Paul Polman at ChangeNow: 'Don’t drop impact commitments because the US president makes a phone call'

Business leaders need to hold strong in the face of current pressures against corporate sustainability, Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, said at the ChangeNOW conference in Paris last week.

The current “polycrisis” was an opportunity for a real reset, he said, and it’s up to business leaders to decide what the “new economic order” would look like. For large companies, the power rested with the ultimate decision-makers: the board of directors.

He continued: “My biggest fear is that too many [board members] are still stuck in being stewards of the shareholders, whilst they should be stewards of the future.”

Too many [board members] are still stuck in being stewards of the shareholders, whilst they should be stewards of the future

Business leaders should not see sustainability as a side-hobby, but have it as the core of their strategy. “You see too many companies dropping [sustainability] now, in two seconds,” he said. “How can you drop D, E and I because the president makes a phone call? How can you drop ESG within a minute because there’s a little bit of pressure? …A good board knows that these issues are of such magnitude that we all need to work together to address them.”

Several large corporations have dropped diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in the face of pressure from the US president, and the Trump administration has sent letters to European companies asking them to abide by US executive orders banning DEI programmes.

• Read more: The Editor’s Post: DEI is under threat, but can it hide in plain sight?

He added: “What is important in this, is that the board starts to realise that they increasingly need to move their mindsets away from just building shareholder value, to increasingly building societal value.”

Changing dynamics

Speaking in front of an audience of 900 delegates in Paris’s grandiose Grand Palais, Polman looked back at how he oversaw Unilever’s pivot from what he described as a poor-performing business to a successful, impact-driven company. 

He explained that the key to shifting direction from shareholder primacy to stakeholder engagement was to change the board of directors. When he joined as CEO in 2009, his single pre-requisite was to change the makeup of the board to introduce gender equity (with women representing 50% of the board) and global representation.

“[Before that] we had six white Dutch men and six white Englishmen, and they could disagree so strongly that they thought they were more diverse than they’d ever been or ever seen in the world,” Polman said.

Having the “right board” made a real difference. “It changes the dynamics in the company,” he added. “[Board members] need to be aligned with the direction in which you want to take the company. They need to challenge you. They need to be diverse. They need to bring their different skill sets to the board, but they also need to be partners in that journey.”

Under his tenure, Unilever adopted a “Sustainable Living Plan”, through which the company aimed to have a positive impact on society and the environment without compromising on growth. 

By 2020 (Polman retired in 2019 after a decade in the job), Unilever had reduced its carbon emissions from manufacturing by 75%, supported more than 830,000 smallholder farmers and 1.2bn small retailers, and reduced the amount of manufacturing waste going to landfill by 96%, according to a Unilever impact report. 

‘Share speculators’

In the face of today’s challenges, Polman said he regretted that not many more companies followed Unilever’s lead. Educating board members on sustainability issues was part of the solution, he explained. A misinterpretation of fiduciary duties – which requires board members to act for the benefit of shareholders – meant boards were pursuing profits to the detriment of positive impact, while the latter would actually benefit the company’s long-term economic sustainability, he argued.

He also criticised short-termist shareholders that sought profit at all costs, calling them “share speculators”. He said: “None of them has ever run Unilever. And if you would listen to all of them, I think you'd be bankrupt before you know it.”

But Unilever’s dedication to impact might not have survived its admired CEO for very long. In 2024, five years after Polman’s departure, the company scaled back its social and environmental objectives, under shareholder pressure.

Top image: Paul Polman speaks at the ChangeNow conference on Friday, 25 April 2025. All images courtesy of ChangeNow.

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