The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges faced by the world in recent times. As a Company driven by purpose, Hindustan Unilever Limited stands united with India.

Our work covers donating essential products to the needy, undertaking investments towards upgrading healthcare facilities and ensuring the health & safety of communities and our people.

Medical & Health Support:

To fight the second wave, we are collaborating with medical institutions and governments to strengthen health infrastructure across the country.

Taking learnings from 2020, we have taken steps to augment health infrastructure in COVID hotspots.

We have procured more than 2000 oxygen concentrators from around the world. These will be made available in the most impacted cities/areas in the country.

HUL is donating about 50 ventilators to address the severe strain on medical facilities in certain areas.

30+ Isolation facilities are set up near HUL factory locations for HUL employees.

Telemedicine centres in partnership with Labournet Healthcare have been set up to support communities near five of our factories. We look to expand these centres to all HUL factory locations.

Product Donations for Health & Wellbeing:

As manufacturers of hygiene and sanitation products that form the first line of defence against this virus, we have worked closely with the Government, NGOs and various other partners to ensure that our consumers and communities have continued access to essential items and other daily necessities.

We are continuing the donation of hygiene and sanitisation products like soaps, hand sanitisers and disinfectants as well as nutrition products such as Horlicks to frontline medical professionals, police force and sanitation workers.

We are working with UNDP and other organisations to get essential products to those in need. HUL is committed to working with the Indian government and local authorities to fight the deadly second wave.

In partnership with UNICEF, we reach out to tea growing communities in Assam to positively impact their health and wellbeing. We provide sanitation and hygiene products such as soaps, Domex surface and toilet cleaners and are spreading awareness about protective measures such as social distancing and handwashing.

Caring for Our People

We are proud of our Supply Chain and Sales personnel who have been working tirelessly to serve citizens across the nation by ensuring the continued supply of essential products.

The health & safety of our people is our topmost priority. We have ensured that all our people across the HUL ecosystem are safe and secure.

Our Supply Chain and Sales safety protocols comply with World Health Organisation (WHO) standard and incorporate the best practices in safety management for operations. We have implemented Work from Home wherever possible.

Across our 31 factories, HUL has put together strict Covid-19 protocols to maximise the safety of our employees. These include stringent cleaning protocols to protect high-traffic and high-touch areas.

Leveraging technology, we have been using mobile phone apps to ensure employee safety. For example, the US Pro app helps maintain physical distancing at work - the app sounds an alarm if a two-metre distance between people is breached. Apart from this, employees must submit a self-declaration of their health and display their safety status on the Aarogya Setu App upon entry to the workplace.

We have ramped up medical infrastructure and workforce to support employees and their families while closely monitoring the fast-evolving situation. We now have 60 doctors at HUL, a 40% increase in doctors compared to pre-COVID times.

Employees can now call a virtual command centre with a dedicated team for all COVID related support.

We have tied up with more than 200 hospitals and have 44 fully equipped ambulances across our factory sites to support critical cases. We have about 94 Oxygen concentrators available.

Every blue-collar employee family is supported by a member of the factory leadership team.

We have also partnered with hotels and arranged for about 30 isolation rooms for our employees and their dependents.

We have also entered a PAN India partnership with health care service provider Connect & Heal to provide support for home and hotel isolation, including home care kits.

We have over 40 employee volunteers termed as 'Nightingales' assigned for every region to help coordinate with local hospitals and facilitate vaccination slots for employees and their families, wherever possible.

Central to tackling the pandemic is vaccinating our people - both our employees as well as their families. We are facilitating as well as covering the cost for the vaccination of our outer core of around 3,00,000 people working for our suppliers, distributors, and Shakti Ammas in rural locations. We are also working towards amplifying awareness to reduce vaccine hesitancy.

Since March 2020, we have strengthened the wellbeing initiatives for all our employees, the extended workforce and even for family members. We are running an Employee Assistance Programme with 100+ trained counsellors and activating 500+ mental health champions.

We provide employees with unlimited sick leave and also have a provision for special leave to take care of themselves or family.

In addition to medical cover for own employees and dependents, we have extended Covid Insurance for 30,000+ outer core employees and third-party workforce working in the frontline.

Early payments have been released to small and medium-sized suppliers. In some cases, credit has been extended to small scale customers, distributors and partners.

Creating mass awareness:

We have created mass awareness campaigns, which is critical for us as a nation, to contain the virus.

Our hygiene brand Lifebuoy continues to urge people to practice the life-saving habits of handwashing, social distancing and wearing a mask through campaigns issued in the public interest. Watch the public service campaign called 'It's In Your Hands' launched in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI).

In 2020, we had committed Rs 100 crores to support the communities impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. HUL provided more than 100,000 migrant labour families with food kits and donated more than 3 million soaps to communities across India. We also helped improve healthcare infrastructure by donating medical equipment and setting up isolation centres around some of our manufacturing units. We had tied up with Apollo Hospital, State Bank of India, Lemon Tree, Oyo, and others in metros to ensure people have ready access to isolation facilities with medical supervision. The Company also partnered with UNICEF to create a large-scale awareness campaign about protective measures. The campaign, which reached over 600 million people, drove home the message of social distancing, hygiene and generosity.

Contact:

Mumbai Head Office

T: 022 5043 3000

Mumbai Regional Office

T: 022 5043 2000

Delhi Regional Office

T: 0124 5094101

(C) 2021 Electronic News Publishing, source ENP Newswire