Unilever is a world-renowned company that has its business spread across the globe. As per the statistics put forth by the company, it has 148,000 people in the world, with 400 brands and has a presence in more than 190 nations (Our company, 2022). The customer base of the company is around 3.4 billion people and in fifty markets, the company leads the FMCG graduate employer of choice. This global company chooses to employee local leaders, where 92% of its leaders are native to their market (Careers, 2022). All these measures are carefully put forth by the company, it in efforts to have a leadership, which is accepted by local people, particularly when it has such a large human resource to manage.
The important for effective leadership and a proper Human Resource Management (HRM) cannot be denied. Moreover, with a large sized company, having its foot in nearly two hundred countries, the significance of leadership and HRM functions cannot be undermined. An effective leadership has the power of influencing the subordinates to align their personal goals with the goals of the company. Moreover, where the leadership is able to do so, the team members stay motivated enough to work on the long-term goals of the company. Similarly, HRM too plays a crucial role in effective management of any company. The HRM functions allow the companies to hire and retain talent, in a manner that the strategic goals of the company are met (Nguyen, Yandi and Mahaputra, 2020).
The following discussion covers interplay of these concepts. The aim of the research is “to examine the impact of the leadership and HRM on Unilever Plc. international business success”. This would help the managers of Unilever Company to understand the level of influence and role leadership and HRM theories have on acquiring success in international environment, long with assisting in development the strategies and plan for leadership development and human resource management.
Leadership can be best denoted as the ability of motivating a person to do something (Northouse, 2021). The leadership, as a skill set, allows managers to get the work done, even when the subordinates may not look forward to doing something. The manner, in which the leader states something or inspires the others to do something, is what essentially gets the task done. Thus, the direction given by the leader is one, which the other members of the group are ready to follow (Bennis and Thomas, 2020). Even though there is lack of agreement on one exact definition of leadership, this very theme is reflected across all the leadership definitions. In addition, this very theme is reflected in the theoretical aspects as well. The transformational style of leadership covers such a leadership approach that allows a change to be brought in the individual person and in the social system as well. The theme is that the leader is able to create a positive and valuable change for his followers (El Toufaili, 2018). Then there is the Transactional Leadership Style, which states that in order to get the job done, the leader relies on rewards and punishments to get the job done (Putra et al, 2020). The charismatic leadership style denotes the ability of the leader to use their communication skills, charm and their persuasiveness to get the goals met (Fragouli, 2018).
All the three leadership styles denote a common thing, i.e. the fact that the leadership is the ability of the leader to influence his or her subordinates to attain the goals or vision set by such leader. It is just the way in which this is done is differentiated, in the three leadership styles (Kriger and Zhovtobryukh, 2016). In absence of effective leadership, the organization becomes a muddle of machines and men (Okolie, Omole and Yakubu, 2021). The human factor of the leader is what keeps the group motivated to reach the goals. In doing so, the leader may rely on the different needs of the subordinates and use them to get the desired results. Reliance can be placed in this regard on the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A competent leader would use this theory and use it for motivating the subordinates. Then there are leadership styles like democratic one, which was reflected in the working of the former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, who was a proponent of sustainable development (Feloni, 2022).
In context of Unilever Plc., the very size of the company puts it in a high-risk zone as a larger company has people who can become stagnant and disinterested easily. There is thus a need for the company to create its structures in a manner that employees stay motivated. In addition, in this regard, the role of leaders in the company becomes very significant. The company has a reach of over 2.5 billion people each day, giving it the potential of making a significant impact over the world. In addition, the company is in fact doing so, which is being promoted by the Chief Human Resources Officer of the company, Leena Nair. The company uses this opportunity to promote itself as a sustainable company, while acknowledging that high performance and purpose go hand in hand. This leader of the company also highlights how the company is a beacon of inclusion and diversity, and the manner in which the company has a plethora of purposeful brands (Hougaard, 2022). A close look at the present themes adopted by Unilever Plc. at present show that the leadership of the ex-CEO of the company, Paul Polman, is still reflected in the company’s present working. This means that an effective leader is not only able to influence people while working for the company, but even leaves a lasting impact, which reflects in the working of the company after they leave such a company. That, in essence, is the true power of leadership.
In the recent tough times of pandemic, the present leadership of Unilever stepped in to show the manner in which it was working on understanding the needs of their employees. Alan Jope, Unilever chief executive, put forth a new leadership model in order to deal with the changes brought forth by the pandemic, placing equal weight to external and personal performance. He demonstrated a charismatic style, where he stated that the leaders and employees had to manage their emotions and even their energy levels, along with focusing on the need of mastering the inner game to win the outer game. The essence here was to connect with people while pushing them to perform, and to do so he used his communicating skills. He focused on driving business performance, creating strategies, inspiring people and attracting talent. To connect with people, he focused on family responsibilities, their wellbeing and growth. The need for higher intrinsic motivation was also identified in the purpose training attended by company’s staff. Again, to align with people, Jope highlighted how the company created a culture of belongingness for people, showing that the company was sustainable, purposeful, flexible and inclusive (Pham, 2021).
One of the key aspects in leadership is to motivate people (Alghazo and Al-Anazi, 2016). This is essential to attract and retain the employees (Maylett and Wride, 2017). Again, in doing so, there are different theories that can be used by an effective leader to manage the human resource it has. One of such theories is the AMO theory- Ability, Motivation & Opportunities theory. This theory states that the employees’ characteristics and the manner in which they contribute to the company’s success are determined by three components, i.e. ability, motivation and opportunity. Thus, in order for the company to motivate the employees, it has to increase the ability of the employee, to motivate the employees and to provide them with the opportunity to contribute in the company (Kellner, Cafferkey and Townsend, 2019). These very aspects are reflected in Unilever’s working. These can be easily located on its website as well. The company shows the opportunities it presents to the current and possible new employees.
Human resource is deemed as the most significant aspect for any company, and the significance of it does not even need to be reiterated. This term of human resource shows the capability of people to drive the performance of the company (Peccei and Voorde, 2019). The advocates of human resource management advocate that the decision of management and employment of people as a resource need to be firmly rooted in the strategy and mission of the company. Hence, the focus of any company in human resource management has to be based on the goals of the company (Anwar and Abdullah, 2021). This can be proven through the example of Unilever. The company has, as stated earlier, its operations spread across the globe, and hires people globally. This is the reason it promotes its image of being inclusive in hiring people. The strategy of the company is to hire talent pool from multiple companies, which allows it to get the best people to do the job. The company accepts that the job type is evolving on a daily basis and shows that it is ready to change with the work (Strategy and goals, 2022). This is of particular importance in context of the pandemic and the manner in which the dynamics of working has been changed because of it.
Unilever aligns the importance of change, with the AMO approach, as the company reskills and up skills its employees, so that they can be future fit by 2025. The company also puts forth new models for providing the employees, by 2030, flexible employment options. Furthermore, it is equipping 10 million young people to get essential skills by 2030 (Strategy and goals, 2022). These points towards the theme of attracting and retaining talent, which can be deemed as quite a clever approach/ strategy adopted by the company. By providing such skill to young people, the company is essentially creating a positive image in the mind of its upcoming talent pool. By enhancing the skills of the present employees, it is working on retaining them. Moreover, with the flexible employment option being put forth, the employees who have become used to working from home, in their comfort, will be able to continue working in such environment, thereby helping in the retention of employees. At the time, when the world is opening back up, post pandemic, and the offices across the globe are opening up again, this can be labelled as a smart strategy of Unilever.
In order to undertake any research, different methods can be followed. The first choice is between a primary and secondary research, followed by the choice on selecting a qualitative and quantitative research (Flick¸2015). This research was undertaken by following a secondary research methodology. In this regard, the reliance was placed on literature review format, where a qualitative research method was adopted. The reason for choosing this combination of research methodology was due to the type of topic that had been selected for this work. The focus of this research was on understanding the impact of leadership and human resource management by taking the case study of Unilever Plc. In this regard, it was important to understand the view of different scholars on what leadership means and how it leaves an impact on different people. The next aspect of this discussion was on human resource management, which is interlinked with the leadership theme. In order to explore these themes in context of Unilever, it was crucial for literature to be explored.
The literature review study allows for exploration of views of the different scholars on the selected topic. This kind of approach allows for the identified research questions to be reviewed in detail. In order to undertake such a study, there is a need to develop a search strategy so that the relevant literature can be identified (Hopia, Latvala and Liimatainen, 2016). There is a need to understand the inclusion and exclusion criteria as well. In addition, this requires crucial decision making on part of the researcher, which ends up determining the quality and rigor of the study. For finding out the relevant literature, the key words also play a crucial role. These key words had to relate to the theme of the discussion so as to attain the aim of this research (Snyder, 2019).
For this research, very simple research technique was adopted. The research adopted the key words of leadership, human resource management, transformational leadership, transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, AMO theory- Ability, Motivation & Opportunities theory, Unilever Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There were other key words used as well, which covered the combination of these concepts, so as to get desired results. The inclusion strategy adopted for this research was latest articles on this topic, and the exclusion strategy was to discard the older publications even when directly connected to this topic. The main platforms used to undertake this study was Google scholar and internet search. Considering this was a desk-based study, and pandemic still looms the world, the entire research was done through the secondary sources. This presents an opportunity for future research to be undertaken wherein a primary research on this topic can be done. Apart from this, the present literature does not show the impact of leadership and HRM techniques on Unilever. Thus, this literature gap can also be covered through further study.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that leadership and human resource management can be deemed as vital components for any entity. This is particularly for a large sized company like Unilever Plc. that has its operations spread across the globe. The impact that these concepts leave on any company, are resonated in the strategies that the companies follow. The effective use of leadership allows the company to form an image in the eyes of different stakeholders, as they want it. This is done by Unilever in the sense that it creates an image of being sustainable, which the past and present leadership of the company also promotes. The role of leadership, when clubbed with human resource management functions, shows the possibility of motivating the employees, to further the goals or objectives of the company. The different concepts and theoretical frameworks discussed in the present discussion highlighted the manner in which the leaders are able to motivate the employees, and how a company like Unilever modulates it strategies so as to show that it works towards fulfilling the needs of the employees. The strategies of the company reflect the true manner in which the leadership create an image of working towards the employees’ interest, in sense of training them, the future employees, and offers them future flexible environment, which are all measures towards attaining and retaining the employees.
It would not be wrong to state here that the global companies like Unilever have the capacity of impacting the world through their leadership mechanisms. This not only creates a positive image of the company in mind of the employees (be it past, present or future), but also in the minds of the people it touches. This involves different stakeholder groups like the customers, which is also a major point of focus for any company. To sum up, the present strategies adopted by the company in sense of leadership and human resource management, are able to leave a positive impact on the different stakeholder groups.
References
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