choice.

It's a enabler to stronger business performance. Because if we can't make that correlation, if we can't prove that, then we'll limit ourselves to what we can do on the sustainability front.

Yeah, 100%. And there's reams of data and evidence from the B Corp community, which is obviously what I'm fully immersed in, around how B Corps do outperform on both business performance, business metrics and sustainability metrics. So it does seem to be that you can have your cake and eat it. And indeed it's now, I think, you know, the fact that Unilever Australia, New Zealand is a B corp would, to me send a very strong signal that if you're in the consumer goods sector, you should probably really be thinking about your impact because, you know, it's kind of. There's quite a few companies in that sector that have done it. So, yeah, I think there's increasing proof. So Paul Polman would have been CEO when you joined Unilever? I guess for people who have been living under a rock for the last 10 years, Paul Pullman was the CEO of Unilever, who really started, I guess, that transition, that journey and the public conversation around, you know, Unilever can be a sustainable business. And so Ben and Jerry's word were purchased by Unilever. So they were an Independent B corp for many years. And so yeah, I guess Unilever has been on, on this journey to acquire and then now certify internally its own organizations. So clearly, yeah, you're seeing, you know, I guess, yeah, large global companies typically don't make big investments in areas without really thinking it through and having, you know, I guess, confidence that it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna do something for the organization.

So definitely, yeah, we, we started by acquiring, as you said, a number of brands. The Ben and Jerry's brand, the Pukka Tea brand. And then we actually started looking at some of our existing businesses like the, the T2 brand of teas that was started in Australia and Melbourne and we certified in 2020 the, the T2 business to be a B corp. And you know, that, that kind of progression of thinking and seeing what that certification did for those businesses from a behavioral standpoint, but also from a performance standpoint really started to challenge us to think bigger and more bolder on, on the front. And it was, it was great that, you know, back in the end of 2021 we were able to certify the, the total Australia and New Zealand business for Unilever as a, as a B corp. Nice.

I think, I think that's, that's just great demonstration because the question we get asked a lot, or maybe the comment we get is, oh, we're too big to be a B corp. It's only for small businesses. And then small businesses go, oh, it's not for us, it's only for big businesses. But no, I mean I am a B corp and up until very recently it's been just me. We've got plenty of sole traders that we're helping with their B corp. We're working with a very large New Zealand company at the minute who I can't name yet. Yeah. Who have got really complex corporate structure with entities all over the world. So for me it comes down to that mindset and the intent and the desire to want to prove that you're doing good. But yeah, how did you find it? So was the whole company excited and engaged or did you find that there were certain brands that, I mean clearly like your T2s and your pucker Teas, you know, sort of natural, I guess, food based products where there's clay, you know, they're organic. Well, I think they've got organic parts to their stuff. I think, I'm pretty sure the, because I've got some Pucker tea here. It's 1% for the planet. So clearly that those companies were already on that journey doing good. How have you found that cultural. Yeah. How has that sort of dissipated or how's the osmosis of the. The idea of doing good? Because I would imagine, possibly I'm hypothesizing, but if you're kind of in the personal product development team, you might be pretty focused on just creating the best detergent rather than actually being, you know, a force for good in the world. Whereas obviously if you've got a tea product, there's things like, you know, supply chain, you can be looking at packaging and how we do it. Whereas yeah, like your washing detergent is. It's kind of been the same excuse my lack of nuance on the detail probably. You probably go, no, Tim, it's actually the formulations change a thousand times in the last 10 years, but fundamentally it's some powder in a box and it's kind of been that way for quite a while. So. Yeah. Did you find that there's been difference in the sort of pace of the uptake of the idea of doing good and the B Corp or has it had been pretty, pretty homogeneous?

I think there has been the, you know, this was a we term kind of some of these big moonshots or these ideas of big transform. Transformative things that we want to achieve. And we kind of use the term a big area audacious goal or a B hackers kind of. And we set that for the business for Australia and New Zealand back in 2020. So it's been a number of years in which we've been kind of thinking what can we do with the business that is truly transformable, transformative and that holds us to account. It shows the progress we've made, but it holds us to account to future progression within the sustainability space. So we set this idea of, you know, the Australian and New Zealand business becoming B Corp certified as our kind of big hairy audacious goal for the business. And, and it scares a lot of people. You know, it's, it kind of would, it would be untrue to say that we, we came, you know, from day one with full support of everyone business. There was a. There was a lot of nervousness, there was a lot of questions, there was a lot of hesitation.

But I think all of that are the right emotions to be feeling because they drive the right discussions, they drive people to. Then when they do commit, they commit fully into the, into the cause and they allow us to sense check, you know, the stuff that we're doing to make sure that we're entering into this with, you know, full understanding of what it means for our business global, globally, what it means for our business locally, what it means for our brands and our products, you know, in Australia and the New Zealand markets.

So I think that tension ends up being a positive thing. But you know, it does require a lot of conviction, it does require a lot of passion from people to kind of move through those, those initial barriers and those initial nervousness from people and, and make sure that, you know, you, you move towards the destination of what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah, it's, it's almost having internal due diligence, isn't it, by having some people kind of go, whoa, whoa, hang on a minute before we kind of launch into this. Yeah, if you can, if you can kind of. Yeah. Get everyone on board having gone through that process, then yeah, it's really cool. Way of. Yeah, I guess of having sort of laid a lot of those fears before you get too far down the line. So did you have. So typically when we work with companies we, we suggest this one person who is the king or queen bee and then you build a team of beekeepers around them. So. Yeah, and those people are the cheerleaders. They're also the information gatherers. Yeah. Snuffle around and support the process. So how did you go around getting engagement across the teams once you cross the threshold, I guess of enough commitment and enough buy in. Yeah. How. What was the process around getting full support and you know, like, hey, someone's going to be coming to you, Cameron, next week and they'll probably have 50 questions they need some answers to. Please, please do that.

Yeah, absolutely. You've touched on a couple of really important points as you kind of rally your business behind the cause or the direction of bec B Corp Certified. You know, we have these ethos where, you know, when you match someone's personal passion up with something that the business is great for the business and the business wants to achieve, that's when you get gold. That's where you get, you know, transformative stuff happening. And we were really lucky that in our business we had a number of people who were really passionate about making this happen. So as you said, we, we identified, you know, our general counsel and, and company secretary who was kind of really on board with this and, and he, the B Corp lead and pulled together a multifunctional team across, you know, different parts of the business of people who showed an innate, you know, passion and energy towards the B Corp movement and kind of achieving that, that big goal. That we'd set and having that kind of multifunctional approach, different area of expertise across the business coming together, but also keeping it in a somewhat small team that was accountable, that was time bound, that really kind of needed to move things forward at pace, that was key in making sure that we kind of move forward on the B Corp certification journey. And now that we are certified, as we said before, that's kind of just the beginning for us. We don't see that as the end goal. That's actually kind of the beginning of maintaining that certification and becoming better and showing continuous improvement. So that team now is fully focused on what does a 2025 recertification look like and what are the steps that, particularly with the new B Corp standards that going in. What are the steps that we need to be taking now to kind of build off the base that we use to become certified to begin with?

Yep, perfect. Yeah, I think that that's a textbook approach. You know, that's exactly how we suggest people do it. You know, build a team around it. Not too big, not too small. Get that cross functional buy in so that you've got not only people able to go and get the information, but I think like you say, the key is carrying it forward and having people with knowledge of the assessment in different parts of the team team. As you look to that next three year cycle for your recertification, they are aware of the questions on this. Hey, hang on. Before we commit to that decision, actually let's just. What, you know, what would B Corp do? Okay, well actually we need to re review that supply contract or when we are, you know, locking that in, can you please make sure that it actually has this context or this detail in it? So yeah, no, it's super, super cool. Absolutely.

And I think that it's a, it's also such an important thing to have an ongoing conversation so it doesn't become, okay, we're certified, we park that for three years, we come back to that three years time. You know, the behavior change that I've seen in the business since becoming certified is that every time we sit down for a board meeting, there's a, there's a paper, there's a recommendation, there's a policy put forward for change or for review that pushes us further towards, you know, some of the gaps that we had in our original certification or some of the things that we're going to need to think about in a couple of years time. So there's that real proactive approach rather than a reactive approach in the Business which I think is a great thing. That, that the certification is Dr. Yeah.

One hundred and again that, that tying in again that this is what we, we're really big on promoting is bring let people bring the things that they care about to the business and use the business as a vehicle to fix the social and environmental things that they're passionate about. It's you know, employee engagement. It just goes through the roof and, and the company gets wins and community and the planet gets wins. It's so I call it the self sourcing chocolate cake of goodness. Maybe, maybe Unilever should. I'll give you the license for this. You can create this, the B Corp self sourcing chocolate cake. It's like a chocolate fondant that just keeps pouring out chocolate and it's just, it's never ending and you just create this cycle of happiness and awesomeness and impact and you can, you get a real palpable sense of that in an organization that's got it versus business as usual. You know they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work. One of my favorite stats because it's so awful. It was a YouGov survey. So the British government that do these surveys, I think it was about 2018, around about 30% of the of the British population said their job provided them with no meaning and was more than likely contributing to destroying the plan planet. And so you know, you kind of use that as a baseline of well that's business as usual. Anything beyond that is. It's a good starting point.

Absolutely. And this idea of progression over time and taking small steps of progression, that's another kind of ethos we kind of really talk to our teams about is, you know, transformation doesn't happen overnight, it won't happen next week, it won't happen next month, but the start of that is happening today. It's the steps that we're taking now and the small steps of progression, the small wins that we make, the small changes that we put into place that will cause that transformation to occur over time.

100%. As I said, I was working with this large company this morning with a good bunch of their global people and culture team and keep saying to them do what you can with what you've got that makes sense for you and your stakeholders right now. There's some stuff that you could do, but it's going to take you three years and it might not be that impactful anyway. So let's, let's assess and prioritize and then implement. And again I think that's the real beauty of the bco. It just gives you that framework. It's a global framework that other companies are doing or working against. You can go, well, this is what best practice looks like. Are we there? No, we're not. Okay, do we want to get there? Okay, we do. Right. Well now we know what we need to do to get there. Who's going to do it, when are we going to get it done by and what resource do we need? It's almost frighteningly simple but, but also it's not because you have, you've got to have all those conversations and prioritize and yeah, again, and I think it's this balance of impact and business and this is the challenge for the B Corp world and the business of the future is balancing profit and purpose. Sure we could implement all these things but by doing that we run out of money next month. So do we make this massive amount of impact and then we have to close up shops or do we keep making a bit of money so that we can keep doing the impact? And really interested to hear. So I had a really good conversation with a lady, Sandra Smithall. Shout out to her. She, she's a bit of a governance expert. She works with mainly sort of medium sized businesses and doing governance and sitting on boards. And she was, she, she connected with me at a recent event. She said hey I'm, can you give me the name of the course I can do that teaches me about stakeholder and ESG governance for directors? And I said no, I, I know not of that course. And she's like great, because I can't find it either. And I'm actively looking for it. And I think this is a, we're at a real interesting time where obviously to become a B corp you have to update your constitutional or corporate governing documents to include a stakeholder clause and a purpose clause. So this, this is almost at the heart of what B Corp and B Lab, who run the system is that this is at the heart of the system change that they've really been looking at is taking the sole metric of a board or the owners of a company off. We just need to make as much money as possible to yes, let's make some money, but in a manner that is I guess, consistent and supports our communities, our employees, our supply chain and the planet. So really interested to see how you, so you report to the board.

How do you see your board or boards in general grappling with this idea of, of okay, you know, five years ago we just looked at the balance sheet and like we're good, you know, and I guess at a Unilever you're a bit of a juggernaut. The balance sheet probably looks pretty good. You know, I always used to say at Johnson and Johnson they could fire half the sales team and people would still just keep buying the product because people just keep buying the product. So yeah, what have you noticed in terms of conversations at a board level and the governance level around hey, we need to be thinking differently here. And do you think you're nailing that or is there room for improvement?

Improvement, yeah. I think a couple of words, you know, to touch on one thing you mentioned earlier. One of the things I love about the B Corp when you know, when we say where do businesses go to learn about how to, you know, be great at esg or how do you, how do leaders learn how to lead for esg? You know, one of the stats I heard a couple of weeks ago was that, you know, whilst there's 7,000 B Corps, 250,000 companies are using the B Corp standards and certification criteria to assess their business. And you know, that in itself is an amazing tool. It's helping so many businesses, even though they may not become certified immediately, it's.

Completely free as well.

It's completely free. It's helping them educate themselves on what it is to be a holistically great business, you know, across the, the multiple elements which B Corp looks at. So, you know, big the B Corp certification standards in themselves are a resource to train, to educate, to know, to create momentum. You know, coming back to, to Unilever, I think the, we've always, for as long as I've been working with Unilever, so for, for nearly nine years now, this idea of a multi stakeholder model and the triple bottom line has been a concept that's been running through the business globally, not just within Australia and New Zealand. And thinking around the role of business to be more than just shareholder return and profit is not a new concept for us. It's been, you know, something that, that we've been living by, for, for a long time now. So you know, the, the way of thinking, the way in which, you know, innovation is assessed before we launch, it has an angle on what it will do for the environment, what it will do for society, what it will do for people's health, but also what it will do for the business. So I see that kind of running through the processes that are, that are in place with the business and the mindset of people that are running the business.

You know, quite.

Quite regularly and, and that's even kind of more so spurred on by the fact that across Australia and New Zealand we're now certified.

So I think that this is something that.

The business community will continue to evolve to a multi stakeholder approach to assessing performance of the business. One really, one really tangible thing that we've done in New Zealand with our people is that we work off this a system of priority setting or performance management for our team called flexible go goals. So we ask each person in the business to set three goals that they're going after within a time period. So that could be a six month period or an annual period depending on your role. And the framework we're put in place is that one of those personal goals needs to be people and planet goal. So how are you individually giving back to the environment, giving back to people's health, giving back to society as part of the role that you do. And by doing that, by formally putting a people and planet goal as part of how we measure performance and how we measure impact of our people, it's showing that as a business we really do care, encourage and promote the individual impact that can be made by our staff along with the collective impact that we can make as an organization. So I think that there are some kind of small steps you can take and small things you can put in place which are high impact and that show that no one is too small to be making their contribution to the overall effort.

Benefit 100. It's that classic, you know, JFK at NASA when he talked to the janitor. Hey son, what are you doing? I'm putting a man on the moon, sir. I think that that is the key and it sounds like you really, you know, you really have or are continuing to create that culture of buy in and letting the individual understand the impact that they can have and, and you know. Yeah, but by yourself maybe your impact isn't huge, but you times that by I don't know how many employees Unilever's got in this region, but globally you've probably got quite a few people who. Yeah, if you can, if you can harness that, yeah, that's super, super, super powerful. Absolutely. And of course, I mean, I mean Unilever originally the origin story of Unilever was half the Lever Brothers, wasn't it? From the. Undoubtedly. I know what it's like when you work for big companies. You get indoctrinated with the history of the company pretty early on in your career. I remember I used to work for this one company, Synthes, Swiss medical manufacturing, medical device company and they had a sister company called the ao. And your first test within two weeks of joining the company was being able to pronounce the full word of ao, which stands for. I'm gonna put. I can't remember it now. I had it on tip my tongue. It's like R bites. Combined shaft for Osteosynthes. There you go. So you had to learn that and be able to say that to an orthopedic surgeon within two weeks of joining or else you were kind of out of the company. So, yeah, the, the Lever Brothers, obviously, you know, there was, there was an element of paternalism and. Yeah, building worker housing and you know, the first product was. It was soap, wasn't it? I think for the Lever Brothers. So there's been this. It's always interesting to track back the core of some of these larger companies. And do you feel that maybe companies like Unilever are almost coming back to first principles where there might have been a bit of a loss of some of those principles in the sort of the mid part of the 20th century where it was just about, I mean, let's face it, the 80s 90s really was about rampant. You know, let's just make as much money as possible. So yeah. Have you felt a sense of that or is that something that comes up or do people not look back to the history too much in the modern era?

No, we talk a lot about the, the founders mentality and kind of some of the, the initial values that the founders of the organization, like the Lever Brothers in the UK kind of, you know, brought to the business. And we're quite pioneering in kind of, you know, as you said, you know, universal care for workers, providing housing, providing sanitary products in a time which basic sanitation wasn't the norm. And the purpose and the way in which they built the business in a purposeful way was quite pioneering a few hundred years ago when they were first operating. And that ethos still runs through today. So the question that we get asked for Australia, New Zealand is what are you doing to pioneer purpose? What are you doing to kind of pioneer different ways of working? And you know, one of our big examples over the last couple of years has been the four day workweek that we've put into place where we've said to people, you know, if you can deliver 100% of performance, we'll allow you to work 80% of the time while you retain 100% of your salary. And this idea of kind of sharing reward, you know, where the business is performing well, we share a really meaningful Reward with our people in the gift of time back and, and the impact that that on people's lives, you know, that's kind of transpired in some ways you probably wouldn't expect at first. You'd expect, you know, most people to say, great, I'll go down to the beach for an extra bag for that for the weekend. But you know, what we've found in the business is that people are using that time to give back to their local communities by volunteering. They're spending time caring for some of their elderly parents who might be sick and unwell and need that company and support. You know, they've got people who are been able to take caring responsibilities from their partner, to allow their partner to get back into their career sooner or to kind of go out and pursue, you know, their learning and development. We've got people who have invested into, you know, furthering their education with that extra time. But, you know, this idea of.

Thinking forward, what is truly meaningful for our people, what is truly meaningful for the communities that we serve and you know, really challenging ourselves to continue to pioneer in those spaces is something that we take a lot of inspiration from the founders of the business and still try to live today.

Nice. And a good mate of mine, Tim Loftus, he was the brand manager at Kathmandu who sort of led, was leading the B Corp certification for them a few years back. He always talks. I saw him give a really good keynote and he talked about how, you know, the ripple effect of doing good. So you do good for your employees by saying, hey, look, we're going to pay you the same, same 80% of time at work.

You can maybe capture some of the impact around, okay, X percent of employees have now, you know, gone into adult learning or X percent of volunteering. But to then capture the ripple that that volunteering has which then has in a community which it's, it's really interesting to think you will never capture the full amount of impact that that one thing has. And in, in some ways ways should you. Should you want to capture that. Like it almost takes away from the essence of the idea of. I don't know. For me it does. I'm not that much of a data sort of junkie, sort of geek person. Yeah, I just think sometimes it's just nice to know that you've benefited the universe in some way and that ripple go out there. But yeah, the impact that I think, and that's the thing for companies of your size and scale is the scale of the impact that you can, can have if you if you flick by 1% or 1 degree, the impact that you can have versus what I could have as a relatively small business at the bottom of the planet. It's.

Yeah, I think that it's also to come back to what you mentioned earlier and the diversity of the types of business that are businesses that are involved in the movement and sometimes that causes a bit of attention between, you know, whether B Corp is a, in its purest form, kind of a certification that founders and smaller businesses really went after. It's so important in every aspect of business and particularly with the B Corp movement, that you do have that diversity of industry, that diversity of business size, that diversity of the tenure of business or the kind of maturity of a business. Because as you said, the smaller businesses are far more agile. They're able to turn and steer the ship, make faster decisions and there's a lot of inspiration and, and learning that can be taken from that. But as you said, larger organizations, this, the scale, you know, we're in 99 of New Zealand households with our brands. You know, by putting the, the B Corp logo on the packs of some of our brands, it's, it's advertising space and that creates awareness and inspiration for, for a huge number of Australian and New Zealanders behind the movement. So I think that, you know, the diversity of membership and, and certification plays a really important.

Bro 100. You know, I mean, it is interesting some, you know, let's be honest, there were some B corpse, typically smaller ones, who, when you guys joined, and then I'll mention the N word of Nespresso, when those guys got their B Corp certification, some people literally were ripping up their B Corp certification. I've got my, you know, my B Corp in here. I did not rip my one up. You know, they're kind of like, well, if these guys can join then clearly this thing is a sham, you know, so it's rubbish. I'm not interested. This is taken away from the essence of the movement. But for me, you guys have met the operational requirements and you sort of alluded to it and I know that it took you a good over two years to reach the 80 point out of 200 requirements to become a B Corp. So it's not like you paid some money to the assessment team, said, hey, we'd like to be a B Corp. Can you make it happen? I mean, there was a bunch of hard work and you've met the minimum standard to get in in your first attempt. So yeah, I just think it's an open church. We should bring anyone who wants to go on the journey? And what can the community of B Corps here and globally not learn from a huge organization like Unilever who, you know, like you say, integrating personal impact at the individual level, their company. That's hard for me to work out. How do I create that form and how do I have that conversation? But if I could learn that from your team and go, oh right, actually it's quite easy. And you can share that knowledge with the 500, 600, whatever it is, B corks you've got in this region right now. Well, I think that's worth it. Yeah.

And I think it's important to note that, you know, the, the, the journey on for a more sustainable business doesn't start at the beginning of your certification attempt. You know, you talked about Paul Polman our, our CEO for a number of years. You know, he put in place the Unilever Sustainable Living program, which has been a 10 year program that finished just before our certification process started and that, you know, set 10 years ago some incredibly stretching goals on environment, on, you know, people's health, on the way in which our business contributes back to society. And we had 10 years and in that 10 years we did some amazing things and reached some large number of the targets that we'd set there. You know, certification for B Corp then came, you know, in addition to that. So I think for no organization is the certification the start of thinking, hey, we want to do something, you know, a bit more sustainable with our business. It's actually part of a much, much longer term commitment and, and built off a really strong foundation of progress in the past.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it wasn't a standing start. Yeah, you've already been doing some stuff. So I mean, do you know, because obviously so Unilever Anz is a B Corp, but the rest of the Unilever universe is not currently a B Corp. And I guess again for people tuning in who maybe this is your first, you know, interaction with even the idea of B Corp. Typically really large companies are not allowed to certify at the global level. Other examples would be Danone, I'm pretty sure Dano North America is as a B Corp. Dan Own Europe is a B Corp. And then Danone Asia Pacific as a B Corp. So the whole global entity, it's almost like the elephant is too big for us to eat. There's so, so many localized differences across all your business units around HR policies and procedures and what have you that they kind of have to chunk it down into the most appropriate size. So I mean, are you at liberty to talk about other global business units or have people been kind of looking at Anz now going, okay, how's it gone? Yeah. Are other business units interested or is that top secret?

No, no, not top secret at all. I think, yeah. As we said, a number of our individual brands are B Corp certified at a global level. So if I take, you know, Ben and Jerry's as an example, a B corporation at a global level. And, and it does have a lot of the complexities that, that you spoke around. And you know, I think, I think that the Unilever world is looking at Unilever Australia and New Zealand and what we've achieved under the B Corp certification and what we'll continue to prioritize and work on as a global case study for what it looks like as part of our ongoing sustainability journey. So we're within the first 12 months of certification here in Australia, New Zealand, and.

People are watching around the world with bated breath to see what we can achieve and what it does for the business. Our focus, focus in Anz, as we talked a bit about so far, is making sure that we can draw a direct correlation between, you know, doing great for the planet and, and, and, and a focus on sustainability with superior business performance. And that's what we're really focused on, is making sure that we continue to draw those parallels and, and prove that.

Point is there, were there any initiatives or ideas that have like immediately been sent around the world that it's like, whether it's B Corp, you know, did B Corp create a program program or a policy or a concept that's been shared? Regardless of other companies looking at B Corp, was there anything that other people have gone, hey, that's, that's a really cool idea. We want that.

I can't think of one that's, that's an example from the B Corp certification, but there's loads of examples of where Australia and New Zealand as over the last couple of years have come up and kind of inspired the world through different things that we're doing. So, you know, the four day workweek is one that undeniably has a lot of attention from a lot of people both inside the business and outside the business globally. I think, you know, in our global town halls, it's the number one asked question for the last 18 months is when do we roll out the four day week globally? You know, that's an idea that, an experimentation that started here in New Zealand without NZ team. You know, we've got a paid parental leave policy that's a 16 weeks undiscriminative between primary and secondary caregivers. So it's for anyone in the family to be used within the first 12 months. Having a new family member and for a lot of places around the world, that's quite breakthrough. That's, that's, you know, absolutely.

So even parental care in some, the company I was working with this morning, you know, the, the lady who's from the US team was kind of like I had my baby and pretty much has come throughout to work. So anything is an advance in a lot of places.

Yeah, so, so you know that, that's something we're put in place across our Australia and New Zealand business which is getting a lot of, a lot of focus and attention from, from, from different businesses and from the global business around and in Unilever.

Because I think that that is the big challenge for global companies is we do this. And I mean even just the differences between New Zealand and Australia, you know, in Australia there is no federally recognized living wage. So in New Zealand we have a government level living wage. So we get the points for most companies if they're paying people on a salary and to be honest, even most people who are paying on an hourly wage are paying a living wage that we're working with if they're thinking about B Corp. But they might be paid the same wage in Australia but you get zero points recognition because there is no federally recognized living wage. So it, you know, the B Corp assessment is not perfect, but it's the best that we've got. But yeah, that's probably a bad example because that's a government issue. But yeah, things like parental leave and this is something that we're doing with this, with this large company is trying to help them work out how they can harmonize policy and pick the best standard from the world and go, can we now apply this across all our business units? But that's complex and there's people and there's policies and procedures and boards and da da da da. So yeah, all the, all the fun stuff. The real minutiae of going through the, the assessment in that detail.

So getting back to you a little bit. So you mentioned, you know, you had this, this desire to sort of do good and make impact impact from the start.

Where did that come from? What was your sort of upbringing like? Were you, have you always been interested in sort of doing good or was there a moment in time at university where you kind of thought, hang on. Like this is sort of. Because I mean when I was at university. I think I'm possibly a bit older than you. I don't know. I think so. But I was at uni in the, in the late 90s and the idea of getting a job for impact and purpose, no, you're just going to go and get a good, good job and get paid good money and then eventually you'll get married, have kids and you get a nice house. And that was kind of the path that was. Whereas I do quite a bit of mentoring for various student programs over the last few years and seemingly every student at university now has got a social enterprise startup side hustle gig where they're trying to change the world and that. It just blows my mind that that's how awesome young people are today. But yes. What was it like for you and where did the idea of doing good? Because for me, me it was pretty late in my life.

Yeah, I think probably for me it was at different phases. I think I was quite. As I said, I grew up in the, the southern suburbs of Sydney and I was really lucky to have a lot of nature around me at all times. So, you know, the best memories of my childhood were kind of running around in the Aussie bush barefoot, building tree houses, trying to escape the snakes and spiders and.

And I think that this, you know, really built a really strong appreciation for nature, for the environment, for, you know, the, the flora and fauna of the world. And.

You know, having, having that experience growing up then, you know, as I came into, you know, my studies and, and then into business, it's probably been something that's been in the background, but probably not a driver of my ethos of approaching business until probably similar to you. Probably the best example I can remember of first connecting the importance of sustainability and the correlation between strong business performance was a project that we worked on for our foods business in the Czech Republic.

We had a, a challenge with our ketchup and you know, similar to, to the example I gave earlier, our mayonnaise that a lot of people says a bottle of ketchup is a bottle of ketchup. You know, how can a bottle of ketchup be purposeful? And you know, through this project we, we had a ketchup business which was declining and we had to really look through the entire makeup of the, of the product to understand, you know, what do shoppers want want, what's our business capabilities that we can we have and parameters we need to work within, what do our customers want and how do we create a viable ketchup bottle for the future. And as we kind of deconstructed what we had in this bottle of ketchup, there were a series of decisions that we made around the composition. Everything from, you know, when we looked at the design of the bottle and understood what do consumers actually care about and the functionality of a ketchup bottle, we were able to remove, remove a bunch of plastic within the design which resulted in, you know, no consumer meaningful downside to the bottle or the function of the product, but a significant reduction in the amount of plastic that goes into the bottle. We, we looked at, you know, what was important for consumers when they were choosing a ketchup and naturalness was something that came up and free this idea of free from, free from preservatives, free from artificial colors. So we changed the, the plastic used in the creation of the bottle to a clear plastic rather than this highly industrialized red plastic which gave stronger naturalness cues and also reduced the amount of materials that go into the plastic bottle and the cost that goes into the plastic bottle. We, you know, we looked at the formulation of the ketchup and we removed, we shortened shelf life slightly, but we removed a bunch of the preservatives and some of the add ins in there which, you know, as a consumer was moving towards a desire for more natural products then kind of met, you know.

And we relaunched the ketchup business to a business which was significantly more sustainable from a packaging and formulation standpoint, was significantly better for the consumer's health and also was significantly better from a margin perspective. And after relaunching, we turned the business into a 30% growth business.

And from a simple bottle of ketchup, that's for me the clearest example of where I was thinking, know, acting purposefully, really understanding what your consumer wants, doing the best thing by the planet.

Can have and must have, you know, a corresponding business benefit and an outcome. So I always go back to that example and you know, it sounds like a bottle of ketchup, but actually it was so much more than that. And that's where, you know, for me I really started to invest behind, behind, you know, purposeful business and, and using purpose and, and the ethos of sustainability is a key driver for how I make decisions and how I approach business.

Nice. Because I think, yeah, I remember reading that article, I think I saw it in the Financial Times a few months ago where there was some pushback from, from some Unilever shareholders saying, look, mayonnaise doesn't need a purpose. And I think that's a really interesting question. And this isn't I've got the blog that I want to write or the article I want to write on this and I guess this is me giving my first attempt at writing that. And in some ways I kind of think they're right. So Ben and Jerry's is an obvious example where the original founders, I guess Ben and Jerry, they wanted to build a business that was happy and proud to highlight social issues on the global scale and use their brand as a means of protesting or highlighting things in the world that they personally didn't agree with. And I think that's every business's business owner's right. If you are particularly passionate about a cause and you want to use your vehicle as a mechanism to create awareness about that cause go you. But I think the risk is clearly you can polarize people and you pick a cause that actually only you care about and not so many other people care about or you don't actually articulate the two depth of the cause and the number nuance of the cause and da da da da. So I think for brands I think that's quite, it's. It's risky. But go you if you want to get behind a cause but do it authentically, think about how you actually, you know, are you creating change. But I think for me you hit the nail on the head about does a brand new purpose. And particularly in, in the FMCG sector. The purpose of food is to provide nutrition and sustenance. And that that is the one thing I, I just get really wound up when you look at some of the ingredients and some basic food products and you go look, actually you kind of know that a lot of these ingredients are the cheapest ingredients so that you can get the most margin. And actually they're not really that healthy compared to, I mean the one I will pick on you guys for this one, the mayonnaise. All I want is a mayonnaise that's got olive oils and egg in it. I don't want one with canola oil in it. I don't want one with artificial oil oils in it. And so I think the brand that we buy it's got, you know, now we've added olive oil and it's like why can't it just have olive oil in it? And yeah, I know there's the shelf life and but for me that, that that would be the purpose is the job of food is to provide high quality nutrition, the best quality nutrition we can to serve humanity. There is nothing more purposeful than feeding the world or keeping the world hygienic and free from disease. So again, it's coming back to those first principles and this is quite, quite often the purpose journey of companies is the actual origin story of the company was really purposeful and solving the problem. But we got a little bit distracted and we've gone, oh, actually, yeah, if we do use that cheaper ingredient, we can get more money. Well, it still cleans people, but it is slightly more toxic than the one we used to use, which was more natural. So I do feel that there is this resurgence back of, you know, more natural, less toxic ingredients or less toxic. Not obviously you don't put toxic stuff in food. Well, hopefully not, but you know what I mean, it's like there's more, more natural approach to. And for me that's more impactful is actually having a really, particularly in the food sector, products that sustain life in a manner that is regenerative and, and supports the environment. So you're thinking that way. So.

Absolutely. You know, when we think around, you know, you. When we think about brand purpose and, and how we might activate a brand purposefully, there's, there's a, there's a lot of stuff we think about, we look at. But if I break it down to three things. One, is there a true societal tension? Is there a true problem that exists that we could play a role in resolving? Two, does it.

Does it naturally fit with the brand? If there's not a natural fit there, if it's too much of a jump between what your brand or your product is to the cause or the purpose in which you want to kind of work within, often the consumer doesn't make that connection and it becomes disingenuous.

And then third, you need to invest for the long term behind that. It can't be a one marketing campaign that runs over a season and then you walk away from it the next year again comes across as disingenuous and doesn't show a strong commitment towards that cause.

And then I'll add a fourth, which is, you know, that link between purpose and performance. Is that the most successful purpose campaigns or the most successful brands who are able to work alongside a purposeful cause, ones in which that purposeful cause also helps grow the consumption or grow the usage or grows the connection with that brand. So if I take Hellman's, we talked about that a few times now, but you know, Hellman's is a, as a, as a condiments brand, its purpose is around reducing food waste. A third of all the food that's produced in the world goes to Waste, the majority of that comes from a consumer's household and the majority of that comes from the fridge. And with mayonnaise, we're able to add flavor and taste to stuff that's maybe a couple of days old in the fridge that you may have otherwise thrown away. So there's this really strong inherent link between the real tension or the real challenge in the world, the functional benefit of the product and something that we can have a perspective and, and, and actually make a difference behind using our product. And that's often where, you know, you get the sweet spot of those four things. Right. Where purpose actually then does become genuine. It does become, you know, long standing and meaningful for consumers and the cause you're trying to tackle.

Yeah, although in, for me, in my household, mayonnaise is just guaranteed on every meal pretty much. Um, so.

Which you're probably saving a.

Whole lot of waste by doing because you're, you're using stuff from the fridge more than likely.

I take a very European approach to mayonnaise, particularly when it comes to, to fries, which confuses a lot of people in New Zealand, although aioli is quite commonly served with, with I, I. It's the big, the big conundrum when it comes to food and beverage in this house is I refer to a lot of stuff still through the British lens. So chips are hot. Hot crisps are what comes in a packet. But Kiwis and Aussies like to call chips that come in at crisps that come in a packet chips. So what are the things you get from the chip shop? This is all very confusing. All of which you can put mayonnaise on as far as I'm concerned.

Absolutely.

Yeah. No, I think it's so true and I think that's the key. We've got a podcast episode that I think has possibly gone live with Tim o'. Brien. He's a similar guy to me. He wants people to be corp and impact. And his big thing is we need to get, we need to get away from having a purpose statement, having an impact statement, where the core of what the business is about is solving a problem. And I think that's really cool that you can articulate that. Say, well, look. Yeah, I mean you could, you could flippantly say, well, sure, people starving in Sierra Leone right now probably don't really think too much about whether they mayonnaise on the food that they don't have. But we also have to be cognizant. There is a world of consumption in the west where, yeah, actually the emissions, the waste what have you from food waste is really significant and if we can play a part in solving that with a condiment, well that's, that is a way of solving it and we shouldn't exclude that or be, you know, I guess you have the hubris to sort of say, well mayonnaise isn't going to save the planet, you know. But then I guess you can get into the nuance of how much emissions does it cost to make the mayonnaise and ship it and blah blah, blah. But fundamentally it's like, yeah, well we're still to trying, trying to play a part in solving it and at least we're thinking that way rather than just can we sell more white product instead of red product to people? Yeah, absolutely. Which leads nicely to I guess another question of how, particularly for yourself as managing director of a business unit of part of a global company, you've got this purpose lens for yourself. You've clearly got the support of the organization regionally and it's seemingly globally. And I guess the legacy of Paul Pullman to really get the company, company thinking differently. I always found and I kind of feel like I'm, I'm 10 years ahead of myself. When I was working for large global organizations 20 years ago, this stuff just, they were not interested. It's just make more money. But, and, and in the medical device world, I don't know if you've been watching the painkiller series on Netflix about the Sackler family and the OxyContin. You know, that literally was how. Well I dare say is still how last large amounts of the medical device world are run. It's sell the products. We don't care if people die ultimately as long as we're making a ton of money. And I say that there's the cases of companies that I work for where they knowingly sold products into the market without the full FDA approval and patients died on the operating table because they knew that if they didn't launch the product they would lose market share and boohoo, the shareholders lose out some money, some of whom were the surgeons doing the procedures. So it's kind of like been there, seen that and done just. It feels like there has been a massive sea change at the last large corporate world where actually this stuff is here and it's genuine. It's not, you know, like I say, working for large companies historically they'd have the values on the wall and, but it'd be like, yeah, but we could ignore those today because we just need to make more money. So how Do. How are you finding as a managing director of a business unit of a large company, how do you balance the purpose and profit thing? Do you have a, is there a framework or is it like gut feel you've got, you know, hey, here's two options. One means we make a bit more money. One means we serve our purpose. How do you manage that personally, that tension between doing good and keeping the money coming in?

Yeah. One of my favorite quotes from a mentor and manager that I worked for once was very simple and it was never break consumer trust. The moment that you break consumer trust, whether that's for whatever intention, that's the moment the business starts to fall apart. And that's, that's probably quite a simple value and quite a simple principle in which I think all businesses should look at the decisions in which they're making. Is it the right thing to do? And you know, and you know, so that's definitely a guiding principle and something kind of stays in my mind as I kind of manage the business here is what's, what's, what's the right thing to do for our consumer? What's the right thing to do for our people? What's the right thing to do for our, for our customers?

And, and if something feels like it is not the right thing to do, no amount of profit or no, no amount of market share is, is worth that because it's a short term gain. And, and, and you know, you'll, you, if you lose that trust, your business will suffer in the long term.

The, you know, the question around, is there a framework in which we use to balance out, you know, purpose and, and performance. The.

Value we try to kind of push within our people is this value of curiosity.

If we have a solution which is more purposeful, if we have a solution that's more sustainable or more environmentally friendly, what needs to be true to make this work for the business rather than, no push that to the side, it costs too much or it brings too much complexity in what would it take to launch, launch that. How could we make that true? What are the other circumstances we would need to alter or change in order for, you know, that to, to be able to launch.

You know, a great example of something we've done just recently actually this month is we've relaunched our roll on deodorants under the Rexona and Dove brands. And you know that historically our deodorants have been flipped upside down with a ball of. The roll on deodorant sits across the lowest point which then allows it to be the app, the deodorant to be the ball to be lubricated. You're able to put it on your arm. We've been able to figure out a design that flip, but the trade off has been you have to flip the deodorant the other way. But the design allows us to use up to 30% less plastic within the product. There's a trade off. You need to make the functional design of the deodorant or the sustainable choice. And, and the choice we made. Let's go ahead with a sustainable choice. Our commitment towards plastic reduction and doing the right thing for the environment. And that trumps.

So there's a business benefit also because less plastic also means less cost in packaging design.

But yeah, it's the right thing to do. So let's go ahead and implement that.

Nice. That's a great example, man, you're full of great examples. Yeah. As I say to people frequently, you know, doing good makes sense and can make you sense.

I think one of the recent stats from the B Corp Global or B Lab Global impact report was B Corp's are 1 1/2 times more likely to be creating zero waste than a non B Corp. Well, you go, well, clearly there's a massive environmental benefit if you're creating no waste, but there's also going to be some cost savings if you're not having to pay for anyone to pick up your waste.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, and that's really cool. And I think again, this is the value, value I think that the really large companies can bring is you've got a bunch of smart people who like solving problems and. Cool. Yeah, that's a really great idea. As it stands, we don't have the money to do that right now, but you come back to me and work out how we can do that or what are some steps to do that. Again, I think this is, this is where, you know, your organizations of your size will play a leading role in, yeah, forming ideas and, and, and yeah. Distilling ideas so that other people can then go, actually okay, okay, right now that's been done. Now we know that we can go and do it. So yeah, that's super cool. And have these. Is it too early to know yet whether any business results have been influenced by the B Corp or are you guys tracking that down to the millisecond of revenue, which no doubt big companies will be pretty good at tracking levels of revenue to quite small levels.

Yeah, we have no shortage of data and a shortage of insight from that data as well. You know, One of the stats I love is, you know, 60% of our global brand portfolio.

Sits within purposeful brands. So brands who have a clearly defined purpose and those brands are growing 40% faster than the rest of the balance of the portfolio. So there's a, such a clear linkage between, you know, when a brand has clarity on its purpose and executes consistently behind that, it does deliver stronger business performance.

Nice.

If I look at the business more locally across Australia and New Zealand, our business performance over the last kind of two years has accelerated from a, from a top line sales perspective and, and we are gaining market share within, within the categories which we play. And you know, those two things are in part testament to some of the steps we've taken. I don't know if I can directly correlate sale for sale but you know, in New Zealand we've, we've had a consistent growth record, I think it's 22 consecutive quarters of, of accelerating top line sales growth. And, and a lot of that is due to the purposeful sustainable and certifications like B Corp, which we've been focused on for, for a long period of time. So the business is, is healthy and, and there are business results to, you know, illustrate and demonstrate, you know, what long standing commitment to sustainability can do for performance.

100%. And if you had any noticeable increase in applications for people wanting to work.

At Unilever, it's been a really interesting employment market over the last couple of years. Yes. So it's a, it's not.

I like, I like how you preface that.

You know, what I'm focused on is actually more around retention, retention of people. And we were really lucky in, you know, in New Zealand to have a really high retention rate. And actually it's so much more beneficial from a cost perspective, from a disruption perspective, from you know, a retention of knowledge perspective and a business perspective to retain a great talent than it is to try to recruit a great talent from the market. And you know, the B Corp certification along with things like the four day work week, like the 16 week paid parental leave, like the work we do with Dove and its self esteem program and helping school kids with self body confidence, you know, those things all create a stronger connection with our people and, and allow us to retain the talent that we have. So talent retention has been kind of the by far the biggest focus for me particularly over the last kind of two years or so. And that's, that's held us in really, really a really strong position because the talent retail market in New Zealand and globally has Been incredibly competitive. And you know, we do find that the majority, I think There's a stat 67% of young people today in New Zealand will only work for an organization who they believe is making a positive impact in the world. So when we do come to recruit externally and we go to market for certain positions, we are finding people, you know, they know about Unilever, they understand what we stand for. They expect to be working for a business that is doing business in a better way when they come, you know, they come in and work for us. So where we do need to go to the market, we are finding the applicants that we are getting are, you know, purposeful applicants who know what they want from us when they come in, but also respect and understand the long standing journey that we have been on in the space.

Yep, very cool. Very cool.

Yeah, just so, so much good stuff. Yeah, really, really cool.

Biggest surprise, having gone through the B Corp journey, was there, was there anything that you were like, oh, we, we hadn't really thought about that or yeah, anything that, that really kind of struck you from going through the B Corp or was it. Did it all kind of make sense for you? That. Yeah, that kind of stacks up.

Two surprises. One, I think that the amount of time it took from the initiation.

Through until securing the certification, I think it's actually a good thing, you know, because it does show how robust the, the process is. It took us two years, you know, with a good amount of resource behind, really investigating how do we make this happen. So I think that, you know, initially we did know there's a lot of commentary around the, how robust the process is. But, you know, when you, a year and a half in and still working on it without knowing, hey, are we going to make this or not? You know, it requires so much commitment to the cause and so much resilience from the team to continue to drive that forward. So, you know, big surprise was it was how long it took, but a lot of respect, respect for the amount of time that it took.

In also then being so proud of the certification once it comes.

And another surprise was probably just how far reaching the assessment is into your business.

And it's probably.

Something that's known, but sometimes we forget is that the answers for a lot of the questions for any business challenge or any business problem or through certification doesn't come from senior leaders in the business. It comes from your people. It comes from the guys that are in the trenches getting the stuff done on a daily basis or on the front line of your business and.

Engaging and empowering those people across the business is so important when it comes to these big areas, areas of focus. So maybe not so much a surprise, but a reminder of just how important everyone is in the business and how much value and knowledge sits within your teams.

Yep. Nothing. Yeah, you're nailing it again. That's what I like. B Corp, it's globally recognized, it's independent verification, it's social and environmental impact. There is no other framework that has all of those. There are other similar frameworks but, but you know, again with B Corp you can fail. You cannot meet the criteria where there's a couple of other frameworks that basically, you know, you will get a, you will get a pass. It's just what grade of pass you get. So have you really passed though? You know, you've kind of got a D or maybe, you know, an F. Kind of suggests that you're not really doing much. But hey, you've got a, you've got a certificate to prove that you're doing something which, okay, look, maybe there is merit in that. Say, look, we're on a journey. But I do think the rigor, Jamie Oliver, his food group in the UK is a B corp. He described it as, as invasive as having the tax man having a rifle around your neck. A drawer.

They get into the weeds and like I said, that's, that's how we want it because it's not greenwashing. And so when people kind of throw rocks at the big boys like yourselves and Nespresso site.

I would hesitate to suggest that the audit team from B Lab would possibly even more thorough with a Unilever. I would like to think they're pretty, you know, they're good with everyone. But the reputational risk for these, for B Lab, for, for certifying you and Nespresso and I would suggest there was probably more rigor for you guys to make sure that. Okay, are they really, really doing this? So yeah, you probably got a bit more of a fine tooth comb than others because the reputational risk for you and, and for the certification framework. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just coming to the end of, the end of the chat, what does being a B corp mean for you, you personally, as Cameron or as md, whichever hat you put on.

Yeah, I think, you know what's been really a moment of pride for me has been the external nature of the certification and the recognition of the long term commitment to sustainable business.

You know, my vision and what I hope to achieve through being part of the B Corp community with Unilever. In Australia, New Zealand is, I would love this to truly become a consumer recognizable and a differentiator for New Zealanders and for all Australians where, you know, people understand that when they see that logo, they're making a choice to support, you know, only the organizations which uphold themselves to the highest holistic set of standards, you know, across how they run their business. So it's been a huge kind of moment of pride to have that kind of that badge, have that certification and also start to think around how do we leverage our business to drive that awareness and that understanding further.

Amongst the community. Another, another really great part since being certified has been being involved in the local B Corp communities, you know, particularly in Auckland. But I hope to get more involved down in CR Christchurch as well. And you know, being a part of some of their events, we're part of their organizing team. We've had the opportunity to network with other B corps that we didn't have contact with, you know, prior to being certified. And you know, that, that interaction, that, that kind of shared experience, that ability to bounce ideas off each other and be part of a local community of B Corps in New Zealand on the ground, that that means a lot and hopefully we can find ongoing ways to contribute to that community because we're getting a whole lot of value out of being part of it.

Nice. It's a two way street for sure. You'll learn a bunch of stuff from someone like say the smaller B Corps. Yeah. So shout out if. I'll make sure in the show notes there's links to the B Locals in certainly in New Zealand and there are B Local chapters all over the world. So if you're what we would call be curious. So you're not sure if you want to be a B Corp yet. When you grow up, go and check out a B Local. If you're a wannabe, if you're on the journey to B Corp, go check out B Local. And if you are a B Corp, for heaven's sake, get down and support your local B Locals in Auckland.

Come along to one of our B Local events there. Yeah, we've got it every couple of weeks and we'd love to see you there with you're an inspiring vehicle or.

Or a certified 100% and I think, yeah, the role that you guys will play in promoting the wider community, I, you know, we've got, you know, with your Kathmandu's on board, you guys on board, unespressos the leverage that you can bring to the global movement and explaining that movement and, and yeah, I don't think you can put a value on what that's going to do to, to expand the awareness and expand the pie of B Corp for all B Corps, not just for you. And I think rightly so, you guys should, should get the benefit of leading that and, and, and hopefully, hopefully get the consumer support for. Like I said, I think increasingly, particularly in the sectors that you're in, the savvy consumer is looking at both options and going this one's got an independent verification to prove the claims that they're making. Yeah, I'll give it a go. So yeah, thank you for, for what you're about to do to the movement. I think it's going to be. The movement is already growing exponentially but I think you are going to just. Yeah. Expand that to untold heights. So last, last question. What do you see the future of the B Corp movement looking like? So looking 10 years into the future, what does, what does B Corp look like? What does B Corp and Unilever look like?

I think bigger, better, bolder. It kind of comes to mind bigger in the sense of the rate of certification or number of people attempting certification is growing at an exponential rate rate. And the way in which we will continue to make this a differentiator for business is for more businesses to become a part of the movement. And the scale that then comes from a larger and larger community of businesses operating under the B Corp framework will only amplify the benefit that it brings to society and to the environment.

Better in terms of the fact that the, the new certification standards hold businesses to even higher levels of account on most kind of areas in the certification criteria. And I fully expect those to continue to get stronger and businesses to continue to make, you know, more progress against it. So I think they've become better, you know, in, in that way. And Boulder, I'd love to, as I said earlier, I would, I would love to see this to be a consumer recognizable brand in its own right with the awareness.

Across Australia and New Zealand where people are boldly looking for the logo to make choices around, you know, what that, what they support through their wallets. I think it's 57% of Australians and New Zealanders will intentionally look for a product which has sustainable credentials or does good for the planet.

Planet.

How do we, you know, get that intention linked to action using the, the B Corp certification and that can be across, you know, any industry or any business in which people are making a decision or what to support?

100 Love it man. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to get to know you a bit more. More than happy to take you up to Mount Hut if you want to come down and get you. I mean, snowboarders, there was a bit of tension. Let's be honest. Please. Snowboarders and, and skiers. But, you know, you are a B Corp. We will, we will let that slide. Just like your board will be sliding down the mountain. I feel we need. We need to have a B Corp ski day. And there's enough of us now. There's got to be.

Yeah. So we'll try and make that happen. But yeah. Thank you so much. It's genuinely inspiring to hear the big companies actually do give a damn and you're genuinely committed and you at the helm of the New Zealand business are really like, you really get it. There's. There's a depth to this. I have no doubt you will go on to bigger and better things and be leading other business units around the globe of Unilever to BE Corp goodness in the future. So thank you for all you're doing. It's been great to catch up.

Thanks, Tim.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp. How to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill. Hit the like and subscribe. Check out some other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.