Quality Policy
Delivering the best-in-class quality for our products and meeting quality expectations of our consumers is a priority for us.
Our Commitment
To win consumers’ confidence and loyalty, we need to consistently deliver branded products of excellent quality. We understand the different needs of our consumers and customers and strive to develop and deliver superior brands to ensure they’re the preferred choice. And by applying consistently high standards, we’re able to do things right the first time, cut waste, reduce costs, and drive profitability.
Our Quality Policy describes the principles that everyone in Unilever follows, wherever they are in the world, to ensure that we are recognised and trusted for our integrity, the quality of our brands and products, and the high standards we set.
Principles of the Quality Policy
Putting the safety of our products and our consumers first
We have stringent mandatory quality standards in place, against which compliance is verified through regular independent external audits and self-assessments. These standards ensure we design, manufacture and supply products that are safe, of excellent quality, and conform to the relevant industry and regulatory standards in the countries in which we operate. Comprehensive management procedures are in place to mitigate risks and to protect our consumers and markets. This includes regularly testing emergency response procedures, food safety programs and contamination prevention initiatives to ensure product/service safety.
Putting consumers and customers at the heart of our business
We actively engage our consumers and customers, translating their needs and requirements into our products and services, thus creating consumer value wherever we position our products. We are leveraging technology programs which help us drive unique applications like Quality One, Digital Voice of Consumer and Product Superiority, which help us get real-time feedback from our Consumers, track audit compliances, drive Corrective and Prevention Actions and enable us to constantly redefine the requirements. This is at the very heart of our innovation process.
Quality is a shared responsibility
Quality and consumer safety is the responsibility of every Unilever employee, and Unilever demonstrates visible and consistent leadership to meet this policy. The drive for quality, in all that we do, is a passion reflected in our brand development, manufacturing and customer service processes and is also expected of our business partners. We partner with stakeholders to provide leadership, promote transparency and share best practices. And we’ve forged effective working relationships with suppliers and contract manufacturers. We drive focused programs and extend responsibility and accountability with our suppliers that enable continuous improvement of systems and processes for Food Safety & Quality.
Our Quality Policy is executed through various internal systems and standards with clear responsibilities, both at Corporate & Unit levels, and extensive detailing. Mandatory standards, latest guidelines, training, adoption of industry best practices, periodic and comprehensive review, and audit mechanisms, etc., are in place to implement the policy and to ensure that each employee follows the blueprint, imbibes the quality culture and encompasses them in their ways of working. This Policy is ultimately governed by the Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) Leadership Executive. It is implemented through several internal policies and standards with clear breakdown of responsibilities.
Building and maintaining excellent systems and processes
We’re proactively and continuously developing our systems and processes to ensure quality and safety throughout the whole value chain, and we’re setting a benchmark for the business. We monitor product safety in our markets, passing the learning on to our product development teams. We provide appropriate and regular training and resources to our workforce and will ensure that we deliver our quality objectives and targets. We regularly measure and improve our performance using both internal and external measures.
We actively promote our Quality Policy and have a quality assurance organisation in place to ensure consistency and visibility of quality standards, processes, and performance indicators across all Unilever businesses at all levels and to anticipate and develop future quality capability requirements.