Introduction

Emotional Intelligence at Unilever will be analysed in this report with the theories of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence of EI refers to the ability of understanding and manage people’s own emotions and the people around them (Kirk, Schutte, and Hine, 2011). People who have a high degree of emotional intelligence know what they are feeling, what means by their emotions and what will be the influence of their emotions on others (Khalili, 2012). Empathy, social skills, motivation etcetera are the skills that are involved in EI. EI can make a workplace happier by raising a better sense of collaboration among the workplace and employees. In this report, the effectiveness of EI in the workplace has been analysed. The connection between emotional intelligence, effective management and business advantage has been evaluated. Models of emotional intelligence have been applied to the chosen organization which is ‘Unilever’. The effectiveness of emotional intelligence and mindfulness in workstations and the way how EI helps companies to achieve competitive advantage have been analysed also.

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Introducing Emotional Intelligence

EI refers to the capability of understanding and managing people’s emotions including their own emotions that help people to handle their feelings in order to stop these feelings to swamp anyone (Chin et al., 2011). Emotional intelligence allows people to sense other people’s emotions and they can respond to these emotions effectively. When people have emotional intelligence, they can have the ability to identify their own and others’ emotions which helps to effectively respond to the emotions. Therefore, they become capable of handling social relationships both caringly and wisely. People who have emotional intelligence are much more adjustable than others which helps them to handle situations more efficiently than others. Adaptability is a must-have skill for people in this fast-changing digital world that makes their stuff easier in both the workplace and personal life. People works in teams and a team consists of different type of people therefore emotional intelligence can make the environment of the workplace healthier because people will be able to adjust to one another with the help of emotional intelligence.

Effectiveness of EI at Unilever’s workplace:

Different types of people work together in a workplace, and they feel many problems in adjusting to one another within a team. Emotional intelligence makes people more adjustable, which increases the effectiveness of the workplace. Employees can adjust with one another with the help of emotional intelligence which ensures a better outcome for an organization. The effectiveness of EI within the workplace has been analysed below:

Increases resilience among employees: Emotional intelligence grows resilience among employees (Littlejohn, 2012). They can identify the way how they respond in emotional situations and become aware of their reaction. Employees of Unilever try to control their emotions and have better control over themselves in any situation they face. It seems that emotional intelligence increases employees’ resilience highly, which helps them to handle any kind of situation with a stronger mind. As a result, employees can complete their tasks effectively at Unilever.

Helps employers to keep the employees highly motivated: Emotional intelligence helps employers to keep their employees highly motivated by considering their emotions (Brackett, Rivers, and Salovey, 2011). If employees make any mistake, employers control their anger and try to understand the perception of the employees and give them constructive feedback. This constructive feedback will encourage the employees of Unilever to improve their performances and employees give their best to bring greater outcomes. These efforts of employees’ will maximize the profitability of Unilever.

The increases reasoning power of employees: Emotional intelligence increases the reasoning power of employees because they can understand situations better than before (Trivellas, Gerogiannis, and Svarna, 2013). They convince their own feelings by considering different analytical perspectives. It helps the employees of Unilever to take better decisions by evaluating a situation that will maximize the output of the decision. They also understand the decisions that have been taken by their employers by considering the reasons behind making the decisions and cooperating with them.

Fosters empathy among employees: Employees can identify the feelings of their colleagues through emotional intelligence, and it fosters empathy among them (Bharwaney, Bar-On, and MacKinlay, 2011). If employees of Unilever face depression or trauma, their colleagues will be able to understand their situation and will help the depressed employee to cope with the current situation. Employees will help one another to face different kinds of difficulties, which will increase the sense of cooperation.

Helps employees to manage their stress: Employees can understand that how they behave when they are in stress and how their own stress can influence others with the help of emotional intelligence furthermore, it helps them to manage their stress (Jordan, and Troth, 2011). Employees of Unilever can understand the consequences of their stress on their work and others, which helps them to manage their stress. As a result, they can perform better, which increases the effectiveness of the workplace of Unilever.

Boosts up employee relations by fostering communication: Employee relation refers to the relationship between employer and employees. Because of emotional intelligence, employers and employees, both parties of Unilever can identify the perceptions of one another that help them to communicate effectively (Ju et al., 2015). Effective communication boosts employee relations and it makes Unilever’s workplace healthier.

Helps employees to reduce conflict: Emotional intelligence helps everyone to understand one another’s feelings within the workplace which helps them to consider each other’s situation therefore they become able to avoid conflicts (Njoroge and Yazdanifard, 2014). Every employee of Unilever controls their anger when they have emotional intelligence and behave themselves which helps everyone to avoid conflicts. As a result, the discipline of Unilever’s workplace is highly maintained.

Impacts of Emotional Intelligence on Management Communication:

Management communication refers to the organized scheduling, executing, observing and reviewing of the communications channels of a company. Managers of a company share information and idea with their colleagues, including employees in management communication. Management communication is boosted by emotional intelligence, and managers can communicate with their co-workers and employees efficiently.

Emotional intelligence increases the effectiveness of communication: Managing own emotions is one of the most effective ways of establishing effective communication (Baksh et al., 2014). Emotional intelligence helps to understand own and others’ emotions which make people able of making communication effective. The people of Unilever can understand how to communicate effectively by acquiring emotional intelligence. Managers will be able to communicate clearly with their employees and team members, which will help them operate different types of operations successfully by working cooperatively. As a result, Unilever will be more profitable.

Managers and employees become able to handle business situations because of EI: When people have emotional intelligence, they become aware of their own and others’ feelings which assists them to interact with the business situation in a better way (Gondal, and Husain, 2013). Managers can misbehave with their employees or co-workers because of the stress they are going through. In that situation, emotional intelligence can assist the manager in identifying the reaction toward others, and they become able to manage their stress. Therefore, they behave normally with their co-workers and employees which will help them to maintain good relation with them. As a result, the manager can find out a better way of interacting with the business situation by working cooperatively with their team members. Unilever has 150,000 employees across the world, and emotional intelligence will help all the employees to handle the business situations of Unilever successfully (Statista, 2020). Employees of Unilever may have control over their behaviour toward others by achieving high emotional intelligence. It helps employees to negotiate with their co-workers and find out a better way to interact with the business situation. As a result, Unilever’s employees will become able to handle different types of challenges, and it will make them more successful.

EI helps employees to identify misunderstandings and remove them: Often employees think differently than one another which creates misunderstanding among them. Emotional intelligence helps them to identify the misunderstanding and avoid the misunderstanding (Moon, and Hur, 2011). Confusing emotions create these types of misunderstandings among employees. For example, an employee can be upset because of their own problem, but they can show anger to their co-workers which can create misunderstandings between them. Emotional intelligence helps employees to identify the reason why their co-worker is upset. Employees of Unilever will identify why their co-workers do not mind if co-workers show anger. Therefore, misunderstanding is removed from their relations, and it helps them to work cooperatively which will bring the best outcome for Unilever.

Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Business Advantage:

Business advantage refers to the capability of an organization by which it can leave behind its competitors (Beard, 2014). It is a constructive position that a business holds on in the market they operate a business. Emotional intelligence increases the analytical thinking power of employees which allows them to utilize all the advantages they have in order to make the company more prosperous.

Emotional intelligence assists in developing workplaces: When employees think in an analytical way, they become more decent which helps them to develop their workplace (Caruso, and Salovey, 2004). Decent employees obey their team members which develops a strong bond among employees. They easily adjust with each other and help each other with their work which makes the work easier for the employees. Employees of Unilever will be more decent if they acquire emotional intelligence. They will help one another in their work which will ensure that all the business advantages of Unilever will be used properly. As a result, Unilever will be capable of delivering more customer-focused services that will make customers highly gratified.

Emotional intelligence improves business relationship: Strong business relationship is crucial for a company because it assists an organization in creating an organizational framework (Covey, and Heaton, 2004). Emotional intelligence assists employees to identify the feelings of the people they work with, and it helps them to treat the people in the way they want to be treated. It helps employees to communicate effectively with people, which helps them to create a strong business relationships. Employees of Unilever can identify the perceptions of the people with whom they work, and the employees can communicate with them effectively. That makes business relations strong because people get their desired treatment from the employees. Strong business relations strengthen the business advantage of Unilever. As a result, Unilever will be stronger in the global market than its competitors.

It helps leaders to lead employees in a better way: Emotional intelligence helps leaders to understand their team members, and it helps them to lead the members in a better way (Chaskalson, 2011). Leaders with emotional intelligence understand what can the team members think and how they will react. Therefore, leaders can understand the way to motivate the team members effectively. If Unilever has an emotionally aware leader, the leader will be an effective communicator and will be able to encourage teams to give their best performances. As a result, the quality of Unilever’s products will be developed, and it will make the business advantage of the company stronger.

It makes employees adaptable to changes: Employees can control their own emotions by acquiring emotional intelligence that makes them more adaptable to changes (Goleman, 2001). Employees do not remain prepared to implement changes, but emotional intelligence helps them to control their fear and accept the changes. Because of emotional intelligence, employees of Unilever will be more adaptable to implementing changes within the company. The adaptable mind of employees will encourage them to give their best in implementing the change. As a result, Unilever can strengthen its business advantage by implementing changes.

Emotional Intelligence Models

People can identify their own emotions and others’ also through emotional intelligence. It is a crucial capability of employees that assists them in ensuring outstanding outcomes for their company. The trait model, Mixed model, and Ability model are the models of emotional intelligence. These are evaluated below:

Above figure illustrates that there are three models of emotional intelligence: the Ability Model, the Trait Model and the Mixed Model. In the below section, the models are analyzed below.

Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence:

The Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence implies that the term carefully investigates the emotions among employees, it utilizes emotions to inspire and motivate the employees and drive employees to reach an objective (Murphy, 2014). According to Ability Model, four dimensions play important roles to understand emotions, play a role in motivating and using emotions to make a significant improvement in their performance. The dimensions of the models are critically analyzed below:

Perceiving Emotions: This is the first dimension of the ability model: perceiving emotions refers to understanding the emotions of individuals through observing their behaviour, vocals, language, perceptions, and attitude (Downey, Roberts, and Stough, 2011). An employee of Unilever can also observe their emotional levels of himself through this method. Perceiving the emotion is important to take the next actions of modifications. However, all employees do not have the ability to conduct the observation. Human Resources and departmental heads of Unilever should use the language, skills, abilities, perceptions, behaviour of the employees to assess the emotional intelligence of the staff.

Using Emotions: The next dimension of the model is using the acquired knowledge from emotional observation and utilizing the skills to achieve the emotional goals (Siegling, Saklofske, and Petrides, 2015). HR or department heads of Unilever to apply tactics to motivate employees. To exemplify, the leaders should know the right timing and strategies of manners of asking the employees to do something. This skill will help the leaders of Unilever to rightly make negotiations with employees and effectively motivate them with emotions. It also applies to affecting the emotions of external stakeholders as well.

Understanding Emotions: Another significant dimension of the model is to understand the emotions of the employee, such understanding helps a company to settle complicated problems (Bennett, and Sawatzky, 2013). For instance, certain employees of Unilever may go through personal complications, say, perhaps some family-related problems. It is the responsibility of the HR or unit Head to understand the emotional status of that specific employee and he should be supported with condolences and counselling. In such a situation, he should be handled with care. Failure to understand the emotional status of the employees will result in misbehaviour or mismanagement (Chen et al., 2011).

Managing Emotions: This is the final dimension of the model which refers to the situation in which the unit head or HR department should manage the emotion of himself and others (Serrat, 2017). Following the emotional status of the previous dimension, the unit head should consult with the specific colleague about the problem and should consult to give some possible solutions to that problem. This will effectively solve the problem and will make the employees more motivated and engaged.

Mixed Model of Emotional Intelligence

This model is based on the underlying concept that only theories and principles of emotional intelligence is not enough to improve emotional intelligence in an organization, rather a blend of social awareness and social skills should be added (Kumar, and Muniandy, 2012). This model has talked about those skills.

Self-Awareness: This is related to understanding self-emotions, underlying principles of self-management, perceptions, self-confidence, and awareness (Meisler, 2013). The principles said above can be divided into two categories: self-awareness and emotional management. Both of these skills are of great importance for any potential employee because self-awareness will help him to understand underlying principles of self-management, and emotional management will help him to manage the emotions of himself and others.

Self-Regulation: This refers to the understanding of the techniques and approaches, such as meditation, physical exercises etc., in order to ensure self-regulation (Ryback, 2012). Such methods have been proven effective because they build a sense of in-depth understanding among people to understand the situation and accept reality. If the employees of Unilever are encouraged with such methods, there are chances that they will come up with new innovative ideas, and the chance of conflicts will be declined significantly.

Social skills: Social skill is another dimension of the model which implies that an employee should be equipped with some social skills such as communication, and socialization to gain the skills required to effectively live in a society (Clarke, 2010). Acquiring such social skills by employees of Unilever will help them to make better communication, to bring better-unified results and to reduce the number of conflicts.

Empathy: Empathy refers to the ability to understand the perceptions of someone else and behave accordingly (Gardenswartz, Cherbosque, and Rowe, 2010). Equipping the employees of Unilever with empathy will help them to receive their colleagues care. This will significantly bring better interpersonal relationships and collaboration among them.

Motivation: This refers to thinking in a positive manner and finding some good reasons, and being inspired to achieve a good objective (Clarke, 2010). This plays the most important role in any organization, including Unilever, to make employees more engaged for a better result. Motivation gives the employees an opportunity to find the reasons for doing a job and good work. As a result, employees are encouraged to strive hard and reach the target.

Trait Model of Emotional Intelligence:

This model implies that individual personally is a combination of self-perceptions and emotional traits.

As the above figure illustrates, emotional perceptions of self and emotional features combine together to form one’s personality (Shekar, and Suganthi, 2015). This model helps the employees of Unilever to make a reflection on self-personally. This will give them an excellent opportunity to reflect on themselves and their emotional features. It will also help them to think about the traits and make plans to improve their personal, self-perceptions and level of emotional intelligence. The value of the model is embedded in the importance of self-reflection.

How Emotional Intelligence Models Meet Personal Development Needs of People:

Emotional intelligence models play an outstanding role in developing people’s personalities. The suitability of emotional intelligence models has been demonstrated below:

Enhancing abilities: Through enhancing abilities, people can overcome the limitations they have, and it will help them to ensure better results from their efforts because they can work better after removing the limitations. EI models increase people’s reasoning power that helps them to identify and remove their limitations therefore their abilities get enhanced (Chaudhry, and Usman, 2011).

Responsiveness: Responsiveness indicates the quality that encourages people to react positively and quickly. This quality assists people to handle any kind of situation as soon as possible carefully. Responsiveness is encouraged through the Mixed model of emotional intelligence (Codier, Freitas, and Muneno, 2013). Responsiveness is an important quality that employees should have to increase productivity.

Personal development plan: Emotional intelligence assists to identify own and others’ emotions through which leaders can make their own personal development plan and furthermore helps team members to make their personal development plan also (Mishra, and Mohapatra, 2010). It helps people to develop themselves appropriately, and people can lead better life both professionally and personally.

Social relation: Emotional models encourage people to create social relations by understanding others’ emotions (Mathew, and Gupta, 2015). People behave nicely with people by acquiring EI that develops social relations. As a result, people can lead a better life after getting emotional support and encouragement from people.

Identify strengths: Through the emotional intelligence model, people can identify their strengths by analysing themselves, which helps them to utilize these strengths appropriately (ZHANG, and WANG, 2011). People can strengthen their strengths by identifying them, which makes them more capable of doing their job tasks.

Importance of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence assists employees in enhancing the effectiveness of their workplace. This capability helps them to cope with the challenges of a workplace that increases the quality of employees’ performance. The importance of EI is evaluated below:

It makes employees able to control themselves: Employees learn to control themselves through emotional intelligence (Karelaia, and Reb, 2015). They become able to control their stress and anger therefore, they can adjust better with their team members. At Unilever, employees can learn to regulate themselves through emotional intelligence. When they will regulate their feelings like anger and stress, they will be capable of working cooperatively with team members. As a result, employees will work proactively to make Unilever more prosperous.

It makes employees self-aware: When employees become aware of themselves, it assists them to identify the limitations they have. EI makes employees self-aware and they identify the limitations they have therefore, they can take significant steps to prevent these limitations (Farh, Seo, and Tesluk, 2012). Employees of Unilever can identify their own lacking, including their team members. Therefore, employees will carefully remove limitations and interact with business situations. As a result, the employees bring outstanding outcomes for Unilever by interacting with unexpected situations effectively.

Increases cooperation among employees: Emotional intelligence raises empathy among employees, and they learn to consider one another therefore, cooperation among employees increases (Segal, 2008). Unilever employees will consider one another with the help of emotional intelligence. They will obey one another and respect the decisions of their leader. As a result, employees work together to achieve the organizational objectives of Unilever. Cooperation among employees will be able to develop employee relations that will increase the effectiveness of Unilever’s workplace.

EI makes employees better communicators: When employees have the capability of understanding others’ feelings, they can communicate with others effectively (Al Ali, Garner, and Magadley, 2012). Employees select the ways of communication, such as: verbal and non-verbal on the basis of the situation and will be careful about their body language. Using the right communication process ensures the effectiveness of the communication. Unilever’s employees will be better communicators after having emotional intelligence. They will select the appropriate communication process to communicate with others. As a result, the employees will be capable of attracting more customers to their products by communicating with them in a better way.

EI maximizes employee engagement in the workplace: Emotional intelligence makes employees aware of their responsibilities by raising their reasoning power, which increases employee engagement in the workplace (Pickert, 2014). Employees of Unilever will become more responsible after acquiring emotional intelligence, and they will try to give their best performance. Though employees work by giving full effort, they will be capable of controlling the operational cost and production costs. As a result, the profit level of Unilever will be higher.

Effectiveness of Mindfulness within the Workplace:

Mindfulness refers to the mental state in which people focus on awareness in their work (Cliffe, 2011). People become conscious or aware of their work when they achieve mindfulness. It assists them in concentrating on there without thinking about anything else except the present work. Therefore, mindfulness helps people to keep their mind calm while they are facing depression. People can overcome any kind of complexities if they have mindfulness because they can plan how to face the situation. As a result, they can face the complexities and overcome the obstacles they are facing. People should acquire mindfulness to make their mind capable of winning different king of challenges the effectiveness of mindfulness are stated below:

Helps employees to reduce stress and anxiety: Mindfulness is one of the most effective skills in handling stress and anxiety therefore, employees can avoid these problems (Arghode, 2013). Employees can be more aware of their thoughts therefore, they think more positively in complex situations. They make their mind relaxed by controlling stress and anxiety, which brings a positive outcome. Employees become careful about their reactions which helps them to react in a positive way. As a result, employees can build a good relationships with each other.

Encourages creativity of employees: Creativity comes when people think deeply, and it is not possible for employees to bring creativity to their work without being mindful (Farh et al., 2012). Mindfulness assists employees in utilizing their thinking capability properly and entering into the creative frame of their minds. Therefore, they become able to remove the negative thoughts that create obstacles in the way of creative thinking.

Increases resilience and emotional intelligence of employees: Mindfulness assists employees in achieving emotional intelligence by achieving the capability of identifying their own emotions, identifying others’ emotions and controlling and handling their own emotions (Thory, 2013). Employees can use their own emotions effectively when they achieve mindfulness. Therefore, employees can handle things and make them happen according to their own planning. As a result, employees can maximise the output of their performances.

Improves focus of employees: Mindfulness develops the capability of employees to focus on time and work (Shahhosseini et al., 2012). Employees reduce the tendency to distract from their work through mindfulness. They can understand the importance of their work and avoid multi-task to reduce mental distraction. As a result, employees become able to increase productivity after focusing on important tasks that should be done first.

How Emotional Intelligence Strengthens Competitive Advantage:

Competitive advantage refers to the advantage that a company gain through delivering great value to the customers at a lower price than other companies or delivering products or services at a higher price with great facilities and features (Barney, and Hesterly, 2010). It allows companies to compete strongly with their competitors. How emotional intelligence assists in achieving competitive advantage:

Protects intellectual property: Employees become more aware of emotional intelligence therefore, they work carefully to protect their intellectual property, such as trade names, trademarks, patents and copyrights (Wan et al., 2014). Competitors cannot copy the intellectual property of a company when employees become aware. Therefore, a company become able to maintain its originality which strengthens its competitive advantage.

Develops great leaders: Great leaders help an organization enhance its competitive advantage by leading employees effectively toward achieving the goal of the organization. Emotional intelligence develops great leaders because leaders become aware of their own feelings, including team members (Allam, 2011). Therefore, leaders can lead the employees in a better way by understanding their emotions and nature and, furthermore, behaving nicely with them. As a result, employees become positively influenced by their leaders and give better performance, increasing the quality of services and products. Increased quality of products and services increases the competitive advantage of the company.

Increases customers’ gratification: Employees can identify the requirements and feelings of customers that help them to deliver services according to customers’ needs which will increase customers’ gratification. Emotional intelligence helps employees to understand their customers better and deliver the services of their choice (Anari, 2012). As a result, the competitive advantage of a company gets strengthened.

Develops stronger team: Emotional intelligence makes people aware of their own and others’ feelings therefore, they can communicate with one another effectively. Employees become more adaptable and adjust with their team members with better behaviour. As a result, bonding among team members becomes stronger and they bring the best outcome that reduces production and operational costs. Therefore, companies can deliver services withing lower costs that increase their competitive advantages.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence plays an outstanding role in employees’ life. It makes them better communicators which helps them to make strong bonding with co-workers and others. Therefore, employees get support from others while doing any difficult work. It also reduces the number of conflicts among co-workers because they learn to adjust to one another by considering their emotions. Employees can manage their anxiety and stress which helps them concentrate on their work in order to bring the best result. Emotional intelligence increases employees’ engagement by raising the sense of responsiveness that helps an organization to ensure greater outcomes. Even organizations can minimize their additional costs by ensuring employee engagement. It seems that EI can strengthen the competitive advantage of organizations by maximizing the output of employees’ performances.

References

Allam, Z., 2011. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AT WORKPLACE: A PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW. Global Management Review.

Caruso, D.R. and Salovey, P., 2004. The emotionally intelligent manager: How to develop and use the four key emotional skills of leadership. John Wiley & Sons.

Gondal, U.H. and Husain, T., 2013. A comparative study of intelligence quotient and emotional intelligence: effect on employees’ performance. Asian journal of Business management.

Statista, 2020. Total number of Unilever employees worldwide 2003-2019. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/254366/total-number-of-unilever-employees-worldwide/. [Assessed on: 1 April 2020]