Video tutorial: Why you need to treat your staff as customers and how Unilever is doing this

Organisations have to treat their employees better, in the same way they treat their customers, and provide a retail experience, according to Keith Williams, global project lead – re-imagine benefits delivery at Unilever.

Speaking in a closing keynote address at the REBA Innovation Day, Williams talked through the journey Unilever had been on in the last 18 months or so, turning employees into customers. “That’s not about sparkly stuff, it’s just about putting the employee right at the centre – first – and then building the technology around that,” he said. “We have to make it about people and then deliver it through technology,” he said.

Organisations have to go out and speak to their employees to find out what they feel and who they are, according to Williams. He said he had discovered two different types of people – those who are happy to self-serve and those who want to talk to a human being.

He discussed how his company was in the process of building a global chatbot for the business, the central role of such technology and his mission to kill FAQs.

Williams also talked delegates through one of Unilever's most recent developments to go live - knowledge centred support, which uses knowledge rather than content to provide data that is correct. "We are moving away from FAQs in a 30-page document," he said.