Role of Human Resource Management in Unilever Company

This report discusses the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in Unilever Company, including the effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies, the impact of staff development and talent management, and the assessment of HR systems and policies. It emphasizes the importance of attracting and selecting the right candidates, determining fair compensation and benefits, developing workplace policies, providing training and development opportunities, and ensuring compliance with employment laws. The report also explores the impact of staff development and talent management on employee performance and the organization's success.

Human Resource
Management

Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................................2
Role of Human Resource Management...................................................................................................2
Effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies...............................................................................3
Analyzing the impact of staff development and talent management........................................................5
Critically assess HR system and policies.................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:...............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The human resource Management is a department in the organization which looks after
the hiring, selecting, deploying or managing the employees of the organization. The term human
resource Management is a strategic approach that emphasis on the effectiveness and efficiency of
the employees in the organization (Al Mashrafi, K .A .S., 2020). It is a function which considers
the best practices in the organization at all times. It also plays a very important key role in order
to ensure the right people are hired to the right job which helps to create opportunities and
motivate the employees to grow and develop in their career. This report is based on the Unilever
Company which is a British multinational company in UK which offers various consumer
products such as confectioneries, drinks, food and many more. This report is going to highlights
the various topics such as role of HR function, the effectiveness of recruiting and selection
strategies, approaches used to manage talent, HR systems and procedures and many more.
MAIN BODY
Role of Human Resource Management.
HRM is considered as a process of employing people, developing policies related to
them, training them, compensating them, developing strategies in order to retain in the
organization. It gives more emphasis on the administrative role instead of a strategic role. In
context to Unilever, HRM involves several functions and plays a very key role in the business
organization which are as follows:-
 Attractive candidates: A HR manager plays a very important and crucial role in order to
attract the candidates to hire in the organization (Wilkerson, J. M. and Seers, A., 2019). It
involves branding and promote the organization in the marketplace in which candidates
can be hired and ensuring that sufficient candidates are attracted and recruited in the
organization.
 Selection of candidates: It is also a responsibility of HR manager to select the right
employee and testing the capability which can be suitable to the job. This may include
work tests, IQ test, consciousness test, assessment by colleagues, structured interview and
many more.
 Compensation and benefits: A HR manager is hired to determine the compensation
meets fairly to their employees or not which includes any benefit which is received by
employee for his job. It is also a duty of HR manager to ensure the pay is similar to other
employees in the organization who is performing the similar jobs. Employee’s
compensation may include bonuses, vacation time, stock purchase plans, sick leaves,
tuition reimbursement, pay, health benefits, retirement plans and many more.
 Developing workplace policies: Policies determine the continuity and fairness within the
organization. As HR department cannot work alone, it includes other management
executive in the process of developing the policies (Gauci Borda, D., Hansen, N. K. and
Gore, J., 2019, July). Such as HR manager need to consider with the other’s opinion on
the policies regarding change or developing the new one. then write the policies and

communicate it to the others. Policies include vacation time policy, dress code, discipline
process policy, ethics policy or internet usage policy.
 Training and development: When the HR manager hire the right employees in the
organization it is the duty to provide proper training to do a particular job and grow and
develop his skills in their career (HHDNP, O., 2019). This will help to increase the
productivity for the company, also it can be considered as a key component which
provides motivation to the employee where employees feel that they are developing their
skills which helps to increase the employee retention. Training programs in the
organization includes job skills training, team building activities, training on
communication policy, and legal training such as ethics training and many more.
 Dealing with laws affecting the employment: It is also a duty of HR manager to deal
with laws which affect the organization such as healthcare requirements, work safety
laws, discrimination laws, labor laws, compensation requirements such as minimum
wages. He must be aware of the changes in legal guidelines and laws which take place
and also make a clear communication to the entire management.
 Employee Safety requirements: In organization, worker safety is a major concern. Many
new laws are introduced with the purpose of setting state and federal standard to ensure
the safety of every employee. Union contracts and unions are also get affected the need of
employee safety in the organization. It is the duty of HR manager to be aware of safety
requirements of employee and make sure the organization will meet with the standards.
Employee safety issues may include use of no fragrance zone, chemical hazards,
protection of private employee information, heating and ventilation requirements and
many more.
Effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies.
Recruitment can be understood as a process of identifying, attracting, interviewing,
hiring, selecting and onboarding the employees. It involves the identification of employment
requirements within the organization. It depends on the size of an organization which is
responsibility of a number of employees. By the use of several advanced HR technologies and
online recruitment software, the process of recruitment and selection become much faster and
even more efficient. An organization become successful when company may have the ability to
identify the right candidate to the right job. When hiring or recruiting a candidate it is most
significant for the organizations to look for the candidate’s knowledge, skill and experience and
how he can work with other member in the organization. An interviewer must look for the
capabilities that the adaptability of change and communication.
Recruitment strategies to maintain the organizational performance:
 Time to fill: In order to measure the performance of the organization it is the most
common recruitment statistics which determine the effectiveness of their process. This
can be tracked through several methods such as hours spent on each requisition or time
from search kick off to accepted offer.

 Quality of hire: Assessment of quality of higher is equally imperative when the success
of recruiting process is determining. This method can be tricky to measure the
effectiveness of performance.
 Create job post that reflect the company: The job post will provide the first impression
to the candidate about the organization (Susomrith, P., 2020). So that the job post must be
prepare in such a way that more candidates are acquire and attract who will suit with the
company culture.
 Use social media: Social media recruiting is now becoming very popular now a days. In
social recruiting, a social media platform is used to identify the talent, communicate with
desired candidates and advertise the job. In context to Unilever, it has become successful
with the use of this technique where they create presence on social media platforms.
 Develop a clear a brand: Developing an employer brand is very important in the industry
because it emphasis the organizations image that why candidates would like to join with
the company or why they should work for organization. It should reflect the mission of
the business, values, culture.
 Conduct awesome interview: It should be keep in mind that interviews conduct in two
ways. Interview conduct from the company side on the other hand the candidate also
interview about the company (Sekhri, A. and Cheema, D. J., 2019). It is important to
make comfortable the candidates and try to put low stress on them. Candidates may cross
questions ask about company's culture and management, remote working and many more.
This will help to identify the candidate who is suitable to best fit and talented for the
organization.
Selection can be better understand as a process in which the employer identify the best and
suitable candidates for feeling the vacancies in the organization. Selection of employee is a
complete process which must match the requirements with skills, qualifications and talent. In
selection process, it helps HR manager to make a clear differences between qualified and
unqualified candidates by putting some special techniques to them.
Process of Selection:
 Preliminary Interview: It is also known as screening interview where applicants are not
accepted and eliminated from the process who do not match with the criteria and
requirements by the organization. Individuals are check according to their qualifications,
family backgrounds, skillsets or interests.
 Receiving applications: When the individuals are shortlist in the first step then they are
required to provide the necessary data such as qualification, experience, age and many
more which helps the interviewer to get the fair information about the applicants and
accordingly questions are formulated to know more about them (Rezaei, B., Zargar, S. M.
and Hematian, H., 2020).
 Training applications: Once the applications are received by the interviewer these are
screened by the screening committee who then prepare a list of those candidates whom
they choose suitable in the process.

 Employment test: In this step the mental ability and skills are checked through several
tests which includes intelligence test, psychological test, aptitude test, personality test,
interest test and many more.
 Employment interview: Hear the interviewer ask questions from the candidate to identify
more about them and to provide an accurate information about the job which he is
required for.
 Checking references. The organizations ask for the references from the applicants in
order to cross check the authenticity of the information which is delivered by them. These
references could be educational institute or previous employment (Poór, J. and Et.al.,
2019). It is conduct to know the behavior of the applicant and his potentialities to the
work.
 Medical examination: In this step, the physical and mental health of the candidate are
checked to make sure he is capable of performing the task and activities in the
organization.
 Final selection: This is the last step in selection process where candidate are selected
who cleared all the rounds of process and given the appointment letter to join the
organization.
Equality and diversity act in the process of recruitment and selection implies a complex area
for recruiters and hirers from defensive legal compliance position (McCann, L. and Monteath,
G., 2020). Diversity contains a very positive and broad approach which ensures the employees
about discrimination that plays a very important role in the recruitment and selection process
while on the other side it is also important to make understand the people about differentiation
which provides positive benefits on diverse range of skilled and talented individuals. A positive
approach to equality and diversity allows the interviewer to choose the best candidate from the
process which is chosen by the capability to job not by the age disabilities, gender or race. In
equality act 2010, some legal positions which is related to the protection of individual in hiring
on discrimination, harassment and other damages because of the following characteristics such
as marriage, pregnancy, gender reassignment, civil partnership, beliefs, religion, sexual
orientation and many more. Legislation covers both discrimination direct and indirect
perceptions. People who take discrimination actions of their organization and potential
answerable which is offered to look for the steps to protect the employee from harassing,
discriminatory or victimizing other person also.
Analyzing the impact of staff development and talent management
It has been analyzed that staff development impacts a lot on the performances of the
employees within the organization. It is necessary for the organization to improve the methods of
employees training which will help to reduce the employee turnover, fewer customer complaints,
reducing maintenance cost by diminishing the number of breakdowns equipment. When
employees perform their best in the task and activities they require less supervision and which
helps to increase the productivity and profitability of the organization. It is important to make a
contribution to the organizational and employee performance effectiveness in order to increase
the profitability and productivity. It requires some systematic approach for employees training
which must be follow by all the employees in the organization (Obeidat, B., Tawalbeh, H. F. and

Akour, M. A., 2019). This enables the employee to perform their responsibilities and duties and
give their contribution to make organization successful and meet with their goals and objective.
It should also enhance the focus on the job knowledge and skills which is a positive aspect in the
training and development will also help to improve the morale of the employees and they have
more clear direction to meet objectives of the organization (Wilkinson, A. and Et.al., 2019). It
must be taken into consideration to improve the performance of employee and organization
which will help to get the desired knowledge and skills which is necessary to execute an activity
or project in within the organization. It will also help to improve the better understanding
towards work and weaknesses turn into their strength to execute the task with better thoughts and
ideas.
Increasing satisfaction: It will be very helpful to increase the level of employees
satisfaction and they will feel more confident in order to improve their skills and knowledge,
training provides an aid to perform a task easily and they will also create and innovate new
strategies in order to execute the project which will help to build the satisfaction level in the
organization.
Impact of talent management on the employees performance
In the organization strategies related to talent management helps a lot in order to decrease
the slow destruction rate which helps to improve the employee and organizational performance
and retention where they can get engaged in the organization. Talent management not only
focuses on reinforcing to evaluate the talent or hiring but also helps to increase the employee’s
personal growth and satisfaction level (Kaufman, B. E. and Et.al., 2019). It impacts positively on
the performance of the employees where talent management strategies are designed in such a
way which will enhance the process of hiring, recruiting, selecting and retaining the employee
with desired knowledge and skills which meets the current and future needs of employees
because it is very essential for the growth and performance of employee. It considered as a very
fundamental in HRM to boost the level of employees performance to handle that talent
management which helps to improve the employees performance in comparison with other
competitors in the market. Overall it has been analyzed that it impacts a lot and employees which
is properly administrative makes difference in the performance of organization as well as
employees.
Approaches to talent management:
 Developing job descriptions: In order to create job opportunities in the market for the
organization whether it is internally or externally that job descriptions which is chosen is
very important. It must contains the information about job details which will ensure the
candidates who apply may get clear information about the job duties and organization
which help to get a minimum list of applications.
 Provide development opportunities: For organization, it is very important to provide
opportunities for the development in the profession. It is for existing employees which
can be two day training and which would be great to provide while performing regular

duties. It can be management training programs which permits entry level professional to
get valuable opportunities, experience and knowledge.
 Performance assessments: By regular assessing the employees it helps to find out how
they are working in the organization and what areas need to improve for their
performance. For an effective way this can be done in three months or twice a year
(Okay‐Somerville, B. and Scholarios, D., 2019). These assessments are done by
management by providing a brief overview of their employee and how was the
performance and the methods that can be used to improve.
 Selection process: It must be ensure that the requirements are met with the job profiles,
resume must be impressive and references must be cross checked and many more this
will help to make decisions faster and easier.
 Effective Compensation: Compensation rate in the organization must be very impressive
in order to recruit a good talent (Mion, F., 2020). It is not necessary that the pay is higher
than the competition but it is necessary to provide a reasonable pay for compensation
where reputation is presenting for being a good organization who provide good
compensation packages. To find and attract talented employees for the organization good
health care benefits or additional perks must be introduce for them.
Best practices model should be determined by the organization such as talent strategies
which might be get associated with the business strategies are required to move a seat at the
table. It was great when financial performance are expected to use proficiencies which provides a
success profile the talent management move with the succession management, it is not a
democracy but it provides by the broader part of employee population, having the potential
candidates for performance and readiness are not similar but it is all about finding the right
candidate to the right job (Lamien-Meda, A., Fuehrer, H. P. and Noedl, H., 2019). Talent
management implies “how” instead of “what”. Hence, software is not equal to talent
management.
Critically assess HR system and policies.
HR policies and strategies in order to implement them in the organisation to the
professionals and use the performance management in order to evaluate the performance of team
or individual enables to perform and shows a positive relationship within the organisation. HR
Policies and strategies use as a guideline for the HR professional. This can considered as a
crucial elements to the effective HRM but it serves fair rules, decisions, procedures that can be
applied to each and every member in the organization. These policies and strategies are
implement, execute and evaluate in order to create a positive work environment within the
organization. Also this can be accepted and promoted in the organisation with an intention to
accept a diversity and create a positive work relationship to all the levels organising. These are
continuously monitor and review, these are the indicators of HR performance which includes
staff wellbeing, openness to diversity, quality of work relationship, organisational justice as well
as emotional climate.
Grievances: Grievances refers to the dissatisfaction by the employees with company's
policies and conditions. These may or may not be defensible and it may lead to gap between the

employee’s expectation and what he actually gets from the organisation. When an employee is
hired in the organisation he expect to get a safe working environment, adequate compensation,
clear knowledge of job duties and responsibilities, respect and many more (Jose, G., Nimmi, P.
M. and Mampilly, S. R., 2021). The main objective of grievances is to resolve the problems and
issues arise in the workplace. Grievances handling procedures can impact negatively in the
environment of organisation which a very essential part of maintaining good employee relations
is nurturing running, a productive and successful. When they have a negative impact by
misapplication or misinterpretation of a written organisation policy of collective bargaining
agreement, procedures are prepared in the organisation and these are implemented in order to
maintain the discipline but conflict arise between organisation and employees because of such
grievances. A good HR manager understand this concern and invest his time to identify the
employee’s issues and problems such as the change behavior of them, opinion survey, suggestion
box, effective exit interviews, open door policy and so on which helps to understand the
grievances. In context to Unilever PLC, the organisation is determining the complaints of
employee so that they can be able to resolve them easily and it is considered in the employee’s
handbook which can be easily access.
Acknowledge the grievances: A HR manager when try to identify and talk to their
employees about grievances which should be resolved by them and in order to resolve such
issues they are willing to do something.
Investigate: It is important to identify that whether it is a grievance or not and any
enquiry in order to gather reliable information about employee or his situation is not always
obligatory that it involves other things or it will be informed. It gives a chance and put forward
there shreds of suggestion.
Take decision in act accordingly: It is important for the manager to gather all the
information about employees and closely observing the each situation where are they accept the
grievances for whole task, it would be helped to let know about their writing of employee about
advice and action on member how they can treat with other similar situation.
Performance management: Performance management helps to increase profitability and
productivity for the organisation and also helps to examine the performance of employees in
order to motivate them to do a hard work for their jobs (Jeske, D. and Calvard, T. S., 2020).
When performance management is great in the organisation it will ensure the employers to
achieve their objectives and goals according to the employee’s performance and coordination
with employee’s development plan and hiring. An organisation get affected that HR role is to
manage the associated task and turn to be out more productive and get better performance of
workforce is a great method to drive motivation among the employees. It ensures that
concentration and attention towards organisation and helps to align with their system and
employee’s resources to uphold the strategic objectives which have a better performance. Most
of the organization’s decisions are based on the employees performance and determined how
they perform in their task and activities in a most efficient manner, on the other side focusing on
the organisational performance will help to develop the overall performance of team members as
well as individual perform.

Performance management is also offering impact on the employees performance where it
ensure that employees have a clear understanding of organisational goals and objectives, when
they get feedback it highly impacts on them, provide a necessary coaching and training, manager
will help to build team and individual performance. Most of the organizations are likely to be
more effective and performance helps to increase their ownership and liability of individual
performance through their objectives by maintaining and assisting individuals with the positive
relationship which also helps to create a good environment culture there they can motivate and
do better work together. It is also affected on the organisational performance which required to
bring individual processes and system to work together and each team have to understand how
and why they make a contribution to the organisation result in order to get overall success and
also promotes there collaborations and transparency for all the employee so that they can work
together to achieve a common objective (Innocenti, L., Sammarra, A. and Profili, S., 2019). In
context to Unilever Company, they take it as a means of act to put objectives in front of
employees and monitor the methods which creates innovative ways for managers to collect and
analyses the information which helps to determine the changes and effects in order to get an
effective process and performance of the employee. This method is considered to be analyzing
that data of performance which is taken as a broader concept and helps organisation to generate
more profits and income at a particular time, and used to enhance the employee’s performance
and management to maintain productivity and profitability within the organisation.
Sickness: Due to covid-19, health is considered as a very important part in the
organisation. Nowadays due to covid-19 situation the health becomes an important part of the
organisation where employees are struggle with the disease and not able to perform their duties
regularly or on time which is a great threat to the company for weeks and months. They must
have a capability to get a real time health information about their employees so that they can rely
and monitor all the operations like health instance because they involves multiple location all
together and they are require to get track and monitor what is going in the organisation. In order
to get a proper coordination with local health and state health, they must get a timely accurate
information with suitable responses about local conditions and which influence their decision to
public health and make a strategies with regards of community (Ho, H. and Kuvaas, B., 2020).
Due to the covid-19 situation employees are taking more sick leaves, and deliberated reliable
with public guidelines which means understanding of those policies in order to maintain the
health and employees must stay at home with care in order to take care of their family and
children or close members. Sick leaves are not currently offered to the employees but if they take
sick leaves they must provide a positive covid-19 results in order to provide a proper validation
for sick leaves.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that HRM plays a very important role in the
smooth functioning of the organization where it is responsible for managing the lifecycle of
employee that is hiring, recruiting, selection, training and development, firing, onboarding and
includes several employee benefits and compensations. This provide a pleasant workless at the
work and create awareness about employment laws between staff members and management in
order to resolve the disputes and do firing when problems do occur between staff and

management. Overall, the HR department in the organization ensures the smooth going of the
staff members and enables the organization to not get distracted by anything.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Al Mashrafi, K .A .S., 2020. Human Resource Management and The Electronic Human
Resource (E-HRM): A Literature Review. International Journal of Management and Human
Science (IJMHS), 4(2), pp.44-53.
Gauci Borda, D., Hansen, N. K. and Gore, J., 2019, July. Control and Commitment HRM
Systems in SME Family Firms–A Qualitative Study of Hybrid Forms. In Academy of
Management Proceedings (Vol. 2019, No. 1, p. 15754). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy
of Management.
HHDNP, O., 2019. A Study of Bachelor's Degrees in Human Resource Management in Three Sri
Lankan Leading State Universities. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 7(11), pp.2361-
2371.
Ho, H. and Kuvaas, B., 2020. Human resource management systems, employee well‐being, and
firm performance from the mutual gains and critical perspectives: The well‐being
paradox. Human Resource Management, 59(3), pp.235-253.
Innocenti, L., Sammarra, A. and Profili, S., 2019. From control to commitment work systems:
The role of HRM in the post-bureaucratic transition. In Human Performance Technology:
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1150-1172). IGI Global.
Jeske, D. and Calvard, T. S., 2020. Risk Management in the Age of e-HRM. Encyclopedia of
Electronic HRM, p.150.
Jose, G., Nimmi, P. M. and Mampilly, S. R., 2021. It is not a case of “one size fits all”: the need
for customized HRM practices for employee engagement. Development and Learning in
Organizations: An International Journal.
Kaufman, B. E. and Et.al., 2019. Measuring the quality of workplace relations and organizational
performance with alternative balanced scorecards from strategic HRM and employment-
industrial relations. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Research Paper Series, (19-08).
Lamien-Meda, A., Fuehrer, H. P. and Noedl, H., 2019. Data on High Resolution Melting (HRM)
and phylogenetic analysis of P. ovale wallikeri and P. ovale curtisi. Data in brief, 24, p.103937.
McCann, L. and Monteath, G., 2020. Restoring the missing context in HRM: Habitus, capital
and field in the reproduction of Japanese repatriate careers. Human Resource Management
Journal, 30(4), pp.478-493.
Mion, F., 2020. Achalasia guideline: another step towards standardization of its management.
Obeidat, B., Tawalbeh, H. F. and Akour, M. A., 2019. Reviewing the Literature among Human
Resource Management (HRM) Practices, Total Quality Management (TQM) Practices and
Competitive Advantages. Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS), 8(2), pp.327-358.

Okay‐Somerville, B. and Scholarios, D., 2019. A multilevel examination of skills‐oriented
human resource management and perceived skill utilization during recession: Implications for
the well‐being of all workers. Human Resource Management, 58(2), pp.139-154.
Poór, J. and Et.al., 2019. Internationalisation of human resource management: focus on Central
and Eastern Europe. Nova Science Publishers.
Rezaei, B., Zargar, S. M. and Hematian, H., 2020. The Impact of Green HRM Dimensions on
Sustainable Organizational Development. Journal of Research on Management of Teaching in
Marine Sciences, 7(1), pp.93-108.
Sekhri, A. and Cheema, D. J., 2019. The new era of HRM: AI reinventing HRM
functions. International Journal of Scientific Research and Review, 7(3).
Susomrith, P., 2020. Incorporating Psychological Contract into the Sustainable HRM Model.
In Sustainable Human Resource Management (pp. 57-69). Springer, Singapore.
Wilkerson, J. M. and Seers, A., 2019. Chronic underfit of the small firm’s HRM function: When
low functional elaboration interacts with contingencies. Journal of Organizational
Psychology, 19(2), pp.161-176.
Wilkinson, A. and Et.al., 2019. HRM and the health of hospitals. Health services management
research, 32(2), pp.89-102.