Unilevers Communication With Stakeholders

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Unilever is a world’s renowned consumer goods manufacturer. The company is a benchmark of success all around the world. Every day the company needs to manage both internal and external communication from national to all around the world. In this task a communication audit has been conducted on the communication system of Unilever plc. UK.

1.1 Unilever’s communication with stakeholders

Communication with the community: General information about the company its mission and vision and its business model is provided in the company’s website.

Investor communication: Unilever has a dedicated website which is used to make communication with the global investors since the company is the third largest consumer product manufacturer in the world. Information about the company’s annual report, market trend and share prices are provided in the website. Various podcast is also available in its website.

Communication with shareholders: Communication with shareholders is also made similarly through website of the company.

1.2 Communication technologies in Unilever

Internet, phone, fax, email etc. are the common communication technologies but the internet is vital among its communication technologies.

Benefits of communication technologies in Unilever: Since it is a the third multinational company among world’s consumer product industry the use of communication technologies helps the company by providing a faster means of communication within minutes. Obviously an email is far cheaper than a phone call and the use of email is saving significant costs of the company.

Hindrance of technologies in Unilever on communication: Since the company operate worldwide a system break down will lead a significant communication gap more over the attack of cybercrime may potentially corrupt the data in the network server.

1.3 Unilever’s communication policies and procedures and its effectiveness

Unilever’s sustainable living plan:

Sustainable growth is central to Unilever’s business. The company has initiated a sustainable living plan in November 2010 which sets a range of targets to grow the company’s business while reducing its environmental footprint and increasing the positive contribution to the society. This will affect the company’s communication policies such as Unilever’s commitment as part of its sustainable living plan will require to design a communication system which will be more efficient and effective and environmental friendly.

1.4 Unilever’s communication problems and the causes

RSS feed of Unilever:

Unilever uses RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is the most effective and easy way to stay up-to-date with the information that is important to stakeholders. RSS eliminates the need to continually visit a websites for updates. Using RSS, new web content is delivered directly to the stakeholders the moment is published. Podcasts, images and video content through RSS can also be received. Unilever has experienced disruption in its RSS feed which sometimes fail to distribute information on time for technical problems.

1.5 Values and culture of Unilever

The company expresses its culture and values in a different way than other companies. The company’s logo is an expression of vitality, which is at the heart of everything they do – their brands, their people and their values. Each icon within their logo represents an aspect of their business.

Bird

Bee

Heart

Bee: represents creation, pollination, hard work and bio diversity. Bees symbolise both environmental challenges and opportunities.

Bird: A symbol of freedom. It suggests a relief from daily chores, and getting more out of life.

Heart: A symbol of love, care and health.

2 Task 2- Report

2.2 Information needs of stakeholders

Employees and managers: Will the company be able to give salaries of the employees? Will the company continue over a long period of time? Is the company is an equal opportunity provider.

Customers: Want to know about the company’s products, services and offers.

Shareholders: How well the company is doing? Whether the directors are good at running the company? When Annual General Meeting will be held? The amount of company profit and the amount of dividend declared etc.

Government: They need information about whether the company is complying with relevant laws and regulation.

Environmental group: Is the company doing business considering the impact of its activities which might cause damage to the environment.

2.2 Communication systems used in Unilever for communicating with its key stakeholders

Communication with shareholders is made usually by preparing and publishing annual reports for them although it is used by other stakeholders. The annual report is available in the company’s website. The notice of general meeting is also made available for the shareholders in the website. In my communication audit of Vodafone annual report and notice of AGM is available in the company’s website.

Employees can also use the annual report for their information needs. Information for potential employees is available in the company’s website in the career link. Other information such as; company cultures and values are also available in the company’s website.

Information for customers and government is also available in the company’s website.

For each of the above stakeholders they can also communicate via email, phone and fax for any other query.

2.3 The use of technology in communication

Internet: It is the major communication technology used by the company and provides a significant contribution to the company’s communication system. Internet is the network of computers private, public and personal which is developed using various technology such as mobile network, fibre optic cable etc. The use of internet has various forms such as;

Email: Written message is sent electronically over the internet.

Website: A website is typically a collection of web pages, graphics, and other elements which are linked together to form a larger, structured document (like an interactive book). A website could be a single page or it could be made from thousands of pages. All pages and other elements are placed in a folder on a host server. An internet address (known as a Uniform Resource Location, or URL) is assigned to this folder, so that when a browser asks for your site it will know where to look.

RSS feed: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format.

Other most common ICTs are: Phone, Fax etc.

All the above ICTs are used by Unilever.

2.4 Impact assessment of communication policies and procedures

Communication policies and procedures provide guidelines to the employees in the selection of communication type and communication channel. In the absent of communication policies and procedures employees will make their own choice about communication mode and channels which will lead inconsistency and ineffective communication.

2.5 Communication barriers

Barriers to effective communication:

Language: The communication message might not use vocabulary that is understood by the receiver- e.g. too much use of technical or financial jargon.

Noise: Various things stop a message from getting through or being heard- e.g. poor connection, background noise, distractions, too many people speaking.

Overload: Too much information can cause problems e.g. slow down decision making.

Lack of basic communication skills: The receiver is less likely to understand the message if the sender has trouble choosing the precise words needed and arranging those words in a grammatically-correct sentence.

Insufficient knowledge of the subject: If the sender lacks specific information about something, the receiver will likely receive an unclear or mixed message.

2.6 The influence of values and culture on communication

Values and cultures affect interpersonal communication within organisation. People within organisations differ from each other. Each individual has different personalities and values and come from different ethnic and cultural background. These things affect individual’s behaviour and attitude. Interpersonal communication is affected by these issues. It is very important that people in the workplace works with minimum interpersonal conflict since it will lead organisation’s performance deficiency.

In Unilever the company has specified values and culture which provide a framework for all employees to act within such as; in Tesco they believe to trust and respect each other and this will guide employees to behave accordingly.

2.7 Plan to improve workplace communication and measures to evaluate the success of the plan

Since all most all of the communication is done over the facilities of the ICT the company’s focus should be on improving this area. Unilever can initiate a plan to develop its website so that the down time is reduced and can compare over time the number of times the website was down compared to the previous period.

A plan to redesign the communication policies and procedures can be made as a response to the changing circumstances of the business and information needs of the stakeholders. This can be checked against the existence and implementation of such policies and procedures.

Interpersonal communication is vital and a plan of continuous workshop and seminar can be made to improve the interpersonal skill of employees. Number of employee argument and conflict can be recorded and compared over time.

3 Task 3- Interpersonal Communication

3.1 Evaluation of the effectiveness of my own communication skills

Language skill: Language skill is considered to be very important communication skills. The ability to articulate, clear and meaningful writing, to be a good listener is very important in communication. I consider my English language skill is moderate. In IELTS I have an overall score of 5.5.

ICT skill: I have good skill on ICT such as the use of internet, emailing, phone, social networking etc. I have obtained this feedback from my class mates.

Interpersonal communication skill:

What is interpersonal communication?

Interpersonal communication is a communication with the following features:

Communication from one individual to another.

Communication which is face to face.

Both the form and content of the communication reflect the personal characteristics of the individuals as well as their social roles and relationships.

Uncertainty reduction theory:

There are many theories of interpersonal communication uncertainty reduction theory is one among those. It addresses the basic way of how we obtain knowledge about people when we first introduce each other. According to the theory while predicting the behaviour of each other we both face the difficulty of uncertainty and to reduce the uncertainty we seek more information about the people. A high level of uncertainty crates distance between people and that non-verbal expression tends to help reduce uncertainty.

According to the theory we reduce uncertainty in three ways;

Passive strategies; observing the person.

Active strategies; asking others about the person.

Interactive strategies; asking questions, self -disclosure.

My interpersonal communication skill: I consider myself good at interpersonal communication. I am very able to communicate with people maintaining a good distance and avoiding any interpersonal conflict while achieving my goals of communication. To my best knowledge I never had any conflict with my colleagues and class mates while communicating.

3.2 Communication skills development plan

Oral communication skill: To improve my oral communication I think to learn appropriate accent is very important. I continuously practice appropriate accent through digital dictionaries and I have also a plan to do a course on Phonetics.

ICT skill development plan: The use of IT is vital in today’s world in almost all aspect of communication. Currently I am planning to develop my ICT skill and I have a plan to undertake training on networking basics.