Case of No Name Aircrafts Australia Human Resource Management
Introduction
“No Name Aircraft” is an Australian company with its auxiliaries in Singapore, China and Vietnam. As the company is operating globally for making and delivering aircrafts to all over the world, it is facing number of issues related to its culture management, communication, diversity management, training and development and international performance management. Due to these concerns number of stakeholders has sent concerned letters to O’Meara demanding quality improvement within six months. The organization is facing issues with staff management due to which the workforce has seen experienced breakdown at every hierarchy level. Issues including communication breakdown and cultural diversity are evident in the firm.
In the given report, the case of “No Name Aircraft” will be assessed in light of Human Resource Management principles. The case will be a fair analytical presentation based on the literature analysis along with evaluation and estimation of the company’s performance. The data used for analyzing the case is purely sourced from secondary database including peer reviewed articles, websites and digital platform. No primary data was used for case analysis in the current report.
Issues Identification
Cultural Diversity
Samnani et al. (2012) stated that cultural diversity can positively influence the organizational performance. A growing interest in cross-cultural management emerged due to intensification of globalization that has risen the need for policy makers to focus on understanding culture differences and apply knowledge to maintain the diversity (Maznevski et al., 2002). According to Schneider & Barsoux (2003), reconciliation of the cultural differences at workplace has remained to be the central international human resource issue. In the given case, No Name Aircraft has been operating in China, Vietnam and Singapore. As a multinational firm, it is facing issues related to quality management, lack of integration and weak supervision of large team by the few supervisors.
One of the major issue that triggers the lack of quality issues at No Name Aircraft is the lack of communication between the intergroup (within employees) and intragroup (subsidiaries and Headquarter). Due to lack of commitment towards the job, the credibility of the operations at No Name as faltered. Ely & Thomas (2001) elaborated on the importance of understanding human behavior at work so that the cultural diversity in an organization can be managed efficiently. Harmonizing different cultural beliefs, values and customs allows the organization in understanding the workers’ attitude towards work and bringing change gradually. Daim et al. (2012) highlighted that the organizational performance and productivity of multinational firms can fall due to cultural differences and mismanagement of cultural diversity.
The lacking communication amongst the team members can be caused due to differences in geographical location and demographics of the employees in different nations (Shachaf, 2008). In the given case scenario, the company’s team members are all located in different regions with different demographics. Moreover, the company has failed to instill a friendly working environment due to which the interest of employees in working with No Name is below optimum level. Moreover, it has been identified that the communications at lateral and horizontal levels have been compromised and there is no inter-group communication platform due to which the firm is facing issues related to workplace cultural mismanagement.
The firm has a total flat structure where only two supervisors are responsible for managing the team of 26 people. Other 50 teams has the same organizational hierarchy due to which integration is nearly zero in the firm. According to Ely & Thomsaon (2001), integration-learning perspective regarding diversity has pushed the global leaders in considering cultural identity groups as potentially valuable resources. Without integration, the culturally diverse working group cannot redefine its markets, products and business practices. This makes the company become rigid and fail in advancing its mission.
Diversity Management
Diversity has been explained by Cox & Blake (1991) as the reflective process of understanding the variation of social and cultural identities amongst different workers co-existing in the employment setting. In this context, efficient diversity management can lead to positive employee outcomes and more job satisfaction. Given the importance of diversity management, the No Name Aircraft is facing severe challenges related to its diversity culture at the workplace. At first, the company doesn’t seemingly have any proper diversity policy except for giving respect to all workers regardless of their color, age, gender, ethnicity, abilities, beliefs or race. Seniors at No Name have intolerance in working with apprentices and lower level staff members. Due to this, the working relationships are tarnished amongst supervisors and subordinates. According to Singh (2018), an effective diversity management practice ensures fairness in the organizational policies and procedures for increasing worker’s effectiveness.
Another issue identified at No Name Aircraft is related to discriminate hiring policy in China where people with disabilities are ignored during selection of applications despite of their abilities, qualification and experiences. According to Walker et al. (2012), recognizing the diverse workforce during the recruitment of employees has the potential to provide competitive advantage for the firm. It has also been noted that the selection practices that result in disparate-treatment discrimination is condemned and prohibited by law in almost all countries. Hence, No Name Aircraft can find itself in huge problem if the disabled people take any legal actions against the HR policy of the company pursued in China.
International Performance Management
Performance management including employee appraisal directly influences the efficient performance of employees especially working for multinational firms (Appelbaum et al., 2011). Performance management includes performance appraisals and training and development programs through which employees tend to learn and excel in line with market demand. In the current case study, there are no performance reviews conducted at the subsidiaries level by No Name management. Expatriates do not go through the formal performance appraisal process at the subsidiaries working in China, Vietnam and Singapore. According to Briscoe et al. (2015) having the effective performance management system for measuring performance of expatriates is crucial in the current dynamic business environment.
Woods (2003) identified various methods of performance management that can be used for evaluating the performance of expatriates including 360 degree evaluation or feedback. In order to develop the human resource, the role of appraisal and pay decision has been rated as important for the international companies. However, No Name Aircraft has little to no efforts in conducting performance reviews formally at the subsidiaries operating in China, Vietnam and Singapore. Other issues include major decisions being taken at central level without considering the subsidiaries due to which inconsistent performance in the organization is apparent (Woods, 2003). According to Kang & Shen (2016) home and host performance must be integrated for achieving coordination and consistency across the organization. However, in the current case, No Name’s local management is taking all the decisions including ordering of producing certain quota of parts that were already in surplus in Australia. The control of decision making at central level caused conflicting performance outcomes for the whole organization.
Training & Development
Training & development of employees at both local and international level plays a crucial role in human resource management (Husan et al., 2009). In order to meet the international pace of development, the workforce of an organization must be competent and trained efficiently so that the products and services can be designed in line with latest market and technological trends (Husan et al., 2009). In the current case, No Name lacks the specific training and development programs for the expatriates working in China, Singapore or Vietnam. Lack of online resources and poor feedback hinders the growth prospects of the team members.
Another issue identified relates to lacking training programs for helping employees integrate and fit in the new working environment. The expatriate training programs must be designed for unlocking job-related competencies, knowledge, skills and probability of goal attainment amongst employees (Abdullah & Jin, 2015). In order to allow expatriates in managing foreign job responsibilities, the training and development programs must train expatriates in fitting in the new culture and foreign environment. Therefore, adequate cross cultural and pre-assignment trainings are considered to be important for multinational firms like No Name Aircraft (Abdullah & Jin, 2015). However, currently there are no cross-cultural training programs and development programs at No Name due to which employees are mostly unaware of their career prospects.
Lack of career development programs is also evident at the company. Moreover, seniors do not extend hand for training the junior employees due to fear of being sidelined. Due to these issues, many worthy and talented employees at No Name have been poached by other companies. According to Husan et al. (2009), juniors can extract knowledge, skills and experience by getting training from senior supervisors. The seniors can act as leaders and lead the training and development path for the juniors working in the international arena.
Optimum Solutions to HRM Problems at No Name
As a HR consultant, it is recommended for No Name to construct policies in a way that it gives the workers equal opportunities to grow along with the company. The recommended solutions for the HR problems are based on ensuring that the policies reflect all the employees of firm rather than being focused only on the growth of company or the senior workers. The following solutions are recommended for No Name;
Communication Improvement
In order to improve the cultural diversity at No Name, communication must be smooth across the hierarchy. Motivating and standardization of the communication process along with proper escalation matrix can improve the quality of work while reducing communication gap between stakeholders. According to Lozano & Escrich (2017), the culturally diverse workforce can be handled by adopting a tolerant strategy and respecting each other. By creating a respect culture at No Name, the company will be able to create a standard and equal working ground based on ethical perspective management. Moreover, moving to tall organizational structure can allow supervisors to delegate authorities to lower subordinates while improving communication and responsibility awareness across organization. Delegation of authority can also improve employee participation, thereby increasing employee motivation (Lozano & Escrich, 2017).
Diversity Management
The recruitment and appraisal policy of No Name should be revised for ensuring the survival of diverse workforce regardless of age, race, caste, ethnicity, nationality, color, gender, sexual orientation and disability. The changes must be brought in specially the designing of recruitment policy for including and inviting applications from disabled people by setting up disability quotas in China. According to Dias et al. (2020), HRM practices should be adopted in organizations for connecting and retaining highly skilled workforce and for instilling discrimination free working environment. Moreover, No Name must establish a relational culture within which people could feel proud of their uniqueness while becoming socially integrated into the larger group of people. No Name should also consider maintaining the inclusive culture within which the employees can be intrinsically motivated for taking ownership of learning experience while appreciating multiple perspectives. In this instance, periodic training programs are considered to be most effective and commonly used diversity activity in international firms (Chavez & Weisinger, 2010).
Training, Development and Performance Appraisal Programs
No Name Aircraft needs to develop expatriate training and development programs in order to conduct periodic and interval training in China, Singapore and Vietnam. The company needs to include activities and attributes that serve and strengthen the expatriate self-esteem, mental hygiene and self-confidence. While designing the training & development programs for expatriates, No Name needs to focus on reinforcement substitution, stress reduction and technical competence (O’sullivan et al., 2002). Through reinforcement substitution, the company will be able to bring pleasure and happiness in the home culture with activities that exist in the host culture. In this case, adding arts, sports, family, history etc. into the training programs can make expatriates feel comfortable. Similarly, for reducing stress, the company can develop “stability zones” for allowing expatriates to retreat when the conditions in the host culture becomes overly stressful to them (Dias et al., 2020). These stability zones include meditation rooms, writing activities and religious worship areas. All expatriates must also be given equal opportunities for improving technical expertise in the host country so that they can adjust in new culture efficiently.
At No Name company, there is need to conduct training programs systematically. For this, the training needs to begin with assessment phase in which the training would be implemented using experiential methods (Woods, 2003). It is recommended for management to introduce training in a classroom or on-the-job after providing clear criteria on which the evaluation of results would be conducted. Sensitivity training and field experiences as a part of participative mode of training can allow expatriates to fit in the host country effectively (Woods, 2003). For conducting performance appraisals, the company must use a behavioral observation type of instrument. Moreover, senior managers must appreciate the expatriate’s time being spent in abroad. Teaming up the expatriates with former expatriate from same location can improve the performance and aid the management in appraising the performance of its international team. A 360 degree of performance evaluation can be used by No Name for collection and giving feedback on performance data of an individual or group derived from a number of stakeholders on their performance (Woods, 2003).
In order to ensure that the above issues are not repeated, the No Name Aircraft management must ensure to comply with anti-discrimination laws, equal opportunity laws, harassment laws, occupational health & safety laws, enterprise agreement laws and industrial relations (Australian Multicultural Foundation, 2010). It must focus on following Equal Opportunity Act 1984 that provides detailed provision on recruitment, selection and fair treatment of employees. Other than this, global acts including Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 must also be complied with (Australian Multicultural Foundation, 2010).
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Implementation of Tentative Plan
Purpose
This policy demonstrates the commitment of No Name that it has made for fostering and supporting the diverse workforce and for integrating the equal opportunity for people with disability into No Name’s policies, decisions, operations and procedures. This policy is based on the principles of Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Commonwealth) and Anti-Discrimination Act 1997 and Disability Services Act 1993 (NSW).
Location
This policy is applicable to all workers working in China, Singapore and Vietnam. The policy will be applied to all workers and allow them to use any specialized equipment provided for their workplace. The policy will also be applied during recruitment, selection and screening process.
Policy Statement
The No Name Aircraft supports the rights of people with a disability to get interviewed, selected, work and participate in environment free from discrimination and in an atmosphere that is conducive to the realization of their full potential.
The company will ensure the facilitation of continuous improvement plans for allowing that the disabled people get access to all facilities and buildings of company. Ongoing reviews and upgrading of existing buildings will be done in compliance with Disability Standards, 2010 and Standards AS1428.1-2009.
The company will also take reasonable steps in ensuring that the disabled people will neither have advantage or disadvantage over other staff members based on their health conditions. It ensures the continuation of planning, developing, implementing and improving the strategies, programs and plans that provide the equitable access to employment opportunities, professional development and career opportunities.
Resources
All staff members will be responsible to complete the Online Modules for understanding the rights and responsibilities in relation to providing equal opportunities in workplace.
Physical resources will include prosthetics, special equipment, teaching material, special machinery, special job-training material for staff with disabilities and activities material for disabled people.
Funding will be required for supporting capital costs of construction and renovation related to improving physical accessibility and safety for people with disabilities at workplace.
Evaluation
At each step, the recruitment policy will be assessed in order to see that it is in compliance with the company policy. The measures like checking on the advertisement for featuring of accessibility to disabled people using signaling theory will be beneficial. All the advertisements will be structured based on signaling theory for ensuring that adverts are positioned broadly in a way that signals that No Name is diversity friendly. All the adverts will be evaluated on terms of content analysis for seeing whether the adverts contain list of disabilities and diversity statement or not.
Conclusion
Cultural diversity management, performance management and training and development programs hold vital position in international human resource management. Hence, understanding the principles of HRM for handling concerns as evident in above case is vital and crucial for organizational success. By addressing the above issues, No Name can improve the quality of its products, employee motivation and communication at inter and intra organization level. Furthermore, designing of policies like above can help No Name in reducing friction amongst senior and junior employees for cultivating a work environment of shared culture and collaboration.
References
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