Unilever Homework

Unilever Homework

Competitiveness is  the ability of a firm to offer products and services that meet the quality standards of the local and world markets at prices that are competitive and provide adequate returns on the resources employed or consumed in producing them.

Unilever are huge company globally that bring in around 40 million euros in revenue from over 400 different products including household names such as Ben and Jerry’s, Lynx and Dove.  The corporate objective of the company is growth as they are continuing to expand operations worldwide with the purchase of more products and services.

Unilever operate a flexible working policy which is a soft human resource strategy. A flexible workforce helps to reduce the number of full time employees, better match staff requirements to fluctuating demand and use more temporary and part time workers.

 This will help to motivate the workforce as they will feel like company care about their employees which will make them work harder. Having flexible options means the employees can work the times best suited to their lives which, assuming there are enough employees working at a time, will be good for the efficiency of the business because the staff will be able to do a better job at work when they choose their own working condition. This is similar to the HR strategy taken by companies such as Google and Innocent. These companies feel that their employees will produce the best work when feeling like they are at home as they will be more relaxed and motivated.  Most business’ operating on this strategy follow Hertzberg’s 2 factor theory which balances the motivators of working like responsibility and recognition with hygiene factors such as a salary and social needs.