Triple Bottom Line - Unilever Plc

This report discusses about the use of Triple Bottom Line by a Business entity  to measure their performance. Unilever Plc is a multinational British-Dutch company established in the year 1930. It is the oldest company engaged in selling Consumer Goods.

TASK

Identification and explanation of a performance indicator that the company uses to measure social, environmental and financial performance

Sustainability has often been mentioned as goal of business entities, non-profit institutions and government companies. It can be difficult for the organisation to make sustainable growth. In order to evaluate the performance of organisation’s sustainability, this model was proposed i.e. Triple Bottom Line (Elkington, 2013).

TBL is a concept or accounting framework that seeks to widen the focussing point for including the social and environmental responsibilities by the financial bottom line . This phrase was introduced by John Elkington in the year 1994. It also facilitates in measuring the social responsibility of company's degree, its environmental impact and their economic value.

Uni lever is a consumer good company. it is British Dutch company and its headquartered in Netherlands, Rotterdam UK London. It is seventh most valuable firm in Eutiope and one of the oldest multinational companies that deliver their goods in more than 190 nations across the globe. Unilever is organised into segments of four such as refreshments , home care,personal care,foods. Company has a vision to make sustainable living into commonplace. This organisation applies Triple Bottom Line Model to achieve and evaluate their vision and goal and along with, to measure their performance, the firm has adopted “3P” model that includes people, profit and planet.

According to company, on the basis of the people and planet business growth can't be there and to mitigate risks, it has formulated plans to change the practices and operations (Glac, 2015).

People: Organisation that uses Triple Bottom Line takes steps to ensure that its operations benefit their employees as well communities in which they conduct their business. Unilever Ltd has adopted plan for helping employees and communities at large. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) was developed in the year 2010 to create value for business, customer and people. Company initiated the plan by using the available resources to address issues like equality, gender, health and hygiene, climatic change and plastic waste.

Unilever is attached in encouraging sustainability and provide their consumers with the goods which make them need to look and feel good and to get more out of life (Hollos, Blome and Foerstl, 2012).

Uni lever has initiated many programmes to impart healthy and better future to its targeted customers of different age groups through their different product range which are as follows:

• For supporting people which are affected by the skin conditions Vaseline has started the vasline skin care foundations.
• Unilever Ltd has partnered with the WFP and launched “Together for Child Vitality” programme to help the poor children in the nutrition (How Unilever Converges Doing Good and Strong Performance.2018).
• In the year 2017 Lifebuoy partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and launched an initiative to defend toddlers below the age group of five from premature death and childhood illnesses. The partnership purpose to bring changes in lives of many young children in developing countries by promoting a good habit of washing hands with soap.

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) was built across three main goals and nine strategic pillars which Unilever wants to achieve. Company engage their employees to achieve their goals and it doses by helping their staff members in finding their own purpose so that they can fulfil their potential. Organisation integrates sustainability into their training and formulates bespoke courses to develop employees’ skills, capabilities and assist them to understand how sustainability applies to their job roles. This helps to achieve 'Bringing Sustainability to Life', which is the key businesses skills of company.

Unilever Ltd has developed strategy to increase and support Women Empowerment across the world. Company has formulated plan to reduce down the Gender Gap and to change harmful norms and challenge stereotypes that act as a barrier to women's economic Empowerment. It will create job opportunities with equal wage payment for female and women across the globe.

Unilever Plc has three major goals within their USLP; among them, the one aim of organisation is for 1 billion people facilitating the health and well being across world. Company has initiated to improve the health and hygiene by reducing incidents of life-threatening diseases like diarrhoea.

It will achieve this purpose by providing following things that includes:

• Reduce the impact of diarrhoea and respiratory diseases by initiating the importance of hand washing to all age groups but special lessons will be given to Children.
• Improve access to sanitation and provide safe drinking water.
• Unilever Plc with their expertise and Foundation help in improving skin healing and skin related diseases. Along with this, it will promote the importance of Oral health and initiate programmes to improve them in developing and backward countries of the world (Gareth Bell, 2013).
• Company is working towards improving the nutritional quality of all their products.
• Unilever Plc might for meeting the highest nutritional standards double proportion of the portfolio is needed which is based on the guidelines of the globally dietary.

Planet: It refers to that company that avoids any activities that is harmful for nature and environment in which they operate their business. Unilever control its energy consumption and takes necessary steps to reduce its carbon emission. To reduce their carbon footprint, company has taken actions through their value chain. It developed innovations that produce less Green house gases from their factories, distribution channels and their suppliers. The implementation of sustainable living plan of unilever of 2010 has shown impressive result in reduction of Carbon Dioxide emission from energy by 47% per tonne of production in comparison to 2008.

Company has initiated to build sustainable future and better life to each person within their natural limits. To fulfil this purpose Unilever Plc has launched certain programmes and initiatives which are:

• Many products of Unilever contain ethically and sustainably sources ingredients and each of them are independently certified.
• The brand named Lipton tea has projects in Africa of sustainable forest management and it’s accredited by Rainforest Alliance.
• The raw material used by Unilever Plc comes from agriculture and forestry that ensures that the key crops are 100% sustainable.

Initiative of protecting forest:

Unilever Plc is working for others to remove deforestation of agricultural goods of supply chains. biggest reason for deforestation is when forest are cleared to grow palm oil, soy or for paper and pulp industries for harvesting of timber. Unilever Plc along with other companies has taken an initiative to achieve zero net deforestation associated with four commodities which are; palm oil, soy paper board and beef. To attain this purpose it is taking three main steps these are:

• Transforming their supply chain for assuring that all the products bought by them are traceable and sustainable.
• Unilever is working with governments and other partners to ensure that matter of deforestation gets the political attention and financial resources to reduce this problem. '
• Company is trying to encourage the entire industry to be the part of this plan and reduce deforestation (Fernando, 2012).

Reduce Transport Emission:

Unilever Plc has developed new technology solutions to reduce Transport Emissions by creating positive results for the businesses and lorry drivers. Company has supported New Digital Freight Machine (DFM) technology that uses smartphones apps to connect company who need to transport goods. This partnership with Unilever Plc has helped in building on demand transport along with adding flexibility to supply chain.

Unilever plc has set target of becoming carbon positive by the year 2030. It will achieve this aim by eliminating fossil fuels from their operations and directly support renewable energy resources. Company is jointly working to achieve with suppliers,partners and others their ambition. It has a network of environmental managers around the world to evaluate their carbon footprint. In South Asia at their sites company has implement on site solar panel to generate renewable energy, for example, it has implemented renewable plants at four sites in India in 2017 (Galpin, Whitttington and Bell, 2015).

Company has an aim to reduce Environmental Impact by half till 2030 and to be the provider of sustainable raw material for agriculture. Unilever will ensure that by the year 2020 the total waste material sent for disposal will be at or below the levels of 2008. It will minimise waste from manufacturing by putting landfill with zero non hazardous waste and implement compostable plastic packaging.

Profit: The financial bottom line is the one which is shared by all companies irrespective of the fact whether they use Triple Bottom Line or not. TBL views profit to empower and help community to sustain and grow. There are many ways in which Unilever aims to support and inspire actions of people who believe and help company to achieve their goals and objectives. Every year company organises Unilever Heroes Programme to recognise employees who have shown great efforts and extraordinary initiatitve, commitment and integrity. It has launched Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards in 2018 to encourage young and innovative minds to deliver the sustainable life and fulfilling the goals of Unilever Plc (Gimenez and et. al., 2012).

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Innovations:

Unilever Plc support innovations in order to achieve the desired goals and objectives. This generates employment in the economy as company develops products through innovations in collaboration with leading scientists, academic institutions. Further, these innovations by Unilever helped in reducing other economic issues and create positive impact on improving health and well-being of people.

Unilever Plc is working to improve conditions of Smallholder farmers by providing them to adopt beneficial agricultural innovations that can help to pull them out of poverty.

The Enhanced Livelihoods Investment Initiatives (ELII) will be help in achieving this purpose. ELII has been designed to create, invest and accelerate the growth of agricultural enterprises and innovative businesses models that can bring smallholder farmers into global markets (Muff and et. al., 2013)

Unilever Plc sells their products in the 190 countries or more than that thus creating employment and income for distributors,retailers. They create value for their suppliers as it buys huge amount of products from them. Further, Company consist of tax laws in the nation where they run. In past 15 years Unilever Plc has conducted numerous qualitative and quantitative studies to evaluate the economic and social impact of their business. For instance; Labour rights in Unilever's Supply Chain published in year 2013. Among the three major goals of Unilever Plc one is to enhance livelihoods for Millions of people by expanding their business.

It aims to maximise participation of entrepreneurs who are young in their value chain creation. women safety is promoted in the community where company runs their businesses and build a gender- balanced organisation management focus. Unilever Plc creates model for fair compensation and amending worker health, well being and nutrition (Bansal and DesJardine, 2014).

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CONCLUSION

This report concludes that Triple Bottom Line is an effective tool to identify and measure the performance of an organisation. The three dimensions of this tool which includes People, Planet and Profit helps to evaluate performance of Unilever Plc. The report shows how effectively company achieve its objectives of sustainability by sharing value and benefits to all the People who are the part of Unilever Plc and how efficiently it uses resources to minimise the impact over Planet. Further, Unilever Plc works in collaboration to create value from the Profit it generates and help to build the better future of their suppliers.