Unilever has appointed BP Biddappa as Executive Director, HR, and Chief People, Transformation, and Sustainability Officer for the South Asia region, from June 1st. He is the Head of Global Employee Relations at Unilever and the Chief Human Resources Officer at Global Home Care. Biddappa will also become a whole-time director on the HUL Board, pending approval from shareholders, according to a release.
In this role, he will lead the people agenda for South Asia as well as drive the transformation interventions from a business, organization, and sustainability perspective.
Anuradha Razdan, currently Executive Director, Human Resources, HUL and Chief HR Officer, South Asia will be appointed to a global role as Chief Reward & Organization Development Officer for Unilever. This change will be effective June 1, 2024.
Biddappa is currently the Chief HR Officer for Global Home Care and Head, Global Employee Relations for Unilever. He started his over three-decade-long career in Unilever with a factory stint in HUL and then moved on to undertake a variety of roles, from leadership development to business partnering, across several Unilever businesses and led HR for Unilever in Maghreb, Bangladesh, and India.
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During his last stint in HUL, he was instrumental in setting up the Winning in Many Indias approach, creating a more agile and focused business unit framework in South Asia and launching the Prabhat community development program that has, till date, impacted over 10 million Indians. Over the last 5 years, he has led two critical expertise functions for Unilever globally – Organization Development & People Analytics and Global Employee Relations. He also helped set up and build the Health and Wellbeing business for Unilever as well as the Unilever Professionals business.
Anuradha has been the Executive Director, HR at HUL and CHRO for South Asia for the last five years. During her tenure, she helped the business navigate the COVID pandemic. Under her leadership, the Company completed the seamless people integration for the HUL-GSK CH merger. Being a strong advocate for inclusion, she led the company towards its ambition of being a gender balanced organisation – launching multi-year programmes, like Ahilya and Samavesh, to improve gender balance in traditionally male bastions such as Sales and the Factory shopfloor. During her tenure, HUL has consistently been chosen as the Employer of Choice.
Welcoming Biddappa back to India, Rohit Jawa, CEO and Managing Director, HUL said, “An accomplished HR leader with over three decades of experience, Biddappa comes with immense knowledge of transformation and organisational development. I am glad to welcome him to the HUL Leadership and I am confident that his able guidance and leadership will help transform the business to progress further on our future-fit agenda.”
Thanking Anuradha for her contribution to the business, Rohit said, “Anuradha is known for her ability to shape and deliver a strategic business-focused people agenda. She has played a key role in the HUL Leadership Team over the past five years. Her appointment to a senior leadership role for Unilever is yet another testimony to the powerhouse of talent we have in India.”
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