Unilever Talent Management Case Study

Task 1.  Carry out research and try and unveil how the Unilever People Place and Performance HR vision works.  If you are unable to find it online, then put yourself in the position of a newly recruited Talent Manager in the HR department and design the strategy that will help you cover the three challenges.

Task 2.

Part 1.  Why is it important for senior management, including HR management, to focus on mid and long-term market forecasts and human resource needs?  

Part 2.  What crucial information would you include in the analysis of your human capital to cover foreseeable gaps?  (Data)

Part 3. What procedure would you do to identify the existing talent in your company and what tools would you use to recruit new talent? 

Task 3.  

Part 1. What role does leadership play within an organization and why is it so crucial for Unilever and how would you describe leadership and what main attributes/values would you associate to it?  

Part 2. Why is it so important to maintain the same “storyline” but adapting it to the different national cultures where this company has operations?

Part 3. Design a story to recruit talent for Egypt and explain whether it works for other non-Arab nations and why

Task 4.

Using your analytical skills, do you believe that the Unilever approach can be used by smaller and less global organizations and why?  

Design a Talent Management approach for a small Unilever competitor  (it can be a fictional organization)

Unilever's Vision for People, Place and Performance

Unilever is one of the largest century old organizations whose products are used by more than 2 billion people. The company aims to achieve sustainability in its business model, growth, environment and community by its strong values at the very bottom of its heart (Mosey & Hannah 50). The company has a vision for its employees, which is based on the pillars of People, Place and Performance, the company unveils the same in the organization by:

People- Unilever mission for its people is based on the health and professional development of the employees. The company provides a safe and healthy working environment for its employees and creates a learning environment for them; this ensures that its people are being taken care of in the organization.

Place- Unilever ensures that it practice the vision of Place for the employees by opening up various offices across the globe and internal positing of the employees in such location. This will ensure that employees get a chance to work in the place they love, and Unilever provides them with this opportunity (Chawla & R 110).

Performance- the Company’s vision of Performance is a reflection of its consistent efforts towards improving the performance of its employees. It ensures that its employees are given consistent training and are given feedback on a continual basis and appraised for their performance in the organization.

Part 1 : Why is it important for senior management, including HR management, to focus on mid and long-term market forecasts and human resource needs?  

It is extremely important for the management and the HR team to focus on the short and long term market forecast and the need of human resources to create and nurture the talent pool to achieve the exceptional goals of 80 Billion Euros set by the organization. It will also help the organization to address the growing needs of the organization in the short and long term, which helps the organization to stay steadfast on its business goals. Moreover, hunting for employees take time, it takes more time when the employee is required to have high skill set, thus, finding the talent at the earliest and putting them in a high functioning career path will help Unilever to achieve its future business goals(Burt 40).

Part 2: What crucial information would you include in the analysis of your human capital to cover foreseeable gaps?

One of the most crucial information in the gap analysis of human capital is the training need analysis. Every employee has certain skill set, but at times the present competency of the employee is not the match for the organization needs. Thus, the Human resources have to do a gap analysis and identify the required skill sets for a particular task, based on the present skill of the individual, gap analysis is conducted and employees are put in strict training program to gain the required skills to excel in the job (McGuirk, Helena & Mark 965).

Part 3: What procedure would you do to identify the existing talent in your company and what tools would you use to recruit new talent?

The Importance of Mid and Long-term Market Forecasts and Human Resource Needs

Unilever believes that 70% of its talent is “Built in” and 30% is “bought in”. Thus going by this strategy the company always scouts for talent by their 360 degree performance management system. The company identifies the high functioning talent and puts them into the leadership and development programme.

In order to target the employees, the company leverages its marketing potential to hunt for new talent. The company spends big bucks on employer branding on social media platform such as linked-in and finds out the best talent in the industry, or the individual with the desired skill sets.

Part 1: What role does leadership play within an organization and why is it so crucial for Unilever and how would you describe leadership and what main attributes/values would you associate to it?  

Leadership is both an essence and practical application of skill to motivate and influence the organization, teams and individuals to lead them to achieve their organizational goals. Thus, leadership has a strong role to play here; they have to ensure that a strong culture based on performance is set in the organization along with a great environment for learning and growth. The values which can be attributed with the leadership at Unilever are: Openness in communication, motivator, influencer, ability to lead, empowers the employees and futuristic vision for the organization (Katsos & Timothy 465).

Part 2: Why is it so important to maintain the same “storyline” but adapting it to the different national cultures where this company has operations?

 Storyline of the company is the foundation on which the pillars of success for the company rest. Thus, it is extremely crucial to keep the storyline of the organization same and tweak it according to different national cultures. Consistent story lining helps in maintaining the brand image and identity. Brand identity helps in creating a strike and balance with the employees, and accommodating for the national culture will help them in evading the resistance from the employees in the organization (Adams 25).

Part 3: Design a story to recruit talent for Egypt and explain whether it works for other non-Arab nations and why

 Egypt is a growing and an emerging economy, thus it will take a slightly different note to recruit the talent than in the saturated markets such as USA, Germany and many more. In Egypt, Linked in will not prove to be effective strategy due to limited penetration of the said platform. Thus Unilever will have on HR consultants and the usage of publication house to spread the word in the market. Hence, the story line for recruiting talent in Egypt will be: Join one of the oldest and largest companies of the world and get a chance to drive change in the lives of people around you. At Unilever, we provide you with an opportunity to grow excel and work with flexible timings”.

The strategy might work with Non- Arab market as well, as the potential employees are always in look out for good opportunity, however, usage of Social media platforms would be more beneficial in other nations.

Using your analytical skills, do you believe that the Unilever approach can be used by smaller and less global organizations and why?  

Design a Talent Management approach for a small Unilever competitor (it can be a fictional organization)

It is highly probable that the strategy of Unilever can be replicated by lesser global organization and smaller organization as well, the reasoning behind the same is that every organization has been using Social media platform to scout for the talent. They just have to ensure that in a limited budget they excel both at employer branding and are smart enough to look into the professional communities for people who are search for a job.

The talent management approach which can be used by other small firms can be:

• Using Linked in platform to search and gather information about the people looking for a job.
• Using other social media platform to push the requirement needs on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
• Usage of Email marketing to give information on the job opening on the collected data through linked in.
• Posting the job information on the company’s website and promoting the same on social media platform to capture the interest of the potential employees (Batta 372).

Adams, Carol A. "The international integrated reporting council: a call to action." Critical Perspectives on Accounting27 (2015): 23-28.

Batta, Aaruni. "Employer Branding-The Future of an Organization." International Journal of Research 3.8 (2016): 371-375.

Burt, Ronald S. "Structural holes versus network closure as social capital." Social capital. Routledge, 2017. 31-56.

Chawla, Ashvini, and R. Sujatha. "" What Motivates Employees in Present Day Organizational Settings?" An Indian Perspective." The International Journal of Business & Management 3.4 (2015): 110.

Katsos, John E., and Timothy L. Fort. "Leadership in the promotion of peace: Interviews with the 2015 Business for Peace honorees." Business Horizons 59.5 (2016): 463-470.

McGuirk, Helen, Helena Lenihan, and Mark Hart. "Measuring the impact of innovative human capital on small firms’ propensity to innovate." Research Policy 44.4 (2015): 965-976.

Mosey, Simon, and Hannah Noke. "Entrepreneurial culture and leadership: Structure, processes and people." Building an Entrepreneurial Organisation. Routledge, (2017). 47-58.