How Unilever’s U-Work Model Connects Flexible Work and the Digital Workplace

The Unilever U-Work model offers a practical answer to a growing workplace challenge: how can employers give people more control over their working lives without losing access to hard-won capability?

Rather than treating flexibility as a remote-work policy alone, U-Work combines a continuing employment relationship with assignment-based work. That makes it a useful innovation arc for organizations exploring a more skills-based workforce and a more connected digital workplace.

Why does the Unilever U-Work model matter now?

The Unilever U-Work model matters because it addresses the tension between workforce flexibility and workforce continuity. Employers need adaptable capacity, while many workers want careers that can accommodate other jobs, caring commitments, learning, or different life stages. A flexible working model that preserves a relationship with an employer can serve both needs more effectively than a simple choice between full-time employment and independent contracting.

Flexibility is becoming a workforce participation issue

In Passport Skills: The Future of Work Is Flexible, Morag Lynagh, Global Future of Work Director at Unilever, said:

“Flexibility is now important to all generations: millennials and Gen Zers value it above other benefits, and as we live longer, healthier lives we want to work differently at different life stages. And for employers, flexibility is one of the ways you get greater workforce participation, which helps to build better economies.”

Talent shortages are also knowledge shortages

When experienced people leave, organizations do not merely lose a vacancy from an org chart. They can lose operating knowledge, established relationships, and the context that enables teams to act quickly. The Unilever U-Work model is therefore relevant to workplace transformation because it treats former and flexible employees as a potential capability network rather than a closed chapter.

That distinction matters for digital workplace leaders. Technology alone cannot create a more flexible organization, but it can make people, skills, availability, and opportunities more visible.

How does U-Work combine flexibility with employment security?

U-Work combines flexibility with employment security by enabling eligible people to remain Unilever employees while working on assignments when required. The report describes a monthly retainer regardless of whether work is completed for Unilever in a given month, benefits including pension contributions, and payment for assignments. The precise terms will naturally depend on the program and location, but the design principle is clear: flexible work need not mean a complete loss of connection or security.

What does the employee experience look like?

The report profiles Tony Gregg, a former full-time employee at Unilever’s Pot Noodle factory in Crumlin, South Wales. After moving into aviation engine overhaul work, he remained a U-Work employee and could return to the factory for shifts when needed and convenient. Gregg said:

“They can tap into a pool of skill that they wouldn’t necessarily have. I’ve got quite a bit of knowledge of the factory. If people leave permanently, they lose that knowledge.”

What does the business retain?

For the business, the Unilever U-Work model provides access to people it already knows. Lynagh said:

“By creating pools of people who can work in a different way and have a different relationship with us, we can keep attached to talent who know us and we know them, and they can hit the ground running when they work for us.”

For leaders, the lesson is not that every organization should copy the Unilever U-Work model. It is that workplace transformation starts with defining which relationships, skills, and benefits must remain connected when work becomes less linear.

What role does the digital workplace play in a flexible working model?

The digital workplace makes a flexible working model operational by helping organizations identify skills, communicate opportunities, coordinate assignments, and maintain a sense of connection beyond a fixed team. A policy without dependable ways to find and engage the right people can create friction for managers and uncertainty for workers. The digital workplace is the operating layer that makes a distributed talent relationship usable.

Skills visibility is the practical foundation

A skills-based workforce depends on a credible view of what people can do, what they want to do, and when they may be available. In the report, Ravin Jesuthasan, Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer, said:

“The basic idea is that work is deconstructed into its core elements: tasks and activities. That allows companies to more efficiently and effectively find the optimal means of completing a particular task and to match them to the required skills.”

Trust and governance still matter

A digital workplace should not turn people into interchangeable records. It needs clear rules around eligibility, pay, benefits, manager accountability, data quality, and access. For a skills-based workforce, transparent opportunity matching and clear employee choice are as important as the platform itself.

This is where U-Work’s innovation arc becomes wider than contingent coverage. It points toward a digital workplace that can connect people to work based on capability and mutual fit.

How does FLEX Experiences extend the U-Work innovation arc?

FLEX Experiences extends the U-Work innovation arc by applying similar ideas inside the organization. Unilever’s internal talent marketplace enables employees to take on projects alongside their regular roles, helping them build skills and gain experience while giving managers access to extra capacity. The internal talent marketplace makes mobility more immediate and more project-led than a traditional promotion pathway alone.

Together, the internal and external dimensions create a more complete picture: retain relationships through U-Work, and broaden opportunity through an internal talent marketplace.

What can workplace leaders learn from the Unilever U-Work model?

Workplace leaders can learn that a flexible working model needs a clear operating purpose, a defined employee value exchange, and digital workplace capabilities that make access to talent straightforward. The Unilever U-Work model is not a generic remote-work program. It is a workforce design choice that recognizes the continuing value of people whose careers no longer fit a conventional full-time pattern.

Start with the work, not the platform

Identify which activities require continuity, which skills are scarce, and where flexible capacity could create genuine value. This avoids buying an internal talent marketplace before defining the business problems it should solve.

Build an ecosystem instead of a closed talent model

Placid Jover, Chief Talent and Reward Officer at Unilever, said: “That means a pivot from ‘owning talent’ to ‘accessing talent’.” That approach may support a skills-based workforce, but it also raises important questions about fairness, progression, worker voice, and data stewardship. Those questions deserve attention at the beginning of workplace transformation, not after a new platform launches.

A successful flexible working model should give employees real agency while helping the organization access the capability it needs. That balance is what makes the U-Work example worth studying.

Final takeaway: Is U-Work a blueprint for workplace transformation?

The Unilever U-Work model is not a universal blueprint, but it is a useful signal of where workplace transformation is heading. Its strongest idea is simple: when people need more flexibility, organizations do not have to choose between rigid employment and complete separation. With the right digital workplace foundations, an internal talent marketplace, and a skills-based workforce mindset, employers can build more durable relationships around changing careers.

FAQs about the Unilever U-Work model and the digital workplace