Business Culture and Responsibilities Report: Unilever Case Study

This report provides an in-depth analysis of business culture and responsibilities, using Unilever as a case study. It explores the benefits of waste reduction, including cost savings and environmental sustainability, and outlines procedures for recycling, waste disposal, and equipment maintenance. The report suggests practical ways to reduce waste in a business environment, such as transitioning to digital technologies and implementing first-in, first-out inventory methods. It also evaluates the impacts of making changes to these practices. Furthermore, the report defines diversity in a business context and highlights the advantages of a diverse workforce, comparing Unilever's approach to that of P&G. It explains how organizations can promote diversity and summarizes the legal and organizational guidelines, including the Equality Act and Anti-discrimination Act, that govern diversity in the workplace. The report aims to provide insights into fostering a positive and inclusive business environment, with a focus on sustainable practices and employee well-being.

Business culture and
responsibilities

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
In every firm, role of business culture & responsibilities is high linked to its performance
& ability to work for growth purpose. When talks about culture, positivity and health culture
helps companies to operates efficiently to earn business (Agarwal and Kallapur, 2018). It’s a
born responsibility for firm to enable clear saving of resources to led long term working of the
organisation. Furthermore, intention of waste management is to save cost of the organisation to
arrive at valid conclusion. Apart from this, report will be cover on Unilever Plc., headquartered
in UK and deals in selling of a FMCG (fast moving consumer goods). Also, consideration will be
put down in context of administration & safety department of the Unilever. Also, report will
cover discussion about benefits of minimum waste, procedures for recycling, disposal of wastage
along with maintaining equipment. Also, this report will put down focus on ways to reduce
wastage in the business environment.
TASK 1
1.1 Evaluate major benefits of keeping waste to low
Minimising waste in workplace enables business to keep their operating cost balance
along with preserving internal environment of the business entity. Unilever as one of the largest
FMCG firm has its focus on waste reduction by analysing available and required material, then
allocated to time based manufacturing activities (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015). For Unilever,
benefit of minimising wastage is enhanced sustainability and brings positive message of
pollution to lower down. With keeping waste to low, a good leadership based on environmental
support is available with firm to led social development and initiative to maintain profitability for
Unilever rise with low savage cost. Another benefit is good corporate stewardship to build
company image positively brought in the mind of the customers. Unilever has led saving of extra
space in their warehouse along with reduction in incurring of extra spending to store more
material. Such level of administration is good to increase profits and brand value.
1.2 Follow agreed procedures for: recycling, disposing of waste and maintaining equipment
Recycling: In case of Unilever, before recycling, important is to accumulate all waste at
one place and use of proper machinery such as shredder, crusher etc., with purpose to save both
time and cost. Plus, procedures & policies must be set within given time period and plan area for

setup of recycling. It must be done within supervision of office manager, administration & stock
management of Unilever.
Disposing of waste: Before disposal of wastage, its necessary for administrator to avoid
burden waste material to protect environment from pollution. To dispose wastage, tools such as
shredder, wrench and vermicomposting to dispose wastage material with saving valuable time &
cost of Unilever (Feldman, 2019). Also, risk assessment should be done, before using disposal
tools to save human harm.
Maintaining equipment: Unilever must go for space with proper storage support to keep
valuable equipment safe and avoid any harm to them. Equipment such as packaging tools, tech &
IT devices along with weighing machine are costly and it should be protect in area with lesser
damage or no else.
1.3 Suggest ways to reduce waste in a business environment
In context of Unilever, there are several ways to reduce wastage in business environment
which are mentioned as below:
Working method: Unilever is mainly suggested to shift from paper to digital technology
to record, print and write any business information (Heald, 2018). Here, digital technologies are
Email, chatbot, text, printer, use of cloud storage to store files and data to save cost on physical
storage. Such level of shift will enables administration department of Unilever to reduce of cost
and develop resource management.
Manufacturing: Unilever department should give priority to first cum first out method of
a stock inventory technique to stop burden of left material or may be giving priority to resell it to
the supplier with intention to save extra cost. TQM (total quality management) tool will be use
when checking actual quality of material before production.
Packaging & distribution: Unilever must go for development of the policies to use of
limited polythene use and packaging box will be circulated during time of requirement. At time
of distribution, packaged commodity will be circulated to distributor at time of requirement.
1.4 Implement one of the suggestions
Unilever as one of the renowned FMCG firm is suggested to stop giving priority to paper
at lesser extent and shift to the technology with purpose to save cost & time. Investing in the
technologies are financial burden for short term, but advantageous for long term to backup work
based efficiency (Holbeche, 2015). During manufacturing of FMCG items, first cum first out

method is necessary to use only that material which was brought at first time and resell
remaining if case not needed. As, it’s in favour to reduce cost burden from Unilever and
promotes CSR values and beliefs to other corporates. Unilever must set a vision to promote work
sustainability with zero harm to environment and operational performance of this leading FMCG
to provide customers with productive commodities and offerings for their needs and purpose.
1.5 Evaluate major impact of making change
Change is the ongoing process which is mainly for development and intention for future
based improvements in business activities or process. Suppose, policy change happens in case of
recycling, disposal of wastage and equipment maintenance, that will put down burden on ability
of the Unilever to structure policies to ensure sustainability & overall at longer scale of business
(Jiang and et. al., 2019). As, these some changes are in zone to develop burden on Unilever in
terms of profitability, cost, strategic position etc., of the firm. Suppose, if business is looking to
adopt digital technology in place of paper, adaptation and fixing of that technology will charged
them huge cost and that directly impacts on profitability of the Unilever. Hence, in that situation,
planning to budget & assessment of risk is strategic decision & action plan to low impact of such
changes.
TASK 2
2.1 Explain what is meant by ‘diversity’ in a business context
Diversity is the understanding and recognition that each individual is unique and
therefore accepting any differences we may have. The concept of diversity incorporates
acceptance and respect, and is about understanding as well as, going beyond just tolerating these
differences. In context of the Unilever, diversity is need to be bring to administration department.
Diversity in the business environment means respecting of colleagues regardless of its gender,
heritage, custom, belief, sexuality, physical appearance etc. Diverse workplace is able to:
 Expose person to takes consideration of different value process, task based ethics and
personality varieties and learn new technique to solve issues.
 Contain a variety of ideas and opinion, motivates everyone to be refine and modify its
own steps while taking into account different points of view.
 Implements creative solutions to specific issues, pursue inputs out of a variety of angles.

With diversity into workplace, it is possible to enables positivity among business
environment of the Unilever. Diversity has linked values, beliefs, ethics, policies etc., of the firm
linked to goals or targets of the business (Mann, 2017). With diversity, it’s been necessary to
enhance role of positivism within business firm to accomplish necessary goals or targets.
2.2 Recognise the benefits of having a diverse workforce
The success of a business entity depends on its ability to clench diversity and know its
benefits. With use of diversity peace, harmony, understanding, faith and loyalty can be made to
within Unilever as one of the most prosperous. Having diverse workforce, focus is mainly gone
to effective skills, competencies along with ability to enables positive working around
organisation (Noe and et., al., 2017). Benefits of workplace diversity:
 Unilever may get different solutions to problems of the prescribed service, source &
reallocation of the resources.
 Employee's of the Unilever belongs to the diverse backgrounds helps to gather variety of
exposure, experiences and outlooks.
 Study reveals that diversity is not just good for the human-relations perspective, but can
build actual value to the business and led contribution to bottom line (Diverse Workforce,
2019).
 With immense workforce, emphasis is only to put down to strategic success & immense
success to the firm with promotion of a diversity that will linked to goal courses of the
firm.
 Also, encouragement of the shared beliefs, opinions, values, workforces established has
been raised at a workplace.
2.3 Compare how a range of organisations promote diversity
Diversity is the true promotion of values, shared belief, peace etc., within working firm.
With diversity, intention is to support true working, teamwork, management, leadership linked to
the goal of a business firm (Ratten, 2016). For aim of this assessment, two organisations namely
Unilever and P&G are taken to led clear understanding on how they promote diversity within
their business culture. Comparison in case of two organisations are as follows:
Basis Unilever P&G
Promote the Management of the Unilever focuses The purpose of P&G stated diversity is

diversity onto promotes ethics, values, culture,
norms to equal co-ordination among a
people of the company. They promote
diversity in form of an equality, team
work, true negotiation to the positive
behaviour.
to build climate, where one treats self
as equal and being opportunistic to
perform any defined task or roles.
P&G believes in slogan of “We the
people” to promotes diversity within
their business operation.
Brief conclusion: With promoting diversity, Unilever has probably tried to brings ethics,
values, culture and norms in their organisation to form culture of positive behaviour and ability
to real negotiation. With diversity, focus is being to develop e
2.4 Explain how they can promote diversity within their place of work
In order to promote diversity within workplace, Unilever must analyse pressure and
burden within workplace. In order to achieve this, you need to:
 Understand different people’s point of views and realise from where they have arrived.
Ask people's questions about why they see things they way they do.
 Be delicate and negotiable (Rebelo and et. al., 2016). Being negotiable ability within
workforce helps to promote positive working and ability of the person with the right thing
or intention.
 Within working environment, treat everyone with dignity and respect is preferable. Also,
this will help workforce to develops co-ordination among team work.
 Workforce should also give priority to look on others' social and cultural backgrounds,
both side to understand them better and to be more diplomatic.
 Listening to others at time of difficulties, disagreements etc., is need to develop sense of
positivism around workforce to develop environment based on cultural
Different people consists of different values, belief, priorities etc., and one need to follow
such values to led collaboration within performance entitlement of the Unilever.
2.5 Summarise legal and organisational guidelines that govern diversity within the workplace
Promoting diversity within workplace is essential aspect for every organisation to bring
positive and supportive behaviour of people linked to the organisational performance. Unilever is
well known for culture & internal environment that is linked to its organisational performance.

To promote diversity, including equality & co-ordination, organisational guidelines such as
equality act, anti-discrimination, human right act etc., are available option for developing true
kind of diversity among culture of the Unilever (Sagmeister, 2018). Analysis of all guidelines are
as follows:
Equality act: This act was enacted in the year 2010 legally implemented with agenda to
protect people, while suffering discrimination into workplace and stated wider society. With this
law, equality in form of behaviour, attitude, culture and effort are expected along with taking
care of human right at a work location.
Ant-discrimination act: This act was implemented in the year 2006 to protect employees
in an organisation by unfairly compares on a basis of religion, caste, creeds, culture, shape, size,
gender, colour etc. The moral message behind applicability of this act to treat everyone as equal
and like all others.
Moreover, with all such act, a strict punishable action has been suggested under penal
code of the legislation of the UK with discussion of these two acts, if case not obeyed by people.
TASK 3
3.1 Explain why security and confidentiality are important in a business environment
In the current business environment, where data protection is now onwards major priority
to deal with leakage of any essential information and protect it to maintain curriculum of a firm
in legal manner (Sambhanthan and Potdar, 2016). Maintaining security & confidentiality into the
workplace is essential to build & maintain trust and for ensuring open and honest communication
among customer's, clients & an employee's. Workplace security & confidentiality can be defined
as safety of the data that linked to business, details of the employees or stakeholder, profits or
revenues. In context of Unilever, its duty and responsibility of financial and administration Dept.
to maintain security of respective information in favour of an organisation. In the workplace,
importance of security is to keep safety, professionalism and protection to essential data of the
Unilever.
Maintenance of confidentiality at Unilever is being as responsibility of individual person
with duties such as personal disclosures, should exercise discretion etc. To ensure security and
confidentiality, human resource initiatives such as structure of the policies and procedures to led
ensure confidentiality of the business confidentiality of information & data of Unilever.

3.2 & 3.3 Ensure that property and information are kept secure in line with organisational line
Every organisation must be serious on how they take care of their data or property in a
supportive manner. Data information flowing in and out of the company can be in any of the
following forms: E-mails, formal letters, files, documents, verbal communication, Memory drive
and CDs (Scalet, 2018). Along with this, following are major sensitive information that carries
individual's personal details such as: curriculums, resumes & reports of the property, financial
data of a firm, property & infrastructure data, information regarded using verbal conversation
etc. Unilever is required to set organisation's protocol for handling sensitive material. Main
general guidelines:
 With passing of information to the staff, clients and customer's, share only that
information which is mainly essential to the business. As an administrative officer, it is
essential for Unilever to plan policies or procedures that is actually in favour of a firm.
 Think twice before spreading information out of company premises, including computers,
memory sticks and paper documents.
 If information needs to be released, administration of the Unilever should reveal what is
actually important and keep confidential information that is of secret nature.
 Clear use of the safe disposal for the data and documents.
 Inform staff people, if you have matter related to security or confidentiality
The following legislation concerns data protection and confidentiality:
Data Protection Act 1998
Human Rights Act 1998
Common Law of Confidentiality
3.4 Explain the possible consequences of failing to maintain security and confidentiality
Security & confidentiality has major role to build & keep curriculum and business image
at the competitive business position. (Suharto and Nusantoro, 2018). In context of Unilever,
suppose if administration of the firm has failed to maintain data to true secure, threat of a misuse
with wrong intention is biggest consequences of failure of security & confidentiality to the
Unilever. Consequences can be in form of monetary such as cost burden, pressure to put down
new investment to secure theft of data (Wayne, 2016). If Unilever is deals with term contract, its
being essential for them to ensure confidentiality of an information to ensure clients relationship.
In case of failure to secure that is simply arising of breach of contracts or agreement. Moreover,

consequences out of a failure to security is threat for brand image and reputation of the Unilever
Plc.
TASK 4
4.1 Identify a risk within their place of work
In context of Unilever, there are different risks related to the administration & safety,
including securing and safety of the workforce of the Unilever. Also, security will also be given
to information flow into the firm. Also, risk is also related to leakage and misuse of a valid info
is also identified as critical or severe. Hence, to overcome this, initiatives such as development
of secure IT system, premises safety infrastructure, firewall etc., are improvement initiative that
needs to be taken care.
4.2 Identify the source of the risk
Within the workplace, risks are heavily occurs with response of improper plan, lack of
resource allocation and lack of time management (Eriksson 2015.). Due to risk, Unilever has
falls under situation, condition arises onto effect business profitability and productivity at the
same time. In case, if talks about sources of risk in context of Unilever are as follows:
mischance, slips and falls, fire accidents as caused because of electrical premises within
workplace, heavy lifting, pulling and theft, revealing private & restricted computer information
and unauthorized use of the Internet. It’s necessary for organisation like Unilever for being
aware with all these sources risk to reduce chances of misshapenness. Due to risk, Unilever has
been face off burden on its operations. All such given risk has proven necessary to overcome by
taking measuring such as risk assessment, ability, planning to overcome along with forecasting
to minimise its impact. These type of source is being threat for Unilever to carry out its
operation. Fire, lifting and pulling are responsible for destroying of the goods or services.
4.3 Assess the impact and likelihood of the risk
Risks are some of the critically ascertained forces which mainly comes out of uninformed
activities or work. In previous assessment, sources of the risk such has misshapenness in form of
fire, excess pulling, theft and unauthorized use of an internet is mainly found as critical sources
of risk, which led to impacts such as loss of the profits, break down or might be decrease into the
competition, high employee turnover, effect brand loyalty of the Unilever (Tura and et. al.,
2019). Also, with such risks, sometimes, it would be difficult to survive into competition.

4.4 Identify strategies to minimise major impact and likeliness of the risk
With power structures and measure into place, you can lower risk of greater catastrophe.
Also, keep evaluation of safety measures and office maintenance, which would surely help to
minimise the risk of accidents happening at work. Strategies such as planning and forecasting of
the risk in advance, implement strategies such as fire safety tools, proper accessories and proper
IT infrastructure such as software to protect legal and valid information etc. Moreover, major
thing is cost, budget & financial aspect to buy or manages supportive system to prevent business
premises out of a critical risk (Agarwal 2018). Strategic planning and pre-assumption ability is
important to estimates risks such as shutdown of the operation, loss of the profit, loss of trust of
business stakeholder etc. In case of uncertainty or impact is out of control, then pre-information
to employees will be given in advance to at-least minimise its impact. Such step is helpful to
minimise big loss and impact to the firm. Still, after minimising of the impact its essential to
evaluation of the previous decision and plan to utilise resource to minimise impacts in the future.

CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that business culture & responsibilities has placed
as necessary in every business firm to accomplish effective chain of administration and achieve
business objectives & goals in minimum point of time. Minimising waste in workplace has very
much enables business to keep their operating cost balance along with preserving internal
environment of the business entity. Diversity workplace are much successful to accomplishes its
workforce performance objectives or goals.

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