Foundation Degree in Business & Management HRM Report: Unilever

This report provides a detailed analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices within Unilever, a global consumer goods company. The report begins by elaborating on the various functions of HRM, including selection and recruitment, training and development, safety and health, performance management, and job analysis and design, emphasizing their roles in achieving organizational goals. The report then evaluates the effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies, such as employee referrals, direct advertising, social media recruiting, and internal promotions and transfers, along with the selection strategies like outsourcing, multistage selection and conjunctive strategy. Furthermore, the report explores different approaches to talent management, highlighting their impact on employee performance and retention. Finally, the report examines the procedures and systems of human resource and how they enable the achievement of Unilever's business objectives. The report is based on research and analysis of the best practices in HRM, providing a comprehensive overview of how HRM contributes to Unilever's overall success. The report is a student assignment and is available on Desklib, a platform offering AI-based study tools for students.

HUMAN RESOURCE
Report
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
1: Elaboration of various functions of human resource that play in an organization to achieve
its overall goals............................................................................................................................3
2: Analysation of effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies within an organization. 5
3: Elaboration on various approaches for talent management:....................................................8
4: Analysation of procedures and systems of human resource and help an organization to
enable business objectives.........................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12
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INTRODUCTION
Human resource refer as a practice that help an organization in managing people so that it
achieve better results. Human resource is responsible to play many key functions that mostly
includes training and development, selection and recruitment and provide bonuses to employees
as per their achievement. This study focus on Unilever company which has its headquarters in
London and operates at global level. Company mostly deals in consumer goods and its products
mainly includes varieties of goods for example, food products, soft drinks, baby foods, soft
drinks, baby products, beauty products and other related items. This report includes various
functions that human resource in an organization. Further, report discuss effectiveness of
selection and recruitment and its plan of action to maintain performance of an organization.
Report also analyse various approaches that used to manage talent that connect with
organizational performance. Lastly, report discuss various human resource procedures and
systems.
1: Elaboration of various functions of human resource that play in an organization to achieve its
overall goals.
HR is considered as one of the key department in various companies. Human resource plays
various essential functions within an organization for smooth functioning of all processes. Each
functions that human resource link with wide variety of activities. Let's discuss more in detail
about those functions that HR is responsible for:
Selection and Recruitment:
Selection and Recruitment is one of the primary function of HR, as it involves selection of
desired candidates. It helps Unilever to achieve goals or objectives by recruiting well-qualified or
skilled employees. Overall process starts with selecting the correct workers out of the overall list
of applicants, hence human resource management carefully place the suitable candidates for the
interview or selection process later (Michael, 2019). Now, all the selected candidates are then
going for a comprehensive screening test so that it filters out the most desirable candidates from
the pool of applicants. Once this function of human resource is completed than candidates get
selected after so many rounds of interviews in Unilever and all of them helps to make greater
contribution in company.
Training and Development:
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This is another main function of HR that is essential in Unilever. Training is provided by
employers with the help of required equipment so that it assist them to follow new organizational
culture. In Unilever, the main role of training and development is to furnish them with proper
resources and prepare new workers for their job role, help them to become more expertise in
their specific fields and able to perform their task more efficiently. Human resource management
performs crucial task in order to prepare all employees for harder or bigger task so that it leads to
the development of employees at work. For healthy relationship in workforce, Unilever give
chance for growth and improvement to its employees, as a result all employees will perform their
job with up to date software and information. Training helps Unilever to upgrade satisfaction of
employees and enhances performance. This functions of HR also try to involve every staff
member towards more intriguing roles.
Safety and health:
Health and safety also very essential in an organization for keep employees safe and secure
towards their job role. Therefore, human resource is responsible to cater workforce culture in
Unilever that is related to safety and health culture. However, incorporating overall health and
safety culture in an organization is not sole responsibilities of HR, but it is also fallen in
employee's role sometimes. Human resource departments manage all workers as well as the
demands of every role with the help of job design, so it is up to HR to ensure that every position
is filled with an employee who is able to perform all required job duties properly in accurate
way. If there is a deficiency in ability or knowledge among employees, then human resource
must provide training so that the employees can bridge the gap and be able to execute their job
without unnecessary risk (Meskó, Hetényi and Győrffy, 2018).
Performance Management:
The next functions of human resource management include effective performance
management of employees. Effective performance management is considered important because
it ensures that the output of all workers will meet the objectives or goals of Unilever.
Performance doesn't only focus on one or two workers but believe efficient performance of
whole department, team or company. Human resource also plays vital role in executing and
utilizing performance appraisals. Performance management communicate vision and values of
Unilever to all its workers and customers. It also ensures that all employees will achieve their
overall objectives and Unilever will keep all its employees informed about their progress towards
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the achievement of objectives and proposing corrective state for non-achievement of their overall
performance. Unilever also show commitment towards all its employees benefits so that it enable
efficient management of performance and develop a huge pool of talented employees.
Job analysis and design
It is one of the important functions of human resource management and responsible for
analysis or design of jobs. Firstly, job design includes an important methods like describing
responsibilities, duties and all operations of job roles. If human resource management is
appointing candidates that should be based on research, then it is vital to acknowledge the
characteristics of a suitable employee who would be considered best for the job. By applying this
process, it will help to determine the right candidates that fill the requirement with job at
Unilever. While, analysis of job includes all the requirements of job that an organization demand
for example skills, work experience and minimum qualifications of candidates. At Unilever, day
to day important functions need to be identified and described in detail, since they will decide the
course of action in future while selecting the candidates (Strohmeier, 2020). If human resource
managers effectively use this job analysis method than it able to improve job specifications and
enhance overall output at Unilever.
2: Analysation of effectiveness of recruitment and selection strategies within an organization.
Recruitment is an essential part of any organization and define as an overall method to
attract, screen and short-list an appropriate candidate for particular role in Unilever. In many
other companies and private sector organization, recruitment process is undertaken by few
recruitment agencies and consultancies. Recruitment helps Unilever to hire talented people as it
enable them to work towards achieving goal of company. Below paragraph will provide more
detail about various strategies of recruitment that Unilever can consider:
Employee referral
In employee referral, it allowed employees to take part in recruitment process. In this
strategy, employees are asked to share vacancies for job in their own network and give
recommendation for those candidates who want to apply (Pak and et.al 2019). Employee referral
is effective for Unilever for many reasons that includes lower rates of turnover, require very less
amount of time to hire any new candidates. Unilever can save fund as less money is invested on
hiring process. Employee referral allow company to improve its brand and provide results
accurately and constantly.
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Direct Advertising:
Direct advertising is another great and effective method of recruitment. In direct advertising,
it reaches out with wide area of network in very least amount of time and allow job seekers to
use internet to search about most specific types of job on various popular websites. Unilever can
use this method as it allow only a second to post an advertisement for job vacancies. It also
allows wider reach with very low cost.
Social Media recruiting:
If company is active on social media platforms than it allow building contact and meeting
most desired candidates in various ways that includes shared connections and lots of discussion
groups as it is convenient for new candidates to get in touch with company. Additionally, social
media activity also expand brand value of company, showing candidates about organizational
culture at Unilever (Delery and Roumpi, 2017). This is a great method for attracting and
engaging top and brilliant talent in an organization. All these social media activity works in other
manner too, Unilever may utilize social media platforms to screen candidates, examine their
suitability based on the content of their online that they post on their profile. Majority of UK
companies now use LinkedIn which is professional recruiting sites and help company with many
innovative ways of recruitment.
Promotion and Transfer:
Company can also use internal recruitment strategy to select most potential candidates
within their workforce. Promotion is one of the effective way that Unilever use for its
recruitment method and allow for encouragement of an employee to an improved job. That
involves betterment in terms of greater duty, enhance prestige or status, greater skill and
specifically increased rate of pay of that employee. An employee's skills and abilities can be
better used at higher level as a result it delivers maximum utilization of human resources in
Unilever. Promotion continuously inspires workers to grow in their professional career.
Another method is transfer that company used in their recruitment process. In transfer, an
employee move from one position to another without any additional responsibilities. In transfer,
there is no promotion as employees just shift their job role with same duties. Unilever can utilize
transfer to meet its needs and provide satisfaction to employees.
Selection strategies and its effectiveness:
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Selection is a process in which hiring and selecting a candidate is done to fill up empty
vacancies in an organization. In selection process, organizations necessitate will be match with
abilities and qualification level of an individual. Let's discuss more in detail about strategies used
in selection process:
Outsourcing strategy:
Outsourcing is a selection strategy that human resources teams can use for selecting
executives and any temporary employees. It is most used strategy that hire search firms to recruit
and select, check references, perform initial interviews and surface larger pool of application.
However, final selection is still a responsibility of internal department that is performed based on
the external firm's suggestion (Collins, 2020). With the help of outsourcing, company just need
to made small amount of investment that automatically cut down cost and enhance bottom line of
company and also enable to increase quality of candidates.
Multistage selection method:
In multistage selection, it includes various number of classification tools as part of their
overall process. At Unilever, human resources team is responsible for approving every tool that
they used for their assessment. Also, make sure that it is lawfully related to the requirements of
new position. For examples, various stages in a multistage selection strategy that are used by
Unilever are interviews, personality tests, skills tests and work performances. This strategy helps
and organization to carefully examine all the candidates so that HR able to make accurate
decisions.
Conjunctive strategy for selection:
If human resources team at Unilever utilizes a conjunctive method in their selection process
than they apply various assessment tools in an order of stages. If any candidate does not perform
well on a first assessment, then it will be eliminated from the pool of applicants. While using
conjunctive strategy, assessment tools must be ordered carefully, so a candidate is not eliminated
based on a less important criterion (Kianto, Sáenz and Aramburu,2017). . One of the benefit that
conjunctive strategy bring in Unilever is that it is less costly as compare to other selection
strategy as later assessment tools are managed to fewer people.
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3: Elaboration on various approaches for talent management:
Talent management helps human resource to encourage, retain and attract talented and high
performance staff member. Talent management has purpose to enhance performance of various
operations of business with vital practices which make employees more productive. Let's discuss
more in detail about essential practices that organization follow and make necessary
improvements:
Set accurate expectations:
If work expectations is not clearly identified by employees than it is likely to create blunder
at the end. Therefore, every team member must acknowledge goals towards its achievement of
work, there main responsibilities and all employees must measure their performance towards
their goals. Employees also need to understand actual reason for their importance in company
and actual contribution for success of an organization. Human resource can start by making sure
that overall team must realize and agrees with main vision and goals of Unilever. Individual and
manager goals at Unilever will help to make proper tasks at level of department. As a result, it
giver all employees a better understanding towards their efforts (Tang, and et.al 2018). At
Unilever, goals need to be regularly reviewed so that it will create not confusion among
workforce because company also set goal for quarterly basis and that may not be relevant later.
As priorities for business also changes faster and that is the reason company must examine its
objectives before implementing it. Setting proper organizational goals than break downs into
smaller chunks will assist staff member to effectively perform those jobs.
Furnish development opportunities:
It is essential for Unilever company that it take care of its existing employees. Unilever can
adopt various methods to retain its employees. For that, company make sure that they serve
opportunities for all its employees so that they make development in their career and profession.
For example, it can also be something easy like to provide three-day upbringing class on
something creative that would help in routine work. Moreover, company also focus on providing
management training programs that let entry level professionals to gain valuable knowledge,
experience, and chances. With the help of all these measures, company can see growth and
productivity.
Day-to-day performance appraisals:
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If company follow regular review of performance appraisals than it will provide a chance to
review past achievements, new challenges, acquisition development and continuous achievable
goals and objectives. Performance appraisals can help employees to understand their strength
and weaknesses and make necessary improvements if needed so that it able to reach their full
potentials. Human resource used to examine their overall staff member to address necessary
issues and defined mission and goals. Unilever must utilize this method so that it provide
necessary feedback on their particular work so that it later decides increments, bonuses, increases
in salary with accurate justifications. As workers need daily positive and quality feedback with
specific details on how they make necessary improvement. In order to increase performance at
Unilever, HR need to give learning, coaching, and help on regular basis to all department
whether they are senior or lower level. Next thing is to mention better productivity by examining
their work of its workforce and evaluate the timing on how long they are taking in completing
their task.
Excellent Compensations:
If Unilever wants that it attract skilled or talented people, it is vital to have great rates of
compensations. It is not essential that company set hundreds of rates higher compare to its
competitor, but its must able to present a reputation for being a great company with good
compensation packages (Fenech, Baguant and Ivanov, 2019). Apart from that, Unilever can also
add benefits that includes health care benefits and extra bonuses as it retain majority number of
talented candidates on board. For instance, company can offer transportation cost or free parking
facility. Ongoing perks are also a great way to boost an individual moral and great reason to stay
in company.
Developing good job descriptions:
For every opportunity of job that human resource post for Unilever, descriptions of job that
HR chooses to post must be crucial. It doesn't really matter if it is conducted internally or
externally. Human resource department must ensure that it will determine and must clear about
those roles and duties that goes in job performance as it will make things clear that what is going
to be expected from them to people who apply for job. At Unilever, human resource will make
sure that it list out all essential items that are required for job applications. It will benefit
company to lower down number of applicants that are going to apply for particular job as they
are qualified for job.
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4: Analysation of procedures and systems of human resource and help an organization to enable
business objectives.
Human resource include many other vital activities apart from just attracting or retaining
new candidates. As an HR professional, they must include employees relations, implementation
of performance, benefits and compensation and effective training. Human resource managers
need to acknowledge main processes that are related with HR and get to know how all those
processes able to contribute objectives of business and growth. Let's discuss more in detail about
key systems and processes that human resource include:
Impressive Performance management –
Human resource department must consider productivity by examining performance of its
workforce and evaluate the timing that overall workforce are taking in completing their project.
Further, human resource need to evaluate the amount of efforts made so that the effective
training or development is provided in order to increase the productivity and efficiency at
Unilever. Performance measurement process is important for human resource as it will enable to
maintain employment growth for a longer period. HR should also measure the productivity or
profitability by managing company's objective, examine targets and growth in sales and other
essential factors. If HR mangers make sure that overall workforce is doing excellent job, then
maximum level of improvements are observed in company and it able to improve its revenue.
Health and safety -
Another main key processes of HR is to make sure that environment is safe and healthy
to perform at workplace so that every employee can work well with proper precautions. Hence,
it’s essential in Unilever company that it enables surrounding healthier for all its workers. As a
result, it provides safer place and avoid any accidents that might happen at workplace.
Additionally, HR also enables a good environment to work so that it develops a healthy
relationship among all the employee or employers and make them work for hours without any
hurdles. Therefore, by applying this process it will reduce the chances of any unexpected
accidents and increases the efficiency at workplace. Therefore, it automatically upgrades the
productivity in an organization. If company unable to adhere to health and safety rule than it
might face legal hindrance and imposed hectic fines and penalties.
Grievances at workplace:
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Employees grievances occur when any kind of disagreement occur between employees and
when there is communication gap occur at workplace. It must handle carefully by human
resource team and must justified later. HR must provide specific amount of time to have a
conversation to staff member and acknowledge grievances effectively (Meijerink and Keegan,
2019). However, it might difficult for human resource to tackle such situation that happen at
workplace but HR can adopt key methods to solve such issues. For example, Unilever can adopt
open door policy system, it is one of the best method for employees growth and empowerment at
workplace. With the help of open door policy effective communication and transparency is build
that allow getting in touch with senior lever manager as well. Another method HR can use is to
conduct surveys for getting opinions from employees. Opinions survey is important and can be
utilized in an organization to get various vital suggestions from employees. This process can be
done on the basis of questionnaire and reports. Human resource people must handle all those
issues with carefully so that it help Unilever to achieve its objectives and doesn't create
hindrance in company's growth and development.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the above report summarized on how an organization can effectively achieve its
objectives with the help of important role of human resource. With suitable human resource
functions, which help company to maintain their position in market as every employee will
effectively perform its work. Report elaborated main functions of human resource for example,
training and development, that is crucial in an organization as it enable to make skilled
workforce. Organization must use AI technology and updated software to give training to its
employees as it is cost effective and can save time for company. Further, report elaborated
effectiveness of recruitment and selection and it related strategies that company apply so that
every employee will do their best as they all are selected as per their job role and requirement.
This report helps us to understand that talent management and skills development functions and
their best and suitable practices that benefits organization growth it also evaluates that employee
relation also influence employees performance and this relationship with employer and help
company to increased their productivity and profitability. Lastly, report explained about
important human resource systems and procedures and how they modify overall accomplishment
of business objectives.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Michael, A., 2019. A handbook of human resource management practice.
Meskó, B., Hetényi, G. and Győrffy, Z., 2018. Will artificial intelligence solve the human
resource crisis in healthcare?. BMC health services research.18(1). pp.1-4.
Strohmeier, S., 2020. Digital human resource management: A conceptual clarification. German
Journal of Human Resource Management. 34(3). pp.345-365.
Delery, J.E. and Roumpi, D., 2017. Strategic human resource management, human capital and
competitive advantage: is the field going in circles?. Human Resource Management
Journal. 27(1), pp.1-21.
Pak, K., and et.al 2019. Human Resource Management and the ability, motivation and
opportunity to continue working: A review of quantitative studies. Human Resource
Management Review. 29(3). pp.336-352.
Ahammad, M.F., Glaister, K.W. and Gomes, E., 2020. Strategic agility and human resource
management. Human Resource Management Review.30(1).p.100700.
Trullen, J., Bos‐Nehles, A. and Valverde. M., 2020. From intended to actual and beyond: A
cross‐disciplinary view of (human resource management) implementation. International
journal of management reviews.22(2). pp.150-176.
Collins, C.J., 2020. Expanding the resource based view model of strategic human resource
management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-28.
Kianto, A., Sáenz, J. and Aramburu, N., 2017. Knowledge-based human resource management
practices, intellectual capital and innovation. Journal of Business Research. 81. pp.11-
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Tang, G., and et.al 2018. Green human resource management practices: scale development and
validity. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources. 56(1).pp.31-55.
Fenech, R., Baguant, P. and Ivanov, D., 2019. The changing role of human resource management
in an era of digital transformation. Journal of Management Information and Decision
Sciences.22(2). pp.1-10.
Meijerink, J. and Keegan, A., 2019. Conceptualizing human resource management in the gig
economy. Journal of managerial psychology.
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