Faraz Zaidi to Lead HR Transformation at Unilever

Faraz Zaidi has been named Head of HR for Global Customer Operations at Unilever, a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, UK.

Through this role, Faraz will lead the global people agenda for Customer Operations, giving a specific focus to transforming talent and culture at the company.

By working closely with senior management, Faraz will help to align talent, capability and organisational culture with Unilever’s top priorities. 

He will oversee the strategic alignment of personnel and structure, ensuring the organisation is equipped to handle any transformations and peak operational efficiency.

This move is said to strengthen the organisational capability for the global giant, whose brands – such as Dove, Knorr and Vaseline – serve 3.4 billion people daily. 

Atlassian Adds AI Enablement to Its People Strategy

Atlassian is expanding the role of Avani Solanki Prabhakar, its Chief People Officer, to also cover AI enablement. 

This change, Avani says, is because the company is approaching AI as “a cultural transformation first, and a technology shift second”. In her newly expanded role, she will lead a newly integrated People and Transformations team, which brings together its people team and customer engineering. 

The move follows a significant focus on AI for the company, which announced it was cutting 10% of its workforce to focus on AI in March. 

Ex-Tesla HR Head Weighs In on Value of College Degrees

Higher education qualifications are becoming less crucial in modern workplaces, with a quarter of employers telling Resume Templates they planned to remove bachelor’s degree requirements for some roles. 

Valerie Capers Workman, who previously served as Tesla’s head of human resources, however, believes that college is “more valuable today than it has ever been.”

Speaking at the Defining the Future conference at California State University, she said: “Do not let anyone, not a tech founder, not a headline, not a podcast host, convince you that your education was a waste. It was not.”

In particular, she says that liberal arts disciplines are becoming more relevant as AI plays a larger role in the workforce, saying: “In the age of AI, these disciplines are not ‘soft skills.’ They are the source code for the emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, cultural fluency and critical thinking that machines will never have.”

Top 10: HR Leaders Transforming Culture

The HR function has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. No longer a primarily administrative function, HR leadership is playing a key role in company culture, digital transformation and the employee experience.

As businesses navigate rapid change, many are looking to develop a people strategy that can evolve alongside the changing needs of their workforces. 

Read the full article to discover the 10 of the most influential HR leaders transforming culture – from leading initiatives to upskill workers in AI to developing new, people-centric ways of working. 

Amazon Launches Agentic AI to Automate High-Volume Hiring

Ahead of a planned hiring spree, tech giant Amazon has launched a platform to speed up recruitment through Agentic AI.

Amazon Connect Talent has been made available in Preview to help HR leaders accelerate candidate selections at scale with AI-powered solutions. 

By utilising Amazon’s hiring expertise, Amazon Connect Talent AI agents are used to conduct structured voice interviews, administer science-backed assessments and score candidates. Interviews can also take place 24/7 on any device, allowing HR and talent leaders to save time, which they can then use for more strategic tasks. 

Once these interviews have taken place, hiring managers will review the transcripts and the candidates' scores, while also receiving detailed candidate evaluations generated by the AI agent.