Unilever's 19-Country EHS Case: Why Local Ownership Matters

A multinational safety leader can centralize policies, dashboards, and approval gates without creating one coherent safety system. The difficult question is not whether every site follows the same standard. It is whether every site can make a sound decision when local conditions change.

Andreza Araujo's tenure as Director SHE LATAM at Unilever covered 19 countries, 30,000 employees, 34 factories, and more than 60 distribution centers, according to her published professional profile. That footprint is useful as a leadership case because scale exposes a common mistake: executives confuse consistency with uniformity, then weaken local ownership in the name of control.

The case does not claim a universal performance result that has not been published. Instead, it examines the operating problem created by a large, diverse network and extracts a decision-rights model that EHS leaders can test in their own organizations.

Initial scenario: scale makes silent variation expensive

A 19-country operation never has one risk environment. Plants differ in process technology, contractor maturity, labor relations, legal requirements, language, climate, logistics, and the quality of frontline supervision. A central team can write one policy, but it cannot stand beside every supervisor when a production plan changes at 2:00 a.m.

That is where silent variation begins. One site treats a control as non-negotiable, another treats it as a recommendation, and a third reports compliance because the form is complete even though the field condition is different. The dashboard may show three green sites while the underlying decisions are not comparable.

James Reason's work on latent failures helps explain why this happens. A weak decision is rarely produced by one careless person alone. It is shaped by the conditions around the decision, including unclear ownership, conflicting priorities, missing input from the field, and controls that were designed far from the work.

At this scale, the leadership problem is therefore not only technical. It is structural. The organization needs a way to keep critical decisions visible without requiring every local team to wait for headquarters.

The decision: standardize the questions, not every answer

The most useful leadership choice is to define which questions every site must answer, then allow the local team to choose the response that fits its exposure. This is different from distributing a longer procedure. A procedure tells people what to do in a known situation. Decision rights clarify who acts when the situation no longer matches the procedure.

For a multisite EHS network, the central team should own the minimum conditions that protect people across locations. Those conditions can include critical-control expectations, escalation thresholds, evidence quality, leadership review cadence, and the language used to describe a serious exposure.

The local operation should own the work design, sequencing, supervision, contractor coordination, and immediate response that make those conditions real. This division preserves accountability because the site cannot blame headquarters for a field decision, while headquarters cannot claim that a policy alone created control.

Andreza Araujo's book Make The Difference: Be a Leader in Health & Safety is useful here because it treats safety leadership as an operational practice rather than a communications exercise. Leaders have to make the decision path clear enough for a supervisor to use when the plan and the work no longer match.

Execution: create a common decision spine

A decision spine gives every site the same structure without forcing every site into the same operating routine. It starts with a small set of questions that can be answered in the field and reviewed by senior leaders.

This structure matters because it stops central governance from becoming a document-delivery function. Each question creates an owner, an observable condition, and a reason to escalate. The local answer may differ between a factory and a distribution center, although the leadership logic remains comparable.

That comparability is stronger than forcing identical forms. A standardized form can hide variation when everyone fills the same boxes. A standardized decision spine reveals variation because people have to explain what the control means in the work they actually perform.

What changed in leadership when ownership stayed local

Local ownership changes the supervisor's role. The supervisor is no longer a messenger who repeats a central rule and waits for an exception to be approved. The supervisor becomes the person who interprets the exposure, checks the control, and escalates when the work cannot be performed as planned.

That shift also changes the regional leader's work. A regional leader should spend less time asking whether a site completed the campaign and more time asking which decision was made, what evidence supported it, and what pressure could make the control fail next week.

Senior executives benefit from the same clarity. They do not need every local detail, but they do need to know where decision rights are unclear, where a critical control has no owner, and where a green status depends on paperwork rather than field evidence.

Across 25+ years leading EHS programs, Andreza Araujo has emphasized the difference between a declared culture and an operated culture. In a network this large, that difference appears in the handoff between central intent and local action, where a standard either becomes a decision or remains a statement.

Measured result: the operating footprint defines the test

The measurable facts available for this case are the scale of the responsibility, not an unpublished accident or audit result. The published profile describes 19 countries, 30,000 employees, 34 factories, and more than 60 distribution centers under the regional SHE scope. Those figures define the test that any leadership model must pass.

First, the model has to travel across different operating contexts without losing the meaning of a critical control. Second, it has to remain usable at the frontline, where decisions happen faster than regional review cycles. Third, it has to produce evidence that leaders can compare without erasing the local conditions that shaped the exposure.

This is an important discipline for case-study writing. A large footprint is not proof that a transformation succeeded, and a polished governance model is not proof that people were protected. The result must be tested through observed decisions, control effectiveness, escalation quality, and the consequences of production pressure.

That limitation strengthens the case rather than weakening it. Leaders can reuse the model without borrowing a performance claim they cannot verify.

What the case does not prove

The case does not prove that central standards are unnecessary. A network without common minimums creates arbitrary protection, makes executive oversight difficult, and allows serious exposures to disappear into local language.

It also does not prove that local teams should be left alone. Local ownership without capability, time, resources, or escalation support becomes abandonment. When leaders delegate a decision but retain the power to punish every inconvenient answer, the organization teaches people to hide uncertainty.

Finally, the case does not prove that a dashboard can show culture. A dashboard can show whether a review happened, whether an action is late, or whether an exposure was escalated. It cannot by itself show whether the control worked when a supervisor faced an urgent shipment, a maintenance delay, or a contractor who challenged the plan.

Generalizable lessons for multisite safety leaders

The first lesson is to separate non-negotiable outcomes from local methods. If the central team prescribes every method, sites learn to optimize for conformity. If the central team defines no outcome, sites can interpret safety as a preference.

The second lesson is to make decision ownership visible before an event occurs. A control without a named owner is a recommendation, even when the procedure uses mandatory language. The owner needs authority, competence, time, and a clear route to escalation.

The third lesson is to review exceptions as management information. An exception is not automatically a failure of discipline. It may reveal a design problem, a planning conflict, or a control that was never realistic in the first place. Leaders should ask what the exception teaches about the system that produced it.

The fourth lesson is to compare evidence, not appearances. Two sites may report the same completion rate while one has direct field verification and the other has a supervisor's unchecked declaration. The evidence standard has to be strong enough to expose that difference.

These lessons align with the central argument of Safety Culture: From Theory to Practice. Culture becomes visible through repeated decisions, especially when operational pressure tests the distance between what leaders say and what the organization rewards.

What to apply in your operation

Start with one serious exposure that appears across sites but is managed differently. Map the decision from central expectation to frontline action, then mark every point where ownership becomes ambiguous. Do not begin by rewriting the entire management system, because a large document set can hide the one decision that needs attention.

Next, interview the people who make the decision under pressure. Ask what they are allowed to stop, what they must escalate, which evidence they can produce, and what happens when the schedule conflicts with the control. Their answers will show whether the organization has delegated authority or only delegated responsibility.

Then test the decision spine in two contrasting locations. Choose a site with mature supervision and another where work is more dependent on contractors, logistics, or changing production priorities. The model is ready to expand when both sites can use the same questions while giving honest, different answers.

Andreza Araujo's books and safety leadership resources provide a useful next step for teams that need to connect culture, supervision, and control verification. The goal is not to make every site look identical. The goal is to make the decisions that protect people clear enough to travel.

Why local ownership is the leadership test

A 19-country EHS operation cannot be controlled from a central office through policies alone. It becomes safer when leaders define the critical questions, assign decision rights, require credible evidence, and let local teams adapt the method to the work.

That is the enduring value of this case. Consistency is not sameness. It is the ability to recognize the same serious exposure, protect the critical control, and escalate the conflict even when the factory, country, language, and production context are different.

Safety is about coming home, and local ownership is what turns that principle into a decision someone can make.