The importance of the HR function is truly immeasurable for any company since it allows ensuring that the right people are assigned with the right job and that the workplace environment is maintained safe and friendly to staff members. Therefore, the efficacy of the HR function defines how prolific an organization can be in the market where it strives to achieve success. As a rule, the HR function has several standard elements, yet its specifics may vary from company to company.
The six typical functions of the HR department include the recruitment of staff, maintenance of safety in the workplace, promotion of employee-employer relations, provision of benefits, ensuring compliance with the law, and management of talent. Traditionally, the differences in the function that the HR department performs in an organization depend on the sector in which the said organization operates, as well as the size of the company in question. One might believe that the HR function becomes more detailed in smaller companies due to the drop in the number of staff compared to large ones, and less elaborate in busy sectors, yet the differences are more intricate.
In the company under analysis, the HR function is represented by elaborate talent management and the focus on meeting staff members’ needs to motivate them and increase their loyalty. The company in question, Unilever, is known for its HR strategies that lead to an outstanding workplace performance of their employees. The HR function at Unilever focuses on strategic management and the promotion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to the key theories of motivation, namely, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Model, the inclusion of the factors that allow staff members to develop professionally helps Unilever to create an effective team of staff members.
Comparing the approach used by Unilever to companies of a smaller size, one should mention that the size of the organization’s staff affects the HR metrics to a significant degree due to the need to embrace a specific number of people with appropriate adjustments of the specified metrics to their unique traits, such as age, culture, race, sex, and other characteristics. To examine the differences between the implementation of the HR function in companies of varied sizes, one may consider examples such as the use of a performance appraisal.
Namely, in the organizations that have low staffing levels and can be characterized as small, the mechanisms of implementing a performance appraisal will be drastically different from those of larger companies. Namely, the communication approach, the system for data collection in small companies may boil down to implementing observations with interviews, whereas in larger firms with a significantly higher staffing level, the assessment will have to be automatized with the help of questionnaires and online forms. Therefore, the performance assessment process is clearly going to vary extensively based on the size and staffing rates within accompany.
In addition, the sector to which a company belongs will also define the choice of the HR metrics to be used when approaching the issues of recruitment and the related processes. Namely, the metrics such as application competitiveness are likely to be irrelevant in the area where competition rates are low, such as bakeries and beverage manufacturing industries. Thus, it is important to consider the type of industry when performing the analysis of competitors and the possible extent of rivalry that a company may face in it.