How Unilever has Created a Culture of Internal Talent Mobility (Interview with Jeroen Wels)

When the CEO cites the internal talent marketplace you have helped to create, as a major contributor to revenue during the company's quarterly earnings call, you know you have achieved something pretty special.

That is what happened to my guest for this week's episode of The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Jeroen Wels is the Executive Vice President of HR at Unilever and the architect of Flex Experiences. Flex Experiences is Unilever's thriving, internal talent marketplace, which is currently used by 65,000 global employees who are able to share their skills and experience with people in other teams and in other countries. During their quarterly earnings call for the first quarter of 2020, Unilever CEO, Alan Jope, highlighted how by using Flex Experiences the company had been able to redeploy over 3000 people from parts of the business with low demand, to the areas that were seeing high demand due to the pandemic. As you will hear from Jeroen in this episode, Flex is a standout example of a talent marketplace and the impact, both to the business in terms of agility and unlocked hours and employees in helping them discover their purpose and support their careers, is huge.

In our conversation, Jeroen and I discuss:

• The journey of talent marketplace at Unilever so far and what is coming next
• How the events of 2020 cemented the business case for talent marketplace in Unilever
• Jeroen’s horizon thinking approach to working with HR technology companies and startups
• Whether the talent marketplace will mean that jobs won't exist anymore

This episode is a must listen for anyone interested or involved in agile transformation, employee experience, learning and internal mobility. So that is Business Leaders, CHROs and anyone in a people analytics, learning or HR business partner role.

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