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For consumer packaged goods, the path from product idea to store shelves runs directly through the center of Unilever‘s new North American headquarters, and not just because the company makes market-saturating products like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and TRESemmé shampoo. This new headquarters space was designed specifically to put the entire process of product creation on display in its office, from ideation to development to marketing to retailing. Spread across 111,000 square feet in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey, Unilever’s newly opened headquarters is centered around an accessible spine of rooms and facilities that are optimized for bringing new products to market. There are “innovation labs” where ideas for new products come to life, workstations where ideas can take shape, a test kitchen and salon where products get sampled and refined, and a retail lab where the company and its retail partners can see the products as they’ll look on store shelves. “We want people to walk in and just immediately know what it is we stand for and what it is we do,” says Nathaniel Barney, Unilever’s global head of workplace services, travel, and fleet. “Not just to see it on the walls, because images come and go, but actually to feel it in the design.” [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] Unilever’s new headquarters is about a third of the size of the company’s previous suburban campus, 12 miles north in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The smaller size prioritizes the collaboration required to develop its wide range of consumer products across personal care, beauty and wellbeing, foods, and home care. In the post-pandemic context, it’s also a recognition that the company didn’t actually need its big suburban footprint, according to Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “When you’re like we are, now three days a week [in the office], actually those three days are all about connection, creativity, collaboration,” he says. “That’s why this design was built for the future.” Bringing Unilver’s products to life Unilever worked with the architecture firm Perkins & Will to design the space, centering its most collaborative product development functions in a spine that connects the entire office. Accessible by anyone passing by or taking a meeting in a nearby private room or sitting aside one of the picture windows with wide angle views across the Hudson River to Lower Manhattan, the product development spine is meant to draw in peopleand ideasfrom across the company. [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] One easy draw, especially for a company in the food business, is the flavor-wafting test kitchen. “It’s the first thing you see when you walk into the space,” says Mariana Giraldo, design principal at Perkins and Will’s New York studio. “Right behind reception, there are two windows into the kitchen, so there’s no way you can miss it.” Employees get a chance to see new foods and flavors being developed live, and also get a chance to taste products that may be coming to market years down the line. The test kitchen is also part of the product pipeline, where new ideas get piloted and refined. [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] Down the spine, “innovation labs” are intended to be blank spaces where those ideas can be born. Intentionally open and flexible in their furnishings and equipment, the labs leave themselves open to interpretation and reconfiguration. [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] For products farther along in the product development timeline, there are spaces with a higher gloss and purpose, including the test kitchen and a fully equipped salon. Both can be used for research and development as products take shape, but also for marketing purposes when products are heading to shelves. Each doubles as a stage set. [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] Beyond serving the product development process, these spaces are meant to attract employees and encourage more engagement with the creative side of the business. Giraldo says the design team approached these spaces as amenities within the workplace. “Here, the amenities didn’t have the purpose of just being amenities for the for the sake of it, but really being amenities that connected back to the product, and that connected back to exactly the work being developed here,” she says. Shrinking desk space Product development also relies on heads-down and desk-centric tasks, so there are regular workstations and meeting areas in Unilever’s headquarters. But even these are shaped by the company’s focus on collaboration. Barney says that the new office carved out much more space for one-on-one meetings and smaller group interactions, and ditched formal conference rooms for large spaces that could expand or contract to host larger groups and events. (The test kitchen, for one, opens out to a common area, making it easy to integrate into an all-hands meeting or a large-scale taste test.) [Photos: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] “Today we need probably two times the number of small rooms to what we had five or six years ago,” Barney says. “What we see a huge need for is places where we can have groups of 35 to 50 people come together and then have another 20 to 30 people on screen, if not more . . . We had to create spaces that were designed around a very different set of criteria.” [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] While Unilever’s headquarters was designed to create products and, by extension, profits, there’s an emphasis on informality across the space. That’s tied to an ethos Patel says is integral to the company’s culture. “We wanted to create a space and a location where our organization would love wasting time with each other,” he says. “We believe wasting time together is when culture blossoms. That’s when you get to know the person, you get to know what’s going on in their lives. There’s so much more than just work.” [Photo: courtesy Unilever/Perkins & Will] If that time wasting among employees leads to an idea for a new body wash concept or mayo recipe, all the better. They won’t have to go far to start turning those ideas into the products of the future.
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E-Commerce
What really holds people back from stepping up as allies in support of their marginalized colleagues? For example, why dont more men say something when they see a colleague or a customer make a sexist remark about a female co-worker? Our research, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, suggests that people often hesitate to intervene when co-workers are mistreated because they themselves feel disempowered in their organizations and experience distrust and polarization. Our findings run counter to the common assumption that people dont step up to support marginalized colleagues because they dont care or are unmotivated. Not seeing much action against inequity and injustice can drive this cynical idea. Its built into many diversity, equity and inclusion training programs that rely on motivational tactics of persuasion, guilting and shaming to get people to act. We are psychology researchers interested in how people can use their strengths to effectively support others who are marginalized. We surveyed 778 employees in Michigan and 973 employees across all provinces of Canada, representative of urban and rural areas, working-class and professional jobs, and across all demographics, including gender, race, and sexual orientation. We asked them, What makes it hard for you to be an ally for underrepresented and marginalized people (e.g., people of color, women, persons with a disability) in your organization? Low motivation represented just 8% of the barriers people cited. And lack of awareness that marginalized groups face inequities accounted for only 10% of the barriers people mentioned. Most diversity training money tends to be devoted to teaching employees about these topicssuggesting why many diversity training programs fail. The most common barrier to allyship that our participants named was distrust and tension between people in their organization, which had them second-guessing themselves and self-censoring. People also reported feeling disempowered, like they didnt have the power, opportunity or resources to make a real difference for their colleagues. Why it matters Researchers, specialists and consultants alike approach issues of workplace inequity with the assumption that to drive action, they need to first unblock potential allies deep-seated resistance to change. For example, specialists assume that people need to become more motivated, more courageous, less biased or better informed about existing inequities in order to act as allies. In this study, we temporarily set aside all preexisting assumptions and directly asked people what made it hard for them to be an ally, in their own words. Our goal was to identify practical roadblocks at the top of peoples minds that stop them from taking the first step, or the next logical step. When popular messaging, like on social media, and organizational interventions misunderstand the causes of peoples inaction, they risk exacerbating frustration and tensions. Interventions need to account for their audiences true perspectives on what makes allyship difficult. Otherwise, theyll lack credibility, and people will likely be less receptive to program content. What still isnt known Wed like to further investigate the impacts of the specific barriers mentioned in our study. More insight could help workplaces focus interventions on addressing barriers that are the worst pressure points and avoid overspending on interventions that can move the needle only so much. More than a quarter of respondents said they experienced no barriers to standing up for colleagues. Wed like to investigate whether these respondents simply didnt want to engage with our question, are uncertain about the barriers, or are already engaging in some form of allyship. Our teams previous research has shown that even loud allies who publicly call out bias often also engage in quiet allyship actions, such as privately checking in on how a victim of bias is doing and assisting in strategizing next steps. Whats next Our research team is investigating whether programs designed with this studys findings in mindstarting with building trusting relationships and helping people feel empoweredcan increase allyship action. When diversity programs built on inaccurate assumptions dont show the desired results, they risk having funding withdrawn or being halted altogether. Instead, as organizations take stock and pivot, evidence from our study and others can help them more effectively plan their next move. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Meg A. Warren is a professor of management at Western Washington University. Michael T. Warren is an assistant professor of psychology at Western Washington University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Recently, I made myself a promise: I would not buy any more Lego for at least a year. That plan has quickly been foiled. Lego’s first-ever Peanuts set is just too good, too iconic, too beautiful (plus, my son loves Snoopy and Woodstock.) This perfect brick renditionwith the classic red doghouse and even the campfire and marshmallows to toastis too cool pass up. Lego’s addiction to licensed intellectual propertythe company now sells 25 IP-based themes out of 45 total, often burying the open-ended, creativity-first sets that built the brandis still a problem, but this Snoopy’s Doghouse set proves exactly why these licenses work so extraordinarily well to burn your credit card. [Photo: Lego] The magnetism of that simple beagle silhouette, combined with Lego’s three-dimensional engineering and the bricks’ intrinsic attractive power, is a perfect formula to trash all my financial constraints. Plus, Charles M. Schulz created something so visually strong, clear, and emotionally direct that translating it into 964 plastic bricks feels less like exploitation and more like homage. Snoopy debuted on October 4, 1950, just two days after Peanuts launched, and he spent decades evolving from a puppy shuffling on four legs into the anthropomorphic dreamer who sleeps on top of his doghouse and imagines himself as the Red Baron, a World War I flying ace. Schulz based him on Spike, his childhood black-and-white mixed breed who was unusually intelligent and could understand about 50 words. The name Snoopy came from Schulz’s mother, who once suggested it as a good name for a future family dog. (Fun note: Schulz had considered Sniffy before remembering her advice). Over 75 years, Snoopy became more than Charlie Brown’s pethe became a vehicle for fantasy, playing shortstop on Charlie Brown’s baseball team, typing novels as the World Famous Author, and strutting around as Joe Cool. He ascended the cultural ladder enough that even NASA adopted him as a mascot, naming the Apollo 10 lunar and command modules after him and creating the Silver Snoopy Award for astronaut achievement in 1968. [Photo: Lego] Woodstock, the small yellow bird who first appeared in 1966 but wasn’t named until June 22, 1970, cemented Snoopy’s status as a character who operated in his own emotional universe. Schulz named Snoopys avian pal after the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival, whose logo featured a bird perched on a guitar. The origin story is pure Schulz sentiment: A mother bird built a nest on Snoopy’s belly, then abandoned it, leaving Snoopy to raise the hatchlingsone of whom became Woodstock. Schulz never specified Woodstock’s species (fans guess canary or goldfinch), and he once drew a strip where Snoopy gave up trying to identify him. Like many of us, Atlanta-based designer Robert Becker is a die-hard fan of the characters, so he spent about a year developing the concept before submitting it to Lego Ideas, the Danish companys program that accepts designs made by anyone who signs up for an account and submits a build. Submissions get considered for mass production after they receive 10,000 votes by other Ideas members. Thats when they may get approval by a company committee to be refined by Legos own designers in a long collaborative process. [Photo: Lego] “This set has so much character, Monica Pedersen, marketing director at the Lego Group, says in the sets press release. We were delighted that the Snoopy Campfire product idea received over 10,000 votes on the Lego Ideas platform. Im glad, too, Monica. At 964 pieces and a $90 price tag, the set also hits the Lego complexity-affordability-granularity sweet spot, unlike many of the huge sets the company has produced in the past few years. Snoopy legs and neck are adjustable, letting you pose him and Woodstock in multiple display positions. The red doghouse opens to reveal a typewriter inside, which you can move anywhere. And the campfire scenewhich can also be hidden inside Snoopys homeis set against a starry sky backdrop. The set is already available for preorder; it will be sold in stores starting June 1. And yes, my kid and I will be counting the days till it ships to us.
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E-Commerce
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