Unilever, one of the world’s leading consumer product companies, has signed an agreement with IBM to transform and operate its human resources (HR) processes across 19 Latin American countries.

The new agreement will see IBM provide related services to more than 27,000 Unilever employees from IBM’s service centers in Hortolandia, Sao Paulo, Brazil and San Jose, Costa Rica. The contract extends IBM's current operation of managed payroll and benefit management services for Unilever employees in Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

"Large, global companies such as Unilever understand that HR process transformation provides them with a competitive advantage," said Patricia Motta, IBM Managed Business Process Services Latin America. "Our mission in this case is to bring additional flexibility and the best practices of innovation to help Unilever quickly respond to business opportunities and customer demands in a secure, transparent, and standardised way."

The project is designed to help Unilever continue to streamline and accelerate the decision-making process and offer its executive staff the flexibility to be able to shift resources to focus on business critical initiatives, as necessary.

The new service agreement with Unilever will now include the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.