ILX Group helps Unilever foster greater financial competence for 17,000 managers worldwide and deliver shareholder value

The Challenge

Unilever has been manufacturing and marketing food, household and personal products for more than 70 years and is now one of the world's most successful consumer goods companies. Around 150 million times a day, someone chooses a Unilever product whether for food, home or personal care. Its leading brands include Comfort, Domestos, Hellmann's, Knorr, Slim.fast and Surf.

At Unilever, people are regarded as one of the most important assets of the organisation and as a result of its commitment to the welfare and development of its staff, the company is consistently ranked among the world's most admired employers.

The company recognised the need to help its managers - from all parts of the organisation - understand how their roles and their decisions could influence the financial and business performance of the company.

The Solution

In 1995 Unilever launched a comprehensive programme to drive value creation in the business. This comprised a video Trading Contribution - In pursuit of profitable growth and a series of workshops run around the world. Prior to these workshops, managers use the UFA (Unilever Financial Awareness) e-Learning course which provides the basics of financial understanding and acts as a refresher and knowledge reminder.

The UFA e-learning content was provided by ILX Group on diskette to 17,000 financial and non-financial managers, and graduate trainees worldwide. The original 12 courses were customised specifically for Unilever and contained over 24 hours of material ranging from standard financial subjects (Financial Statements, Cash Flow, Costing, Investment Appraisal & Return on Capital) to special subjects customised to Unilever requirements (such as Activity Based Costing and Shareholder Value). In 1997 the content was upgraded to reflect changes at Unilever. In 2002, the UFA course content was further developed and was converted from CD to online.

The Benefit

Already highly regarded by corporate organisations around the world, the ILX Group solution was ideal for Unilever. The courses were e-learning based which solved Unilever's problem of providing the same messages and content to all its managers regardless of location.

Unilever has used ILX Group courses to train more than 17,000 managers worldwide since 1995 and continues to use the courses to help managers understand how their decisions can influence the financial and business performance of the company. The courses - along with other elements of the project - have helped managers develop a much better grasp and long-term view of how their day-to-day actions can impact business value.

Another benefit of using the ILX Group courses is that Unilever has been able to customise them by adding the Unilever corporate look and feel and other additions including Unilever's own financial information, terminology and practical examples that staff are likely to face in their jobs. This means that the ILX Group courses not only help to develop a basic understanding of finance, but also show how that knowledge is applied to Unilever and its specific business challenges.

The target group of 17,000 managers changes each year as some are promoted to senior positions and others are included within the group for the first time. It is estimated that over the last 8 years UFA has been made available to a potential 30,000 Unilever managers.

Once the courses became available online, managing the UFA programme became considerably easier. Since course content can be easily and quickly upgraded once, it is available to all staff around the world immediately.

Further developments in the ILX Group courses means Unilever now has the option of converting their online UFA to other languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, even Chinese or Japanese.