ABC Australia Human Resource Management Assignment Help
Company Introduction
ABC (Name of the organization withheld) is one of the leading companies, specialized in the services of software, mobile application and web development. Founded in early 1990s, ABC today is a medium sized enterprise that has its head-quarters in Sydney, Australia and a growing client base from all over the world. The company specializes in a number of web development platforms including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla etc. for a variety of websites such as e-commerce, social networking, content management and others. Development of mobile applications for iOS, BlackBerry and Android mobile phones is also gaining rapid popularity amongst the company’s customers.
Given the nature of the company’s business, its operations are essentially project based with heavy reliance on employees’ skill set. The company currently has about 80 – 100 permanent employees on its payroll. The company has strict policies in terms of the provision of equal opportunities in recruitment and hiring of its employees regardless of their ethnicities and/or nationalities. This has resulted in a highly diversified work force with over 30% of its web developers having a different ethnic background. A large number of these employees come from German and Asian communities including China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Human Resource Problem
Being a project oriented business, the work is expected to be accomplished within teams. Thanks to the multi-cultural backgrounds, it does raise a number of big and small issues of coordination and harmony amongst the team members. It does not take long for anybody to observe this organization closely and come to the conclusion that there are clear symptoms pointing towards some significant issues of communication barriers amongst the employees which are then translated into a number of issues at work.
Australia has a long stretched history of discrimination and cultural diversity has been a sensitive issue for many foreigners. There are a number of private and public initiatives that can be looked at as part of compensating for the injustice that the land of Australia has borne over the past. Encouraging cultural diversity at the work place has probably the same agenda behind this company’s policy; being an ethically and socially responsible organization.
While diversity has countless advantages as many authors have observed over years of research; it can raise a number of issues in many organizations too. For instance, at the organization in question, there are a number of observable symptoms indicating the existence of a problem.
To begin with, the employee turnover rate is higher than the industry average. On average, 22% of the web developers leave their jobs at ABC in a given year. Interestingly, over 45% of these employees are foreigners or amongst the minority groups. After interviewing approximately 25,000 employees, Hausknecht, et al.(2009)stated “job satisfaction” as the most influential factor in making employees stay or stick to a company. Moreover Steel, et al.(2002), as cited in Hausknecht, et al.(2009), state that the reasons why someone would leave a job are very different from reasons why someone would stay. Steel, et al. (2002) have further represented a very interesting example whereby a certained respondent (a software engineer) would like to leave her job because the alternative company offers her better employee benefits but she would choose to stay with her existing employer because she likes the people she works with. This is an interesting insight while investigating the problem that we have at hand at ABC, implying the importance of healthy work-place relationships amongst colleagues.
Another issue that stems out of inefficient communication between the employees at ABC is the obvious blame game whereby the team members are inclined to pushing the accountability on another team member, for everything that goes wrong at the work place. Browning & James (2003) have divided employees into three types; competent, incompetent and the political. Browning & James (2003) have explained;“The competent rise on merit, the incompetent rise because of a shortage of competent people, and the political rise by taking credit from the competent while blaming the incompetent”. This office politics results in overdue projects, lack of proper accountability and consequently the evaluation of an individual’s performance is then always blurred due to other people’s accusations; seriously damaging any chance for a fair, objective and transparent appraisal system.
Moreover, there are obvious concerns with employees’ motivation and levels of morale. For team based organizations, the importance of the third tier in the renounced Psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs becomes amplified. Sadri & Bowen (2011) explain that a person with a white collar Job has his/her physiological and safety needs being satisfed. Such an individual would seek to work at or continue to work at an organization based on the social support mechanisms that exist there. This would certainly mean that where teams are cohesive, go along well and are able to create synergy, the motivation and morale would run high and vice versa.
Analysis in terms of HR concepts
The preceding section discussed the dilemma being faced by ABC organization in its complete detail along with all the problems that stemmed out of it. In this section, the issue presented would be studied in the light of two key concepts integral to the management of human resources.
Effective Management of Work Force Diversity:
Management of work force diversity can be looked at as relevant literature that we can seek insights from in order to offer a practical solution to the issue. Thanks to Globalization, diversity at work place is inevitable (Al-Jenaibi, 2011). Chan (2011) as cited in Al-Jenaibi (2011) defines work place diversity as “the co-existence of staff from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds in a particular organization“.
The effective management of diversity would require for the HR professionals to encourage an environment whereby people can learn to understand and respect the differences and celebrate (rather than mocking) each other’s identities. Patrick (2011) elaborates that the important thing that managers need to understand is that while this discriminations and these differences can create and endure privilages for some employees, they can also create disadvantages for some. However, the disadvantages can be overwritten by enabling healthy communication networks throughout the organization, making adaptability simpler and easier for the new comers and minorities and making change and cultural diversity more acceptable for the majorities.
In order to produce a positive energy out of a diversified work force, the most suitable strategy, perhaps, is to optimize the contribution of an individual within a team work such that the work is significant, measurable and important. Hackman and Oldham’s motivational model of Job characteristics seconds the idea of creating Jobs within groups such as each group member feels having a significant and irreplaceable position in the group for the accomplishment of the final outcome (Hackman & Oldham, 1976).
Elmadssia (2011) as cited in Al-Jenaibi (2011) has put forth four ways of acculturation that diversified workforces can adopt for the employees. They range from a complete ethnocentric approach of Assimilation, whereby the dominant culture is forced over the diversifying minorities to a geocentric approach of Pluralism where minorities are assumed to always have a positive influence on the organization, where individual differences are appreciated and people embrace each other for their values and beliefs. Cox & Balke (1991) have claimed for Pluralism to be the key to success for organizations having a diversified culture.
Managing Teams at Workplace
Another important aspect of the Human Resource Literature that can be looked at in order to come up with a workable solution for the communication issues would be the management of teams at workplace.
Cheng, et al. (2012) have suggested that the team leaders can influence the mechanism and performance within their teams depending upon the stage of team development. For instance, while the teams are at their forming stage, team members are faced by a nervousness in interacting with people that are new to them regarding tasks that are, again, new to them. In absence of a good group leader, this would lead to a high degree of uncertainty avoidance. In the presence of a good team leader however, a proper orientation and exchange of pleasantries amongst group members would significantly lower the degree of uncertainty avoidable and better enable the team members to handle any disorder that might come their way. Cheng, et al. (2012) further elaborate that as teams start moving to advanced stages of team development they begin to realize the importance of relationship building and start appreciating and enjoying the benefits of diversification; even in the absence of their team leader.
Furthermore Roberson & Williamson (2012) have concluded in their research on procedural justice climate that when dealing with culturally diverse teams, forming teams with similar functional backgrounds can help in achieving high strength of team procedural justice that can result in the realization of performance advantages.
Lastly, in their observation of managing culturally diverse IT teams, Niederman & Tan (2011) comment that team leaders or managers need to realize and instill the same realization within all the team members that there can be more than one ‘right’ ways of going about the same thing. This would give leverage to team members to do their work in their own capacity and manner and thus, with a better probability of enjoying their job and accepting the methodologies of their co-workers.
Action Plan
Based on the problems at hand and the review of relevant Human Resource Literature, we can devise a proper actionable plan that can help ABC organization in coping with a variety of problems that it is currently facing, attributing to its diversified culture.
First of all, a culture for better communication should be encouraged throughout the organization, not only within the work teams and groups. This would mean that the organizational structure would flatten and that first line manager(s) will have an easy access to the top level executives. This would encourage people in voicing their concerns and would create a culture of equality throughout the organization.
Secondly, multicultural days and events can be organized on frequent basis. Minorities would actually feel being acknowledged and this would certainly reflect on their performance and liking for the company when the company does not only focus on celebrating the holidays, festivities and occasions of the Majority groups but also, of the Minorities. Everybody likes having free time to spend with friends and loved ones; celebrating occasions with minorities will not only give minorities a sense of acknowledgement but will also give relief to the majorities and hopefully a better appreciation of the minority cultures, even if out of their own pleasure. The bottom line is, such a strategy would help.
Another interesting strategy could be the formation of multiple work teams; all cross cultural. The teams should professionally compete for better results. This would help in creating harmony among the team members since they stop competing against each other for bonuses, rather they would now be working with each other for better bonuses. When the goals of all the people from diverse culture come to unite, the people are most likely to unite as well. Lastly, trainings should be a regular part of an employee’s life span at ABC organization whereby these trainings should be focused on team building activities.
Conclusively, there are a number of insights that can be drawn from the literature discussed in the preceding report that can help the managers in coming up with workable solutions for the organization. While the owners may argue that extra holidays and activities would cost the company; the fact remains that the synergy thus created amongst the team members, the improvement in performance resulting from better communication, improved customer loyalty and word of mouth resulting from better management of the deadlines, the saved costs due to reduced turn over resulting from people liking the people they work with and all the other benefits would indeed outweigh any or all of the additional costs that the company might need to incur in order to build cultural Pluralism amongst its employees.
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References
Al-Jenaibi, B., 2011. The Scope and Impact of Worplace Diversity In The United Arab Emirates; An Initial Study. Journal for Communication & Culture, 1 December, 1(2), pp. 49-81.
Browning, G. & James, J., 2003. Office Politics; The New Game. Management Today, 1 May, pp. 54-58.
Cheng, C.-Y., Chua, R. Y. J., Morris, M. W. & Lee, L., 2012. Finding the right mix: How the composition of self-managing multicultural teams’ cultural value orientation influences performance over time. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 1 April, Volume 33, pp. 389-411.
Cox, T. & Balke, S., 1991. Managing Cultural Diversity: Implications for Organizational Competitiveness. Academy of Management Executive, 5(3), pp. 45-56.
Elmadssia, T., 2011. Specificities of the Cultural Adaptation of French and German Firms to the Tunisian Context. International Business Research, 4(3), pp. 201-210.
Hackman, J. R. & Oldham, G. R., 1976. Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Volume 16, pp. 250-276.
Hausknecht, J. P., Rodda, J. & Howard, M. J., 2009. Targeted Employee Retention: Performance based And Job-Related Differences In Reported Reasons For Staying. Human Resource Management, 1 March, 8(2), pp. 269-288.
Patrick, H. A., 2011. Knowledge Workers Demography and Workplace Diversity. Journal of Marketing & Management, 1 November, 2(2), pp. 38-73.
Roberson, Q. M. & Williamson, I. O., 2012. Justice in Self Managing Teams; The role of social networks in the emergence of Procedural Justice Climates. Academy of Management Journal, 1 June, 55(3), pp. 685-701.
Sadri, G. & Bowen, R. C., 2011. Meeting employee requirements: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is still a reliable guide to motivating staff.. Industrial engineer: IE, 1 October , pp. 44-48.
Steel, R. P., Griffeth, R. W. & Horn, P. W., 2002. Practical retention policy for the Practical Manager. Academy of Management Executive, 1 May , 16(2), pp. 149-162.
