Strategic Approach Of International HRM Managers In Different National Contexts

Unilever: Background and report of its Human Resource Management

Unilever Company traces its origin from an association between itself and British soap-maker Company called Lever Brothers. In the early 1890, they revolutionised business through the introduction of sunlight soap. Sunlight soap and other products gained rapid popularity owing to their success and positive reception in England markets (CNN Business, 2018). Lever Brothers would later see this success earn them more business all over the world. In 1872, another company was formed to produce margarine in Netherlands. At this time, competition around margarine was high in the Dutch prompting the founders to strengthen their business by merging with another margarine producing company in Bohemia (Guardian, 2010).

There was a mega merger in 1930 between the Lever Brothers and the Margarine Unie and the name Unilever was founded. It was not too long after its formation that Unilever got themselves into a big problem. The companies that provided them with raw materials reduced their supply from thirty to forty percent during the first year (Unilever, 2019). Unilever had to react to subvert the problem by putting in place an efficient means or system of control and in the period building up September 1930, Unilever created a Special Committee that was mandated to ensure stability for the organization. Unilever widened their areas of business and creating new areas like chemical manufactures and food industry. Eventually, this saw foods, detergents, toiletries and special chemicals become Unilever’s core and main business (Reuters, 2019).

Human Resource Management at Unilever

Unilever believes that people are their greatest and most valued asset. The Human resource team derives a lot of pride in acknowledging the contribution and benefits of each and every employee (Guardian, 2010). A lot of focus at Unilever is on Human Resource Development. Human Resource department ensures that:

• Unilever staffs consists of Professionals and that the right systems are in order to encourage employees develop fully to their potential.
• A mutually and collaborative cum supportive working environment for purposes of growth.
• Team of professional expertise in place to deliver expert decision through participation in business decisions.
• Reward Systems and performance managements are in place and forms the core strategy of Unilever in business.
• A well-defined Recruitment and Selection policies in place.
• Employees training and development is addressed.
• Employees motivation is addressed through compensation and benefit scheme (Dowling et al., 2013).

Management

Unilever prefer young people for management in lower and middle level management and well and highly experienced people for top-level management. The management seems centralized as all matters and policies are to be reported and approved at the head office respectively (Unilever, 2019). However, management is decentralized at the branches.

Job analysis

This is done based on targets assigned and daily routines. The employees are both satisfied and motivated.

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the process of gathering or collecting a pool of candidates for any vacancy in an organisation while selection is the process of short listing qualified candidates only. At Unilever, recruitment policy is as simple (Dowling et al., 2013). If at any time there falls a vacancy as a result of resignation, retirement, or death of an employee, the management of the branch is mandated to inform the head office about the vacancy and the head office will in turn place an advertisement in all the major newspapers. Unilever has the policy of not mentioning the company name in advertisement. Outsourcing with the help of a third party is done and final selection takes place upon interview (Unilever, 2018).

Training and Development

These involve improving the skills and knowledge of the individuals. Unilever conduct continuous training inside the organization purposely for performance improvement of the employees: In-house and external trainings where the former is customized for Unilever employees a lone. The latter is carried out by external trainers more so in training institutes (Zhang & Iles, 2013).

Compensation and Benefits

At Unilever the following benefits are given so as to retain and motivate employees: medical facility cover to employee and his/her parents, paid holidays, and accommodation to employees (CNN Business, 2018).

Orientation

A new employee must be oriented so that he or she gets to know more about an organization so that they may at least feel at home. At Unilever orientation policy covers the following activities: actual visits to different and various department of the company, and introduction to the Company’s rules, regulations and policies (Guardian, 2010).

Overview on the distinctions between Domestic and International Human resource management practices

International Human Resource Management differs from domestic Human Resource Management in many ways. One such difference is that International Human Resource Management deals with complexities of having to operate in different countries and dealing with employees with different cultures (Dowling et al., 2013). The main reason for the failure of multinational companies or venture is the difficulty in understanding the differences between managing employees in the domestic and foreign environments. Normally a management policy or style successful in domestic arrangement always fails if replicated to a foreign environment without reasonable changes (Zhang & Iles, 2013). IHRM is considered more complex due to the following: Firstly International Human Resource Management tackles broader range of activities than domestic such as international taxation, international orientation, foreign currencies and international movement or relocation for the employee posted in different parts abroad. Secondly, international Human resource managers deals with problem of employing employees from different nationalities hence the need to set up different Management systems for different places (Scullion et al., 2007).

Domestic Human Resource managers deals with programmes to employees belonging to a single or one nationality. Thirdly, international arrangement requires greater attention in the personal life of its employees. International arrangement must consider issues such as taxes and cost of living (Rowley & Warner, 2007). Managers need to assess whether the family of employees are ready to relocate and to support the family to adjust to a foreign environment through cross culture training. Domestic environment only involves providing insurance programmes to family or transport facilities in case of a transfer. Finally, there is increased exposure to risks in international system such as safety and health of an employee and his family and terrorism. Several multinational companies must these factors when deciding on its employees. Moreover, financial consequences of mistakes in international arrangements are more severe than in domestic business (Dowling et al., 2013).

Convergence and divergence of Human resource policy and practices in the international context

Convergence and divergences represent both the ways in which International Human Resource Management is conducted and explored. Convergence and divergence may also be described as contextual and Universalist paradigm (Björkman et al., 2008). The latter concentrates more on the management of Human Resource Management across different national borders including human resource policies and practices by transferring policies and practices believed to have worked well in one country to other countries. Contextual paradigm leads to the need to consider all the organisation’s internal and external factors. Divergence system compares and contrasts systems in one country with other countries then comes up with similarities and differences (Nguyen et al., 2013).

In both systems and arrangements, trade unions play important role in the International Human Resource practices. Trade unions contributed significantly to almost all the organizations which had partnership arrangement by creating good industrial relationship environment (Schaaper et al., 2013). Trade union representatives and their Human Resource contacts have and enjoys better working relationships. However, there is also a decline in their operation due to emergence of different management practices. It is most common in the multinational companies where each governments have their own practices and human resource policies that differs with another government. Trade unions therefore have a mixed result on the International human resource practices and management (Nguyen et al., 2013).

Convergence and divergence is a common phenomenon in international Human Resource practice. The debate around these has been an antecedent one involving economic theory. Evidence exist of continued diversity in arrangements of economic activities and employment criteria contributing to capitalism (Nguyen et al., 2013). Despite all the efforts towards convergence, differences in trade union contexts and culture brings divergent arrangements and relationships. Divergence of Human Resource practices in French economy for example do not form convergence to International human resource pattern. Trade unions plays important role towards functionality of an organization and more so on International Human Resource practices in multinational companies following the Universalist approach system. This is because in the contextual paradigm, decision making is difficult thus hampering the normal working of an organization (Schaaper et al., 2013).

International recruitment strategies: the use of expatriate employees

Recruitment and selection is the basis of all other Human Resource activities. The rapid and drastic expansion of diminishing labour markets implies that Human Resource managers must rapidly adapt with the increasing complex demands. Skills shortages in some of the home-grown environment implies that some sectors must involve the use of expatriates (Ando & Paik, 2013). International companies have adopted complex recruitment and selection strategies or techniques which considers and meet international standards with regards to matters performance, supervisory, organisation in terms of culture, job specifications, and capital which must be considered. The following some of the issues that must be considered in the recruitment involving global feature: culture of the host or parent company, Immigration laws involving matters visa, Security status of an individual, qualifications and skills of an employee or applicant, health and safety policies of the host country, wage involve, language skills, and education level of the expatriates’ and their children (Scullion et al., 2007).

Expatriates interest should be taken into account especially if they are contented with having the organization taking care of their dependants at home. Expatriates are employed to add greater skills and act as a link between parent and host countries. However, cross-cultural settings can be challenging for both an organisation and the expatriates themselves and this may cause a decline in the urge of an individual to be assigned an international position (Bratton & Gold, 2017). As a result, some solutions have been adopted to deal with this cross culture issue and this include the strategy where there is a multicultural corporate environment, special team and workforce in an organisation giving cross-cultural trainings that are to be given first priority. Global Expatriation policies are currently available and cross-culture-training offered to companies with global aspect although there is a shortfall in the actual training (Ando & Paik, 2013).

Choice of training in variety of International context

Training in the wider perspective refers to readying employee’s behavior, knowledge, and attitude in accordance with the current or present job role thereby increasing employees’ effectiveness for a particular role. For example, the cross-cultural training which is necessary to equip and prepare employees for future roles in different countries. Cross-cultural training is a process where employees are oriented about work life in a new environment (Ando & Paik, 2013).

One of the prime motivating factor for the types of training provided by a company or an organization is on the manner in which the organization utilizes its global operations to achieve its strategic goals. Therefore, if two sub-units are interdependent, their training regimes, regardless of their differences in culture, need joint creation so that both units may work effectively for the benefit of the entire firm (Stone & Deadrick, 2015).

An adaptive training type considers a contributor’s role for the subsidiary. In this case, the subsidiary develops a local capability, which is both valuable to the firm and fits local context to such an extent that it is not readily and easily generalizable. Such training utilized in such a subsidiary may not be useful more so to other parts of the firm (Ando & Paik, 2013). Therefore, if compared to other types of trainings, an adaptive training is more appropriate especially when a subsidiary assumes or takes over the role of a contributor.

Impact of culture and institutions on employee voice mechanisms

Several cultures affect both positively and negatively on employees’ voice mechanisms. First, there is the bureaucratic culture. In organizations with bureaucratic cultures, employees tend to voice more of adaptive as opposed to innovative ideas. Employees also from organization or companies with bureaucratic cultures tend to express more dissent as compared to employees from clan and fief cultures (Kassar et al., 2015). Employees here also use formal channels of voice as more often than informal channels. They will also constantly use both collective and individual voices. Also, organization with such cultures, loyalty, neglect and voice is higher than exit. Bureaucratic culture is neither very precise nor completely relational. It strives a lot to be precise thus creating formalization while putting ambiguity at bay. It also produces orientation individually on one hand and endangers collection actions on the other. It is therefore safe to conclude that ideal bureaucracy has high formalization and moderately precise and concise rights (Aravind et al., 2017).

There are organizations with the market culture type where information is widely and largely spread and completely codified. People are able to gather the needed information on their own and interpret. For organizations with market cultures, employees are free to voice both innovative ideas and adaptive ones (Kassar et al., 2015). Employees are also free from organizations with market cultures to express more of dissent than employees from organizations with other cultures. Here, employees use both formal and informal channels of voice to air their needs and there is more use of individual voice than collective voice (Noe et al., 2017) As opposed to bureaucratic culture, organizations with market cultures tend to have more of exit and dissent more than neglect and loyalty

There are also some organization with fief culture which uses substantive level of rationality to sustain itself. Substantive rationality comprises of formal and ambiguous set of ethical guiding principles. Employee voice in a fief-type organization is mostly in terms of interests of the organization. In fief organizations, employees will be voice more of adaptive than innovative ideas (Aravind et al., 2017).

Reward systems

A reward is or could be anything that attracts an employee’s attention and motivates him or her to work with much zeal (Budhwar, 2016). A reward consists of both monetary and non-monetary, non-monetary rewards consider so many factors including promotion, vacation, paid leave etc. To ensure a successful reward system, there is need to have a reward scheme that is as a program or a plan to motivate the performance or the good work of an individual or groups of individuals (Aravind et al., 2017). A reward scheme should have the following features: First, a reward program or plan may consist of both monetary and non-monetary features to provide diversity to match the needs of different employees. Secondly, a successful reward plan should encompass right timing, accuracy and frequency of incentives as its very basis to ensure a successful incentive plans. Thirdly, communication of the plan to employees in time to encourage individual performance provides positive feedback, and encouraging matters redirection (Almond, 2011).

In most countries, a number of criteria are used to reward a performance. For example, the individual and the Rewards method where persons are rewarded individually considering that some employees may not be attracted to monetary values: The work Situation involving use of technology and an employee is rewarded depending on efficient use of such technologies; Satisfying job assignments; feedbacks and equity where employees consider the doctrine of reasonability and fairness in rewarding employees (Aravind et al., 2017).

SMART recommendations

This report underscores the point that Unilever is very successful in almost all aspect of business but recommends that Unilever Company can improve on matters cross-culture trainings to widen their business operations worldwide. In terms of Unilever’s Human Resource management, this report draws conclusion that Unilever is one of the best multinational company to work for. Their value for people whom they consider their greatest asset is unmatchable.

As for the distinctions between domestic and international Human Resource management system, this report underscores that the latter deals with wide variety of issues that are not dealt with in domestic system. This report thus recommend harmonization of human resource practices in both domestic and international arena.

Organizations are recommended to have one approach to ensure their own success. That is convergence or divergence approach. Depending with location, organizations are recommended to explore cultures that best suit them and that which only works to benefit their employees.

Organizations are also encouraged and this report recommends that organizations should have specific recruitment policies and strategies in place especially policies on the conditions of expatriate employees. This report also recommends cross-culture trainings and the creation of cultural training institutes to address the difficulties experienced when employees are required to cross border to a new country. Finally, the method or the approach of training is recommended to be uniform for all multinational companies with branches worldwide.

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