Unilever Change Driver Summit: Where Indonesia’s Brightest and Most Promising Young Professionals Gather to Drive Impactful Change

In the year of 2022, from June to September, AMBIZ had the opportunity to partner for the first time with one of world’s biggest and most-renowned fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, Unilever.

This collaboration was inspired by Unilever Indonesia’s mission to tap into the professional talent market. We were challenged to design, plan and implement initiatives that are capable of not only attracting bright and promising professional talents, but also portraying and embedding Unilever’s values and practices in the process. The end goal of these initiatives was to find professionals with matching purpose and talent DNA as Unilever’s, therefore, increasing the chances of better talent retention.

The Process

We started the process by decoding the right message to be conveyed by these initiatives. To get the right answer, we went through numerous discussions with Unilever representatives, research on professional talents, and observations on past collaborations. From then on, we combined our understanding of Unilever’s essence as a long-standing global employer with purpose-led nature and future-fit business, the DNA of the talents they chose to hire, and the DNA of those who are enamored with the prospects of a career in the company.

Our process birthed several interesting terms, but none came close to the one term we ended up using as the branding for these initiatives: change driver. Our reason was that if we were to create initiatives that attract global-minded, purpose-driven, and forward-thinking professionals, we needed to go with a main message that calls to them—one that creates a spark within them at first read. Therefore, the name Unilever Change Driver Summit (UCDS) was born.

To cater to numerous professionals with different levels of understanding and interest in Unilever as an employer, we divided Unilever Change Driver Summit into three (3) events:

1. UCD Talk: an online webinar event held on July 19, 2022. This event focused mainly on inviting professionals of finance-related background.

2. UCD Talk: an intimate & invitation-only offline networking event held on August 5, 2022. This event focused mainly on inviting professionals of finance-related background

3. The Summit (main event): an offline gathering and competition event held on September 3, 2022. This event was open for professionals of finance, supply chain, tech/data, and marketing backgrounds.

After finalizing on the initiatives, we continued with the creation of a designated microsite specifically designed for Unilever Change Driver Summit. This microsite served as the only registration gate for all initiatives and was made to contain thorough information about each initiative.

To accompany the microsite, campaign contents were also created and deployed through various campaign channels. As the main source of information for Unilever Change Driver Summit, a comprehensive booklet was made and featured on the microsite to be downloaded by interested talents. Following the booklet, campaign contents such as posters and infographics were also deployed on Unilever Indonesia’s Instagram (@kami.unilever), LinkedIn (Unilever), and AMBIZ’s Instagram (@ambizindonesia) and LinkedIn (AMBIZ) and shared to 170+ of AMBIZ’s partnering communities and 50.000+ active internal talents.

The registration for Unilever Change Driver Summit (UCD Talk, UCD Meet and The Summit) was open starting July 11, 2022. Registrants were free to choose on which event(s) to register. However, it was stated from the very beginning of the registration process that only selected few will be invited to UCD Talk, UCD Meet and The Summit.

The process of sourcing the right professionals for Unilever Change Driver Summit also involved personal approach done using LinkedIn’s direct message features. We scoured through this platform to find talents with matching professional backgrounds and personally invited them to register for Unilever Change Driver Summit.

The combination of active social media campaign, personal LinkedIn invitation and community outreach resulted in 1000+ professional applicants, where only:

More about UCD Talk

UCD Talk was designed to be the public introduction of Unilever Change Driver Summit, focusing more on professionals with little to no understanding and interest in Unilever as an employer. In order to make it accessible for as many professionals as possible, UCD Talk was conducted online, and can be joined by anyone who are of finance background or are interested in the field of finance.

Held on July 19, 2022 from 19.00 until 21.00 WIB, UCD Talk brought two (2) of Unilever Indonesia’s top finance executives as the main speakers of the event, Marcin Zientek, the Head of BB Finance Foods & Refreshment with over 12 years of service in Unilever Global, and Gusti Laras, the Head of Internal Audit with over 12 years of service in Unilever Indonesia to, talk about “Driving Change One Dollar at a Time”. The event was moderated by Adista Chaerunisa, Unilever Indonesia’s Assistant Internal Audit Manager. The idea of this webinar was to help professionals, especially ones who are in or interested in the field of finance, understand how change doesn’t always have to be backed by big and costly resources, making everyone, no matter what or where they are in their organization, capable of implementing impactful change in their surroundings.

From start to finish, the webinar was filled with insightful knowledge and fun, interactive exchange between the speakers and attendees. Within only 2 hours, both speakers managed to answer many questions from the curious attendees. Though there were many other questions left unanswered by the speakers due to the limited time, 75% of UCD Talk attendees claimed that they would attend similar events by Unilever Indonesia in the future.

More about UCD Meet

Following UCD Talk, an exclusive invitation-only networking event for selected professionals titled UCD Meet was held on August 5, 2022. This event gathered 19 highly-selected professionals at Prasetiya Mulya’s InnovationHub, and connected them with 11 representatives from Unilever Indonesia, where 8 of them coming from the finance function and 3 from employer branding.

The concept of UCD Meet was to get these highly selected professionals to engage in exciting and insightful discussions with as many Unilever Indonesia representatives as possible. To create a dynamic flow within the discussion, we divided the professionals into eight tables, where in each table, they were to be paired with a finance representative from Unilever Indonesia to discuss about a certain topic. However, to warm up the attendees, a networking game was played at the beginning of the event.

The grouping of professionals in each table was based on their stances on said topics, which were announced a few weeks prior to UCD Meet. We grouped these professionals with other professionals of opposing stances, encouraging them to build shared understanding of each other’s views. The role of Unilever Indonesia’s representatives was to navigate the discussion in the table they were assigned to. After 20 minutes, all groups were disbanded, reformed into new groups, and rotated to new tables, allowing the attendees meet, network, and exchange views with as many representatives as possible, and vice versa.

After the third rotation, all attendees were asked to share the learnings and stories they experienced in UCD Meet. Even after the event had ended, the attendees remained in the venue to get to know each other, exchange contacts, and even reached out to Unilever Indonesia representatives for any lingering questions they still might have.

The execution of UCD Meet resulted in:

More about The Summit

The Summit is the main event of Unilever Change Driver Summit’s series of initiatives. The one-day offline event was held on September 3, 2022 at Unilever Indonesia’s headquarters, Grha Unilever in Tangerang, BSD, and attended by 67 highly-assessed professionals coming from various professional backgrounds: marketing, tech/data, finance, and supply chain. Unlike the two (2) previous events, The Summit was filled with several activities, including Enriching Talk Show, Sustainability & Market Presentation, Business Strategy Workshop, Business Case Challenge, and Awarding Night.

The event began with an Enriching Talk Show themed “Scalable & Profitable Sustainability: Driving Practical Change That is Profitable and Sustainable for Business, Local Economy, and Environment”. This talk show invited three inspiring speakers of different backgrounds: Sandiaga Uno, Indonesian Minister of Tourism & Creative Economy, Nurdiana Darus, Unilever Indonesia’s Head of Sustainability & Corporate Affairs, and David Christian, CEO & Founder of Evoware, while moderated by Adisty Nilasari, Unilever Indonesia’s Senior External & Digital Communication Manager. In this talk show, all three speakers discussed about the meaning behind sustainability and how it’s currently being implemented in Indonesia, and the ways growing businesses, big businesses, and the government could contribute and practice scalable and profitable sustainability.

Following the Enriching Talk Show, The Summit continued with the Sustainability & Market Presentation. This session was delivered by two (2) speakers from Unilever Indonesia, Nuning Wachyuningsih, Home Care Indonesia Whitespace & Market Transformation Lead, and Maya Tamimi, the Head of Sustainable Environment UIF. This session was designed to help the attendees get better understanding of Unilever Indonesia’s sustainability practices and market condition, giving them the much-needed insights before continuing to the Business Case Challenge.

After lunch break, attendees joined the Business Strategy Workshop, where Rani Soebijantoro, the Founder & Chairwoman of AMBIZ, led a training about value-based strategy, the critical drivers of business stakeholders’ willingness to sell, customers’ willingness to pay, how all these are implemented in various functions within a company and how this strategy could help companies in planning their sustainability and profitability agenda. This session concluded all the pre-competition training sessions for Unilever Change Driver Summit.

After receiving preparation training materials, attendees were grouped to face the Business Case Challenge. To ensure team compatibility, prior to being invited to The Summit, interested applicants were required to take the AMBIZ Assessment, which served not only as a selection tool, but also as the basis for attendees’ grouping for the Business Case Challenge. The attendees were divided into 14 groups, and were challenged to answer this question: is refill business sustainable and profitable?

To help these groups answer the challenge question, 7 Unilever Indonesia mentors stood by to give them insights as well as assess the groups. After 90 minutes of spirited discussion, 3 selected teams, based on the mentors’ assessment, were asked to present their groups’ results to the panel judges consisting of Willy Saelan (Director Human Resources), Nurdiana Darus (Indonesia Head of Sustainability & Corporate Affairs), and Nuning Wachnuningsih (Home Care Indonesia Whitespace & Market Transformation Lead). Once all three groups finished presenting their results, all three judges deliberated to find the one (1) winning team to be rewarded with a trip to attend a conference in Singapore.

In the final part of the event, there were multiple award categories announced. The individual awards were Ice Breaking Winners, The Most Sociable Participant , and The Most Active Participant, whereas the group awards were The Most Favorite Group, and Business Case Challenge Winner.

The Summit marked the end of the Unilever Change Driver Summit 2022. The execution of The Summit resulted in: