BMAF001-20

Communication for Professionals

Introduction

Unilever is an expanded homecare, packaged food, and personal care company which was founded in the year 1929 by Samuel van den Bergh, Antonius Johannes Jurgens, and Georg Schicht (Pitchbook, 2023). Unilever has numerous brands which includes Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Knorr soups and sauces, TRESemme haircare brand, as well as Dove skin products. The primary business of Unilever is the personal products and other businesses include beverages, consumer durables, along with the food products. In the year 2022, Unilever earned 60,073 million euros as revenue which was higher than the revenue earned in the year 2021 which amounted to 52,444 million euros (Petruzzi, 2023). Being such a vast firm, it also certain responsibilities towards society. This report will analyze the benefits of CSR to the firm along with the contributed efforts of the company in fulfilling its CSR.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility also known as CSR is a concept of management wherein the companies integrate their environmental and social concerns within the operations of the business. Howard Bowen is known as the father of CSR who defines it as the obligation of the businessmen for pursuing the policies, following the line of action, and making decisions that are desirable and provides value to the society (Bowen, 2013).

Benefits of CSR to Unilever

Unilever is strongly committed towards its CSR through its diversified operations throughout the world. There are numerous benefits of CSR to Unilever which includes:

Highest priority to consumers: Unilever gives highest priority to its consumers as they are directly associated with the profits of the company. The satisfied consumers help in enhancing the revenues of the company by making repeated sales, quality assurance policies, addressing the demand of the consumers, as well as innovation. For example, Unilever consistently enhances the process of production’s environmental footprint which created an effective goodwill for persuading the perception of the consumers (Lawrence, Rasche and Kenny, 2018).

Investors: Investors are those stakeholders who have a keen interest in the financial performance of the company. For example, high profits and revenues enhances the confidence and satisfaction of the investors towards the company. Unilever addresses these needs through continuous expansion and ensuring dominance in the market of consumer goods. The satisfaction of the investors enhances the success of Unilever to address its business goals and corporate citizenship.

Employees: Employees are the assets of the company and it is crucial for management, to keep their employees happy and retain them for longer duration. Mostly, the employees are interested in holistic development and competitive compensation. To ensure that employees are satisfied, suitable policies to ensure work-life balance are introduced for satisfying their needs. For example, introducing agile working program which helps in addressing the interest of the employees for holistic development along with offering them flexibility to work remotely. Thus, satisfied and happy employees results in satisfied and happy customers which in turn benefits the organization (Luigi et al., 2013).

Communities: Through the involvement of community, Unilever gains positive confidence of the consumers. For example, Unilever Climate & Nature Fund is amongst the key initiative which helps in satisfying the interest of the communities (Scriven et al., 2022). Unilever also funds community programs to ensure personal development, nutrition, and sanitation. All these things help Unilever in contributing towards the profitability of the business and development of the community.

Suppliers: The suppliers have a keen interest in maintaining the profitable relations with the organizations. Suppliers are significant in affecting the business capacity of Unilever based on the materials required to manufacture the consumer goods. For example, Unilever maintains a strategic program called partner with purpose for ensuring mutual benefit amongst the suppliers and the business along with guiding suppliers to grow with the business (Unilever, 2023b).

Thus, Unilever has effective programs to fulfill the corporate social responsibility. The worldwide reach of the business partners, network of product distribution, as well as supply chain helps in facilitating the positive impact on a large scale through its CSR strategy. Unilever also uses its strong image for raising the awareness regarding the needs of the communities thereby, resulting in the benefit for Unilever.

Unilever efforts to fulfill its CSR

Unilever is making consistent efforts to fulfill its corporate social responsibility. It includes:

Ethical responsibility: Unilever has an ethical responsibility and it ensures that all the practices are conducted in fair and ethical manner. Unilever treats all the stakeholders fairly, embraces practices, standards, and activities which are to be fulfilled for the society.

• Unilever ensures that all re workers get a justified pay for their efforts and also set minimum wage criteria which is to be given to the employees (Unilever, 2023a).
• Unilever ensures that all the materials are sourced ethically from its suppliers along with ensuring that it does not cause harm to the environment. It also ensures that the products which are obtained from its suppliers are outsourced through sustainable manner.
• Unilever also ensures welfare initiatives for its employees by training tem, ensuring their physical and mental health are up to the mark, along with adopting the attitude which is environmentally responsible. Unilever also ensures that the employees are holistically developed which helps in maintaining proper balance between their professional and personal life (Tien, 2020).
• Unilever adopts ethical labor practices towards its supply chain which includes usage of those products which are certified in meeting the fair-trade standards.

Legal responsibility: Legal responsibility of Unilever involves complying with the rules and regulations and ensure it functions within society. To fulfill the legal responsibility, Unilever has assigned compliance officer for ensuring that Unilever meets all the legal responsibilities.

• Unilever complies with the labor law through ensuring minimum wages for the workers. Unilever also complies with the industrial relations act for managing the relationship and settling disputes with the workmen. Unilever also ensures workplace safety through complying it with occupational safety and health standards.
• Unilever manufactures products and services which meet the legal standards and avoid misleading claims about business practices and products for defrauding the customers (Wilshaw et al., 2013).
• Unilever also ensures the enforcement of intellectual property rights which include trademarks, patents, copyright laws, and trade secrets along with the right of creators and owners.
• Unilever pay all the duties and taxes to government and keep all its accounts transparent and clean (Iglesias et al., 2023).

Economic responsibility: To fulfill the economic responsibility, Unilever emphasizes on practices for supporting business growth in the long term.

• Unilever consistently generates high profit trough leveraging numerous opportunities which help Unilever to target the market for its customers and new products. Through efficient and effective management, Unilever is able to minimize its cost thereby enhancing the profit margin.
• Unilever also introduced new process of manufacturing which helps in minimizing the waste. This helps Unilever to fulfill its responsibility towards environment along with enabling it to maximize the profits and minimize cost.
• Unilever minimizes its cost trough managing its variable cost. Unilever made investments in automated technologies for reducing the cost of labor, tracking the expenses, and optimum utilization of resources (Götz and Jankowska, 2020).
• Customer retention is also a significant economic objective of Unilever which is fulfilled by enhancing the quality of its service and product. Unilever emphasizes on quality within its work culture and ensure employee training for delivering superior quality products and services to its customers (Chirimubwe, 2015).

Conclusion

To conclude, Unilever is well-known brand which has been operating since numerous years. Unilever ears huge revenue and is responsible to meet its corporate social responsibility. Being such a huge firm, it is socially responsible to cater to the needs of the society. Unilever fulfills its responsibility which in turn is profitable for the company. Fulfilling corporate social responsibility is beneficial for the customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and to the communities which in turn benefits the company as a whole. To ensure that every stakeholder benefits from the corporate social responsibility of the company, Unilever make numerous and consistent efforts legally, ethically, as well as economically.

References

Bowen. H.R., 2013. Social responsibilities of the businessman. University of lowa Press.

Chirimubwe, R.G., 2015. The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Awareness: A Case Study of Unilever Zimbabwe Private Ltd. International Journal of Innovative Research and Development, 4(5), pp.322-332

Götz, M. and Jankowska, B., 2020. Adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies and company competitiveness: case studies from a post-transition economy. Форсайт, 14(4 (eng)), pp.61-78.

Iglesias, O., Mingione, M., Ind, N. and Markovic, S., 2023. How to build a conscientious corporate brand together with business partners: A case study of Unilever. Industrial Marketing Management, 109, pp.1-13.

Lawrence, J., Rasche, A. and Kenny, K., 2018. Sustainability as opportunity: Unilever’s sustainable living plan. In Managing Sustainable Business: An Executive Education Case and Textbook (pp. 435-455). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

Luigi, D., Oana, S., Mihai, Ţ.I.C.H.I.N.D.E.L.E.A.N. and Simona, V., 2013. Achieving Employee Satisfaction By Pursuing Sustainable Practices. Studies in Business & Economics, 8(1).

Petruzzi. D., 2023. Unilever revenue worldwide 2007-2022. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269190/global-revenue-of-the-unilever-group-since-2007/ (Accessed: 05-08-2023).

Pitchbook., 2023. Unilever Overview. Available at: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/12626-38#overview (Accessed: 05-08-2023).

Scriven, S.A., Waddell, E.H., Sim, S., King, H., Reynolds, G., Yeong, K.L. and Hill, J.K., 2022. Supporting decision-making by companies in delivering their climate net-zero and nature recovery commitments: synthesizing current information and identifying research priorities in rainforest restoration. Global Ecology and Conservation, p.e02305.

Tien, N.H., 2020. Staff motivation policy of foreign companies in Vietnam. International journal of financial management and economics, 3(1), pp.1-4.

Unilever., 2023a. Code of Business Principles and Code Practices. Available at: https://www.unilever.com/files/92ui5egz/production/a7ad961ef886a578ab4dd316b4e5195cbc0965a0.pdf (Accessed: 05-08-2023).

Unilever., 2023b. Partner with Purpose. Available at: https://www.unilever.com/suppliers/partner-with-purpose/ (Accessed: 05-08-2023).

Wilshaw, R., Unger, L., Do Quynh, C. and Thu, T.P., 2013. Labour Rights in Unilever’s Supply Chain: From compliance to good pracitce. An Oxfam study of labour issues in Unilever’s Viet Nam operations and supply chain. Oxfam.