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Unilever's Self-Assessment: An Analysis

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According to the case study, early results from the self-assessments led to improvements in a variety of areas. For example; the case study touts on page 8 "improvements were identified in the areas of communication, process management and goal deployment". Since communication in any form is a strong component of a successful business, this one facet alone is well worth the self-assessment process if it succeeded in initiating those improvements. As one recent study determined "strategic planning is an essential part of doing business" (Parke, 2012, p. 44) and self-assessment is one factor of strategic planning that in Unilever's case made total sense. One specific manner in which strategic planning and self-assessment worked hand-in-hand was through the introduction of customer surveys that assisted in the self-assessment process. As the case study explains "customer surveys measuring the satisfaction of the retail outlets where HPCE products were sold had been introduced in 1994but the real value of these surveys was brought home during the first self-assessments" (p. 8). In other words, the company had already instituted improvements but had not realized the potential of those improvements until after assessing the employee surveys instituted during the self-assessment process. As the study states "measuring customer satisfaction in a systematic way was a first step in managing customers" (p. 8), and other experts agree with that belief. One recent study determined

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