Strategic Human Resource Management in Unilever - Case Study Example

UNILEVER: A CASE STUDY OF STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Name: Institution: Date: Unilever: Strategic Human Resource Management 1.0 Introduction Unilever is a company whose roots can be traced to Anglo-Dutch and which is one of the International companies that have recorded splendid business operations upon which it has built its capital overtime. The company has over 30 branches in the UK. and it owns many of the brands associated with consumer goods and brands such as beverages and food, home care products and personal care products and is associated with such names as Persil UK, Magnum, Lynx and Flora. The UK branch makes about 2.3 billion pounds in sales and has over 12,000 employees. There is a recognition that the company needs to establish an approach that will promote it in a wider sense to its employees. Work/life balance programs have developed ultimately in the modern world in many organizations in response to employee’s outcry and a desire on the parts of businesses to increase employee’s fulfillment and Unilever has not been left behind. The company has tried to develop harmonization plans to encourage flexible working for all its employees and has communicated this act widely to all its employees across the board. These policies include; working from home, part-time working, job shares and flexible hours and leave options include; maternity, paternity and adoptive leave policies that exceed the normal statutory requirements that are associated with career break systems. There is also employer support policies such as childcare support, gyms, Occupational health and dental services and business related policies. In the year 1988, 6% of female managers came with childcare responsibilities and more than 90% are now able to return to work after child birth and are able to access maternity based benefits which have turned out to be successful in the retention of female workers and research into the matter has shown that had there not been flexibility in working hours, about 60% of the female managers would have left the company (The Work Foundation 2003) Today, there is much improvement in the area of work/life balance when it comes to the regular employees of the company and there is an evident confidence in the day to day management of the organization from all quarters. There is also support for those employees that wish to have flexible working hours (Tarique & Caligiuri 2003) 1.1 Working Smart Unilever introduced a plan that goes by the name “Work Smart” whose aim has been to make simple the organizational practices for its employees at three levels of operation (HC Online 2004). This is according to Geoff McDonald who is the director for human resources at Unilever Australasia. This program was meant on the first level to give employees options on how to make their work simpler and to enable them to manage their time better, and to focus on teamwork on the second. On a third and a much higher level it was meant to make work simpler from an organizational view point and to make simpler the processes that an organization goes through during business and maintain a level of engagement of employees in the business of the organization. The HR function of Unilever also came in for a structured rework that comprised of three HR components namely; sharing of services which manage everyday running of the organization, creating “centers of expertise” which in other words are specialized divisions within the organization in different areas of expertise in quarters such as compensation, management development, and organizational development and the third component is business partners who are also HR practitioners. This third component has a role of collaborating with the organization and working hand in hand with the “centers of expertise” in order for them to create and provide solutions to HR related issues and problems. However, it should be noted that all these do not come without some level of complexity which the company has been working on in order to make it simpler (Shenkar & Zeira 1987) So having entrusted all HR based issues in the joint service groups, business partners are now free and are able to focus on the revolution side of HR in joint efforts with the “centers of expertise” McDonald further elaborates (HC Online 2004). Therefore, the organization has business partners who work together with the brand building managers who are able to understand the kinds of impacts that their intentions might bring to the organization’s marketing strategy, both advantageous and disadvantageous and once this analysis has been done they are in a position to understand them and also to work with their “centers of expertise” in partnership to create and build as well as make informed decisions (HC Online 2004). Thus far Unilever can be said to have created a leadership that holds everyone who is in a leadership position accountable for their deeds but Unilever still faces major challenges when it comes to HR management and one of the major issues is retention of employees (Petrovic & Kakabadse 2003) According to Linda Emery, who is head of Talent Management for Unilever UK, it is difficult to set aside the issue of staff retention as a separate entity from other issues as they all have an effect on whether people stay or leave an organization depending on other factors as well such as talent management. She continues to say that there are wide ranging issues that contribute to the issue of people leaving an organization which makes it difficult for one area of the organization to manage it. Some of these issues that Linda Emery was referring to are; career development and therefore it is the responsibility of the organization’s leadership to look at them and address each issue within the framework of managing talent and creating policies to that effect (Talent Drain 2012). The biggest challenge that Unilever faces is meeting the career expectations of not only its employees but also of the people aspiring to work with the organization in the future, as well as those of its customers because people are always looking for a means to move forward and upwards which is in itself not an easy task but there has to be a means of ensuring that people feel that they are getting the value of their worth (Talent Drain 2012). The situation can be controlled to a certain extend by laying down specific and direct sets of prospects at the recruitment stage but much more important than this is the need for an ongoing and much needed continuing honest dialogue related to careers on the part of the organization as well as the employees. This paper is targeted at trying to find means and solutions to the problems such as the few that have been mentioned herein so far which face not only Unilever but other international organizations. 2.0 Background of the study At the core of Unilever’s HR management issues lies the issue of diversity. The company is by all means a diverse company, this having been judged on its composition base. The company sells its product brands in 150 countries and has a staff of over 200,000 members who speak more than 100 languages. The top leadership of the organization has over 164 members that cover about 25 nationalities. This cultural diversity has come with the issue of gender equity which is evidently lacking in the leadership and especially in the most senior echelons of management. There has been some progress over the years in this direction though not sufficient or swift enough and for the last ten or so years, the balance has grown by a third, up from 11% in the 1990’s (Unilever 2010). The number of women in the senior management positions has grown from 2% to 16% and there are women serving in the boards of the company management in countries such as Ghana, Kenya, China, UK, Nigeria, Indonesia and Israel and women also chair the operations of the company in countries such as South Africa, Eastern Europe and Pakistan (Unilever 2010) The company also has women representation in its main board in the form of non executive members, but this far, there has not been a single appointment of a woman to the rank of executive and this is an issue that should concern the management of Unilever since it’s an issue that is likely to place the company in a position of disadvantage. 3.0 Identification of the Problem Unilever has been struggling with the issues mentioned here for the longest time now. The company employs equal numbers of men and women but for various reasons, the numbers of women employees have tended to dwindle as they approach or reach higher levels of management because they either leave or they end up not being promoted (Noe 2002) Out of the various women that take career breaks of various forms, only less than a half returns to work after the breaks and many of those that do not return move to other companies to escape the ordeal of being compared with male employees in terms of career progress which most of them make during the time when these women are absent. Unilever is however not in this alone (Unilever 2010) In the UK for example, women account for only about 10% of director positions in the listed top 100 UK based companies as per a report by Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) Group. In 2001, according to reports by the same group, in a group of 110 women positions of directorship only 19 were executives and the trend hasn’t changed much today though there have been slight improvements. It is in 2001 when Unilever appointed its first senior executive for global diversity, Rhodora Fresnedi who had been a former HR Director for Unilever in South East Asia (Unilever 2010). Her reference is diverse by all means from her nationality to age to style but when she held her first discussion with the board she was geared towards getting to the root course of the issue of diversity or the lack of it in as far as checks and balances are concerned in the HR management of Unilever. Diversity in this case is off course far much more than just the balance of the genders in leadership positions, but by tackling the issue of gender first which the biggest challenge for Unilever, it is obvious that the organization will be able to develop the necessary competences to address the rest of the problems. Rhodora as an early tread was able to convince the members of the board of executives to come up with programs that were meant to mentor women from two levels under the board in an effort to assist them to be able to recognize better from a clear point of view the challenges facing senior female executives as well as the difficulties that the board faces in the effort to promote women to higher levels of management (Unilever 2010). It is a developmental issue and not a promotional one but it is also a developmental one to the extent that when top executives get to the top, they need to learn to be able to bring other employees who are not the same as them along with them or this could create a further problems in the recruiting process of recruiting only those people that are in the same level as the one recruiting. This is to say that there is a need to recruit the next cohort of leaders that is different from the previous one. Today, Unilever has taken up this reciprocal mentoring program a step further with a cross sector guidance program. There is a need for Unilever and companies that are in its position to dialogue about these issues as well as means of ensuring that candidates are recruited for the right roles that match their credentials. The question of whether the recruitment process should ensure the inclusion of female candidates for positions in the organization and whether all jobs can be organized to allow for flexibility still begs. The issue should not be whether to promote female candidates to management positions or not anymore, Unilever should just get on with it. The issue that needs to be addressed is rather that of dealing with diversity at all levels of management and instilling a new set of mindset into the organizational structure of the company. There is also a need to embrace change (Unilever 2010). A key area in organizational HR management is learning that is based on learning that emanates from understanding of the root cause of the problem and the importance of solving the problem. If the problem lies in the perception that working part time can be damaging to the credibility of female leadership, then that is the issue that should be addressed and the same applies to other issues as well (HC Online 2004). One of the resultant factors of the mentoring initiative at Unilever has been the decision by the board that all jobs in the organization should be structured in a manner that should allow for certain levels of flexibility in order to be able to accommodate women and this has been a great stride in dealing with the issues at hand (Unilever 2010) Building of relationships between the board and women two levels below should also be of great help in creating confidence in the directors of the capability of the organization’s confidence in women leadership. It is also a sure way of reassuring women that they can actually take time away from work without compromising the path of their careers. This is all about recognizing talent among the senior female managers, training them and developing and building them so that they can be competitively suitable for the roles of the senior most positions in the organization (Unilever 2010). The initiative could take longer or shorter than has been predicted or thought by those who are directly involved. It is very crucial that sustainable advancement should be witnessed towards this goal and a show of seriousness should be witnessed on the part of the management of Unilever. 4.0 Strategic HR Management Theory in Practice In the midst of the global expansion of liberalization of the human race lies in human capacity including their needs, aspirations and development (Palthe 2008). It does not matter whether it concerns the local natives of a developing country that are impacted upon by worldwide trade or the Human Capital of large international corporations employed to conduct the businesses of the organization abroad. The key factor is people (Palthe 2008). In this age, when change is unpredictable, the expansion, organization and augmentation of Human Resources cannot be overemphasized and there is a need for companies like Unilever to recognize this fact and come to the realization that their success is depended on their capability to obtain and expand the best human resources from around the globe. Business leaders the world over are on a search for talent and are spending large amounts of time and other resources to find the best people that they can get for various critical positions in their organizations but the predictable instruments, (enrollment and maintenance) endeavors trainings and such like factors oftenly do much more than keep organizations ahead of the pack. Unilever should approach the issue of talent management from the viewpoint of decisions (Rodgers et al 2008). For any organization be able to identify and to perform well, it needs effective decision making which is speedily and well carried out. It should know which decisions are most important in the creation of value and it should ensure that those decisions must receive the attention that they rightly deserve. Research indicates that efficiency is closely tied with the goal realization of an organization regardless of what those goals are. Unilever should focus on the decisions that it makes towards realizing equity in its effort to achieve its human resource goals since decision making will enable the management of the organization to begin to see things differently. So rather than ask whether the organization is winning the talent war, a question that can be answered over a period of years, the company must concentrate on questions that can be acted upon immediately (Rodgers et al 2008) We suggest that Unilever should seek to answer the following questions: -Who are the organization’s best people? -Which jobs have the greatest impact on the major decision making body of the organization? -Who are the best among their top managers and judging by their capabilities are the best people to make and carry out those decisions? -How can the organization make sure that these top candidates are capable of impacting on the important decisions that should be made? Asking and seeking answers to these questions will ensure that the challenges of human capacity management that the organization faces are addressed effectively and as quickly as possible (Rodgers et al 2008). 5.0 Conclusion The initiative dubbed “Working Smart” is an initiative that is continuous and is wide reaching and has extensive effects. And as much as Unilever grew from these efforts so did the human beings that were involved grow in their capacities to comprehend, express and take action upon issues that they identified in their groups and there can never be any doubts as to the importance of the management of the HR organization since there is a need for divergent views. This affects employees and especially the company. The day to day handling of employees of Unilever should be one which engages them one on one and serves as a tremendous maturity towards personnel growth and the growth of the company. The Unilever strategy should therefore be focused on the developmental in more than one way in the direction of Development and achievement of an organization’s goals. Having the right programs in place will mean that out of all the top management participant executives there is always a critical mass that will strategically connect to the issues (Schuler et al 2004) For Unilever, that makes enormous industry logic since the entire effort was build upon the purpose of the organization to develop deeper insights into its main markets with a clear and direct mindset that is tied to two key factors namely; one, Unilever needs to bring its products closer to a critical mass of customers and become more customer centric and two, Unilever needs to focus more on talent attraction, retention, development and promotion and on both of these measures, the company has come really far. 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