Human Resource Management: A Case Study of Unilever

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Human Resource Management: A Case Study of Unilever

















HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Executive summary

Human resource management is the backbone of all organisations. HRM is responsible for various function – advisory, management, and organisational functions. The process of recruitment, training, induction and on boarding is the duty of the HR of the organisation. The motivation of employees and their engagement is also looked after by the HR of the organisation. The HRM makes sure that the organisation adopts the right strategies to meet the organisational goal. This study shed light on the purpose of Unilever, the purpose and functions of HRM. It also includes the evaluation and application of HRM practices. This report also deals with the HRM legalities adopted by the organisation.



Introduction

Human resource management is a fundamental element of any organisation. HR acts as a backbone for an organisation. The practice of managing people in order to achieve better performance is referred to as HRM. HRM is focused on management functions that are hiring, development and growth, and motivating the workforce within an organisation. The issues that HRM deals with are staffing, development, training, motivation, administration, and communication among employees. This study sheds light on the purpose and scope of HRM in terms of resourcing an organisation. It also involves the key elements of HRM and the internal and external factors that affect HRM's decision making.

Company background

Unilever plc is a British multinational company which is headquartered in London. They are the pioneers and innovators for over 120 years now. It is consumer goods oriented company with products ranging from food, energy drinks, confections, baby food, cheese, ice cream, toothpaste to frozen pizza, personal care, cereals and even pharmaceuticals. It was founded on 2nd September 1929 by Alan Jope in the United Kingdom (unilever.com, 2021). The subsidiaries under Unilever are Hindustan Unilever, Ben& Jerry’s, Kibon and many more. There are over 155,000 employees working for Unilever in more than 100 countries. The turnover of Unilever as of 2020 is €13.3 billion.




Part 1

Purpose and objective of Unilever

  • To be the global leaders in the sustainable business.

  • To improve people’s health and well being.

  • To improve the health of the planet(unilever.com, 2021).

  • To contribute to a socially inclusive and fairer world.

  • To serve people all over the globe.

  • To use their scale for a good purpose.

  • To deliver superior and long term value.

Screenshot 2021-01-31 143405.png

Figure 1: Mission statement of Unilever

(Source: Inspired by Unilever.com, 2021)



Purpose of HRM

The main purpose of HRM is to maximise the company’s performance and preventing the issues occurring in the organisation. In comparison to personal management, the scope HRM is much wider than expected (Taamneh et al., 2018). HRM’s purpose is influenced by organisational, individual and social goals. The HRM supervise, manages, utilise the organisational resources in a way that organisational goals are achieved. The various purpose of HRM is as follows:

  • Societal purpose includes all the societal responsibilities for the demand and challenges of society. The Unilever’s HRM sets out the Sustainable Living Plan that decouples growth from environmental while having a positive impact on society. Their 3 big goals are – improving the health and well being for than 1 billion people. Their second goals are to reduce the environmental impact by half – making changes in their packaging, water use, waste management and so on. Their final goal is to improve the livelihood of million people along with their growth in the business (Chiang et al.,2017).

  • Organisational purpose involves the role and importance of HRM that will bring organisational effectiveness. It is the role of HRM to prepare the planning to recruit, select, induct, train and develop the new recruitments, performance management, and achieving the firm's objectives. The main purpose of Unilever's HRM is to have a positive impact through their brand, continuous committeemen to improve, setting out aspiration by following the code of conduct and working with suppliers that have similar supplier's code.

  • The functional purpose of HRM is to ensure the contribution of every department at all level is appropriate or not. Unilever’s HRM is responsible for to bring international expertise and their wealth to the local market and serve them.

  • Personal purposes consist of assisting firm’s personnel in order for them to achieve their goals – high salaries, job satisfaction, healthy working conditions, promotion, welfare activities, social security and standard working hours (Wheatley, 2017). Unilever and its HRM thrive for better business and a better world. So the HR teams make this happen by attracting suitable candidates, developing and retaining the most suitable talent. HR enables employees of Unilever to bring the purpose of life through their work.

Functions of HRM

HRM is responsible for activities at the workplace. It is his or her duty to ensure the organisation functions smoothly (Lewis, 2018). The HRM function is classified into three categories – managerial function, operative function and advisory function. The function of HRM is mentioned below:

  • Managerial functions include planning, organisation, directing, and controlling. It is the responsibilities of the HRM to identify the number of employees needed in the company to achieve the desired goals. Similarly, it is the duty of the HRM of Unilever to analyse the current situation and the need of the future human resources in the organisation. Then he or she organise, direct and control the other employee-related activities in the firm (Beletskiy et al., 2020).

  • The operative function involves all the activities related to recruitment, selection of employees, job analysis, performance appraisal, training and development, wage, employee welfare, maintenances and personal research. The HRM of Unilever brings a pool of prospective candidate for Unilever so they get the best one. The HR then take cares of the performance appraisal and training of the employees. At Unilever the HRM takes care that the employees are working in a healthy environment, having job satisfaction and contributing their best to the company (Mayrhofer et al., 2019).

  • The Advisory functions are where the HRM can give advice on matters related to the organisation's resources. At Unilever, the HRM advises the top management for the formulation of personnel programmes and policies. The HR also advises o the departmental heads on matters of job designing, planning, recruitment, selection and so on.

Strengths and Weaknesses of different HRM approaches of recruitment and selection.

Types of recruitment method

Strengths

Weakness

External recruitment

External recruitment can attract different types of candidates with different skill sets. Hence increasing the chances of getting a number of suitable candidate increases. With his method better quality of candidates are recruited. Even this approach can help the organisation to get different and new skill set thereby adding advantage for the company. Similarly, the candidates hired by Unilever will bring new business insights and ideas to the organisation. It will help Unilever to know the various aspects of its competitors.

On the other hand, external recruitment will attract irrelevant candidates that are not suitable for the position (Lengnick et al., 2019). This method includes positing job on different platforms therefore making the process expensive and tedious. Unilever when adopting this method will have to take the cost expenditure in mind because external recruitment is costlier than another process. At the same time, the process will be very time consuming for Unilever as they will receive hundred of resumes every day and opening and screening them is a long process.

Internal recruitment

Internal recruitment saves the time of identifying attracting and engaging the candidates. Unilever just has to open the track records of the existing employees and will have instant access to the candidates (Perdhana et al., 2018). The induction process also gets shorten as the employees are already acquainted with the firm and their policies. At the same time, it is cost-effective. Unilever gives the existing employees opportunities for career advancement by having a change in their job role.

It is true internal recruitment saves time and resources but at the same time, it rusts the firm's culture. As the existing employees of Unilever may get too comfortable with the process and the organisation will not able to spot any operational inefficiency. Just because they are current employees that do not mean they do not need training. At Unilever, a situation of workplace hostility might occur. As some employees might be expecting for a promotion instead their colleagues get hired for the same position. The learning opportunities in case of internal recruitment are limited.

Direct advertising

The main advantage of direct advertising is the hired employee is a full-time employee. Unilever can avoid the annuity cost linked with contract-to-hire candidates. Employees who are of greater buy-trend will contribute to more productivity and longevity. This approach gives Unilever the option to select from a wider pool of candidates. Direct advertising helps to save a lot of time and energy. For Unilever, it will give opportunities to candidates across the globe to apply for the current job

Direct advertising involves posting the job on different portals that require a lot of money and time (Rosenbaum et al., 2018). When the candidates get hired for Unilever they provide the candidate with benefits – insurance plan retirement plan which may cause a loss of additional cost.

Employee referrals

Employee referrals can motivate the existing employees of the company highly. The company can vouch for top-quality candidates. Unilever gives a monetary bonus when an employee gives a referral which is a crowd-pleaser. It is the second-best alternative for recruitment channels. This approach will best suit for Unilever when hiring for the specific job role. Even the employee’s retention rate will be much higher for Unilever.

There is always a risk of getting alienated from other employees within an organisation (Kang et al., 2017). On the contrary, if Unilever is adopting this method there is always a chance of leading to discrimination among the employees. The other drawback of this process is lack of efficient ideas and sometimes it might turn out to be a disillusionment

Recruitment agencies

Unilever when and if takes the help of recruitment agencies will get full support of the agency un finding the suitable candidates (Salihu et al., 2019). It will ease the process of recruitment for Unilever. The hiring process also becomes faster as the organisation provides the agency with a detailed job description. Unilever will get access to a higher quality of candidates.

One of the major weaknesses of a recruitment agency is that the organisation may incur an additional cost. If Unilever chooses a recruiting agency the agency might not advertise Unilever as a brand fully. Then the candidate will not have the knowledge about the company or its culture. The last drawback is having a lack of communication. Agencies at the time might not be effective – it has been heard some candidate do not hear back from the agency, they neglect the career goals of the individual and so on.



Benefits of different HRM practices for employers

The management of human resources includes staffing, recruitment and management of employees. The HRM play a vital role in influencing the organisational culture. The HR establishes the organisational standards, procedure, behaviours and allows the employers to know and learn the accepted way of behaviour so that the employees can follow. HR ensures the change is implemented in the company smoothly. In this continuous changing business environment it is the duty of HRM to stabilize the organisation while going through a change. The HR acts as the bridge between the department and manager. The HRM manages the conflicts between the managers and employees (Soto-Acosta et al., 2018). The HRM will play the role of mediator to mitigate the problem by finding the solution. Similarly, The HRM of Unilever will be responsible for developing relationships between every department of the organisation. The HR team will solve any issues regarding Unilever managers or executive in meeting the desired goals.

Benefits of different HRM practices for employees

The HR manager or the team will create a plan that will make the employees motivated at all time. The employees get benefited from various HRM practices. The HRM influence the employees so they work willing and efficiently in an organisation. In simple words, the purpose of HRM entails encouraging and guiding employees to achieve the desired goals (Oppel et al., 2019). Not only HR helps with meeting then goals but also assist the employees with career planning. The HR is responsible for the welfare of the employees related to salary, environment, job satisfaction, recognition and so on. Unilever sets an example of effective HRM for other companies to follow (Donnelly,2019). The company focuses on human rights and that the rights are being compliant and carried out properly. They carry a self-assessment of employees, audits and training. Unilever believes that the success and the growth of the company depend on the employees. So making them happy and satisfies is their ultimate goal. Unilever even has initiated different campaigns to strengthen their HRM strategy. Unilever’s HRM looks after that every individual that is hired is best suitable for that job role. The HRM mediates the disagreement that occurs between employees and employers. They make sure that the claims of any types of harassment and workplace abuses are considered and resolved. The Unilever acts as the voice for the employee while discussing major organisational issues pertaining to welfare.



Effectiveness of different HRM practices in terms of raising organisational profit and productivity.

The HRM should administrate its function effectively to improve its performance and overall function of the organisation. The HRM should make management in a way that the company can move from traditional programs to a new system that will fit the organisational needs. According to Saha et al., 2017) there is a different indicator for effective HRM that includes employee satisfaction, motivation trust, commitment and loyalty. Therefore the company should maintain a balanced work environment that will support the employee's satisfaction, motivation and retain the loyalty of the employees. The HRM can be effective only when the practices meet the HRM objectives that will fulfil the strategic objectives along with giving the best services to meet the customers need and enhancing the HR outcomes. Unilever launched a social Impact Hub to help employees and find new activities. Unilever operates across the goals and manages to follow the s with a particular set of skills. They design the jobs in such a way that it meets the organisational need. When the right people will be hired and result in the profitable outcome then the HRM will be effective. HRM provides maximum opportunities for each individual or employees to develop and grow (Mak et al., 2019). At the same time helping to build a healthy relationship among employees and different teams. The organisation has a successful outcome when the HR allocates the work properly to each department.

The HRM of Unilever is effective because – providing the employee's security, selective hiring, effective teams, compensation based on performances, training in relevant skills, creating an egalitarian organisation, developing fruitful communication so that information pass through every level of the organisation. Then social Impact Hub has a positive impact on society with regards to human rights. For instance, Unilever Klev has a device that tracks employee’s motivation level on a daily basis. Here the employees were required to put their mood on that device at the end of every day and this information helped the HRM to identify if the employees were happy or sad. It is beneficial for a company to track the motivation level of the employees because if the employees are happy and satisfied then they will contribute more to the company. This will lower the switching of job among employees and the employee turnover will decrease.



Part 2

Application of HRM practices in a work-related context

The design of a job description for the position of a marketing manager.

The job description clearly states the job requirements, job role, job responsibilities and skills that are required to perform the particular job role (BIRHANE, 2019). A job description includes the job title, required qualification, job purpose, preferred qualification and working environments.

Job brief: Unilever is looking for a versatile marketer who will be responsible for the growth of our sales channels. You will help us to establish and maintain a consistent brand through different online and offline marketing channels. The marketing manager will be responsible for tracking and analysing the performance of our advertising campaigns and managing the marketing budget. To achieve this role, you are needed to have hands-on experience with web analytics too and will able to turn creative ideas to effective promotional projects.

Responsibilities:

  • To develop tactics and strategies to get the word out about the company and driving qualified traffic to the front door.

  • To develop and deploy successful marketing campaign and implementation of it.

  • To produce engaging and valuable content for our website that will attract the target groups and convert them to the consumer.

  • To build strategic relationship and partner with key industrial agencies.

  • To oversee and approve marketing material to hardcopy from website banner.


A person specification for the same role

Requirement:

  • Knowledge of website analytics tools.

  • A minimum of 4 years of experience in the marketing field.

  • Experiencing in optimizing and setting up Google Adwords campaign.

  • MBA degree in the marketing or finance fields.

  • Comfortable working with number and numerically literate.





A job offer letter for the selected candidate.

To

The candidate

Address: XYZ

Subject: Offer letter for the role of Marketing Manager

Dear candidate,

We are pleased to offer the role of Marketing Manager at Unilever and your employment will be starting from 10.2.21. The duration of your probation period will be three months, which may be reduced or extended further at the direction of the company. Your salary will be £ 45,000 per year inclusive of all benefits. Please sign the duplicate copy of the letter as evidence of your acceptance.


We are pleased that you are going to be part of the Unilever family and looking forward to your success.


Regards,

Unilever PLC



Date: 27.1.21



Evaluation of the process and the rationale for HR practices

The HR practices of Unilever are recruitment and selection of the right candidate, management of performance, training and career development, compensation and employee engagement (Dyczkowska et al., 2018). The main issues faced by HR is attracting the best talent, continuous fostering of learning, looking after the health and safety of Unilever’s employees. The HR also faces issues regarding changing organisation rule, training of Unilever’s employees and retaining the employees.

Effectiveness of employee relations and employee engagement, with relation to flexible organisation and flexible working practices and ‘employer of choice

Unilever’s effort to create and maintain a positive and strong relationship with its employees is referred to as employee relation (Fiaz et al., 2017). They ensure to maintain healthy, constructive relationships with their employees to keep the employees loyal and engaged in their work. Communication is way a two street which Unilever tries to sustain with its employees. They believe employee engagement is based on integrity, trust and commitment. To Unilever, employee engagement is about employees having a positive attitude and action leading them to improved and better business outcomes. Being a flexible organisation Unilever has flexible working practices that are of benefit both to the employees and employers. These benefits are –enhancement of the morale, improving the retention of the employees, boost their productivity, creates a balanced work-life, and improved employee engagement. Flexible working practices adopted by Unilever – flexitime, shift work, job sharing and part-time schedules that enable the workers to retain them and allowing them greater flexibility.

Importance of employee relations with respect to influencing HRM decision-making.

A pre-requisite for organisational success is maintaining healthy relationships within an organisation. For high productivity and job satisfaction, a strong employee relation is needed. HRM deals with avoiding and resolving issues concerning the employees (Mohamed et al., 2018). When employee relation is healthy it will result in effective, productive and motivated employees. At Unilever, the HR maintain as positive employee relation by viewing the employee stakeholders and contributors in the firm. They seek employee's feedback so as to value their input and during decision-making, they consider the employee experiences. The HRM of Unilever assists in the creation and enforcement of policies that are consistent for everyone.

Key elements of employment legislation and the impact it has upon HRM decision-making.

The key elements of employment legislation

  • The Employment Rights Act 1999 and 2003 provides a rage of right to employees including – entitlement to pay statement, national minimum wage, and protection against unfair dismissal (Peker et al., 2018). Unilever never goes against this act; they provide their employees with current market wage and never dismiss an employee without prior notice.

  • The Equal Pay Act of 1970 this act rules out that men and women will receive equal remuneration for the same type of job. Unilever ensures that all employees receive equal pay for the same type of job irrespective of sex.

  • The National Minimum Wage Act, 1998 where every employed person will receive the minimum wage, fixed for the country (Hong et al., 2019). Unilever changes its minimum wage policy by changing the minimum wage in the market.

Impact

Employment legislation of all kind effect organisation and HRM adversely (Nalla et al., 2018). It is important for Unilever’s HR to be well versed with the employee legislation acts and with the ever-changing area of employment law to minimize the organisation's liability. The HRM needs to not only see the federal legislation but also the state law in which it operates. These laws are generally labour relation, employee criminal record check and even mileage reimbursement and so on.





Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above study that human resource management is the backbone of any organisation. It is a key element of an organisation which can make or break the success of the organisation. Hr is not only responsible for the staffing or planning but also responsible decision-making process. Overall HRM focuses on performance appraisal which in turn makes the organisation more efficient. It also focuses on the strategic goal and ensures that they are met with appropriate human resources. The main role of HR is – management of talent, compensation and benefits, training and development, workplace safety and HR compliance. Unilever's effective HRM has to make Unilever more successful. They are known for their efficient HRM system and have made themselves an example for others to follow.



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