MBA502 Emotional Intelligence Cultural Intelligence and Diversity

1.The firm is a global organisation based in Australia, with employees needing to collaborate on team-based projects with global partners from various countries such as India, China, the US and Mexico. The management team is keen to
adopt new policies and practices to improve the issues in their firm and to put in place long-term strategies that would promote effective collaboration among their multicultural teams from across the region.
2. In the MBA class you are enrolled in, you recently participated in a series of presentations on emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence and diversity. Choose from any two presentations based on two different organisations (other than the one presented by your own team) and summarise the key findings.
3. Then, justify why some of the strategies you learnt from those MBA presentations may be relevant to your consulting project. In your evaluation, you first need to analyse the firm’s weaknesses in managing a diverse workforce across multicultural regions. You need to provide convincing arguments as to why adopting some of the best practices and strategies from those two chosen organisations in your MBA class will help address the diversity challenges faced by this culturally diverse global organisation

Hewitt is one of the emerging consulting firms in Australia, that has been offering professional service and industry-specialized assistance to other organizations since the year of 2001. Headquartered in Melbourne, the company soon started witnessing a quick expansion in other parts of the world, including India, China, the US and Mexico. The employees are often sent from one country to the other for collaboration required on temporary projects. However, just like any other global organization, the management authority started noticing certain cultural challenges, which remain at the heart if their cross-cultural business, that they are unable to resolve. Hewitt soon found miscommunication and tension growing as a result of cultural differences amongst the native Australian employees and the expatriate ones.

The managers of the countries in the East such as India or China had an altogether different approach while framing management policy or handling clients, than those of Australia and the US. While difference in opinions has led to more than one instance of direct abuse of the other party, which has not only affected employee morale, but has also led to the creation of a hostile environment. However, more importantly, cultural differences and subsequent clash and conflicts amongst the employees have created an ambient cultural disharmony, whereby even if many employees are not experiencing any first-hand abuse, the atmosphere of cultural conflict as perceived by them, has had a deep impact o their minds.

By simply watching the team leads or operational managers squabble, or disagree, the junior employees have started feeling bad about each other. This has negatively affected the productivity, efficiency rate of the employees as well as their creativity. In absence of in-group harmony, many employees have already left the organization, with a bitter feeling that their opinions were not being taken into consideration owing to cultural prejudices, while the existent employees are unable to come out of their comfort zone to explore and engage with other cultures.

Summary of the Two Firms:

The two companies, the cross-cultural management strategies of which are being discussed here, are RedCross and Tesco. Founded in the year of 1914, Red Cross is one of the most recognized and leading humanitarian aid and community service providing companies of Australia.  The second company known for outstanding cultural diversity management across the globe is Tesco PLC. The British multinational grocery store, is headquartered in England, and has stores in twelve countries across Asia and Europe, and this is exactly the reason why diversity management at workplace has become indispensible here. The management authority of the company believes that diversity and talent are but both sides of the same coin, and hence effective diversity management has been incorporated in the business strategy of the company.

Analysis:

At Red Cross, much importance is attached to the issue of cultural diversity as it helps it to improve its productivity, embrace diverse ideas, skills and competencies, as well as to boost the morale of its employees. First of all, the company hires people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and cultural diversity is incorporated in its very recruitment and promotion policy, and is not merely a vague vision that the company occasionally talks of achieving. In order to capitalize on cultural diversity, the management authority of Red Cross has already realized that it is not sufficient to simply hire people from diverse backgrounds, but what is more important is to develop sensitivity and awareness to reach out to other people from other backgrounds, and to think beyond their selfish interests. According to the management authority of the company, Australia is a culturally diverse nation, and so is the case with the organization’s work culture.

Hence, in order to promote cultural diversity amongst the employees, it is highly important to encourage the employees take up voluntary humanitarian action to reach out to people of various backgrounds and classes for assistance and spreading love and compassion (Ang and Dyne 2015). It should be remembered that diversity and inclusion are very much integrated in the policy and company statement of the organization. It is highly inspiring how the company recently launched its very own the Y Challenge-Celebrating Diversity Program, whereby withthe help of young mentors, the children of age between 10 to 15 years were being taught to explore ‘other’ cultures, and inspire interaction and interpersonal communication in the process.

The company periodically organizes various programs such as “R U OKAY Day”, which intends to guide and train each employee in various issues of cultural diversity. The company, accordingly, has introduced the Cultural Awareness Exercise for its employees, so that they are using digital tools in order to check on the condition of the elderly people of Australia and their health problems, or can volunteer a disaster evacuation centre or even contribute to the spread of education, by funding education or at least awareness programs for the students of the Torres and Strait Islanders (Plaut et al. 2014). It is important to note here that the actions involved in the cultural awareness exercise does not necessarily and directly promote workforce diversity at Red Cross, but yet it helps in creating a sense of cultural awareness and sensitivity amongst the employees whereby they learn to work through co-operation.

They learn to appreciate values and ideals of a diverse culture, and they believe in meaningful cooperation, that ultimately helps in enriching workplace diversity. This form of cultural awareness raising exercises can be deemed suitable for Hewitt. By engaging the employees in various social, voluntary activities, it would be possible for the company to promote love and compassion as well as acceptance for the people belonging to other cultures. This will help them understand and appreciate cultural differences as well as contribute happiness to the people of other social strata or cultural background (Barak 2016). Hewitt operates outside Australia, so its employees can be asked to fund the spread of education in India, to eliminate poverty and illiteracy problem in China, or to raise fund for terror attack in the USA. By increasing the emotional engagement of the employees with the people of other cultures, it will be possible for the company to improve the emotional intelligence skills of the employees.

The diversity strategy of Tesco is central to the way it appoints employees, trains them and promotes them to a higher designation. Each employee working with Tesco has a talent plan, career plan and succession plan, and in order to help each employee realize their full potential, the employee performances are regularly monitored by the management authority of Tesco.

Now, in order to eliminate discrimination at the time of the career advancement of an employee, the company created a separate body called the Diversity Advisory Group, that is entrusted with the duty of reviewing the diverse composition of its workforce, as well as to examine transparency maintained during recruitment and promotion of the employees (Brannen et al. 2013). This is an important strategy, that can be transferred to the company at hand, as it will help it to create a separate panel monitoring and supervising the implementation of h diversity policies, as well as to motivate the employees that their needs are being taken care of. Just like Tesco, Hewitt can also create a separate Diversity Board where the employees can share their concerns, if they feel that they are being deprived of any employee right, for belonging to a minor ethnic group, or any sort of cultural conflict at workplace is affecting their engagement at workplace.

Besides, diversity at Tesco is not just confined to cultural and ethnic areas, as the company believes that its employees will be able to appreciate the value of cultural diversity, when they can work in collaboration with many people who are different from them in more than one way (Brannen et al. 2013). Accordingly, Tesco is one of the first companies to hire disabled employees, along with transgender, bisexual and homosexual employees as well, and this has indeed helped in enhancing the tolerance of its existent workforce over the years. By offering equal employment opportunity to its employees, the management authority of Tesco manages to promote harmony at workplace and increase the tolerance of its employees, who understand that diversity is an integral aspect of the workforce, which cannot be discarded in the long run.

Recommendation:

It is highly important for Hewitt to capitalize on its diversity at workplace, and to enhance the emotional intelligence of its employees so that they can work collaboratively with each other. After reviewing the strategies adopted by Red Cross and Tesco, for managing workplace diversity, it is important to state with justification why and how some of these can be implemented in case of Hewitt. In order to handle workplace diversity and improve employee attitude towards the same, Hewitt will have to incorporate workforce diversity in its vision statement as well as core values, like Red Cross (Ebede et al. 2014).

This will help the company to communicate the importance of workplace diversity in the organization, along with organizational and employee benefits, at regular intervals to the stakeholders of the company. By merely updating the employee manual about diversity and inclusion policy, Hewitt will not be able to achieve sufficient diversity success at workplace. It must ensure that at periodical intervals, such as at least once in a month, the departmental manager along with team leads and subordinate employees organize a meeting whereby along with other important strategies, they discuss about how they wish to use diversity at workplace to enhance workforce productivity and harness best potentiality needed for enhancing the annual revenue of the company (Holden et al. 2015).

The company should also acknowledge standard holidays, whereby it must acknowledge every religious festival, so that the employees from India or China may also avail leaves on the days of their national holidays. Just like Red Cross and Tesco, staff training is a must. Often employees are unable to appreciate cultural differences even if they wish to, as they tend to negatively stereotype the members of other ethnic or cultural group. However, the introduction of an effective staff training program, seminar and conference can promote their cultural sensitivity and help them appreciate the members of the other cultural groups or nations. By organizing formal training over a period of at least a year, the company will be able to target awareness and cultural skill development that will promote tolerance and social cohesiveness amongst the members of the same cultural group (Jaeger et al. 2016).

At the same time, the outcome of the trainings should also be evaluated and measured by the company. At the same time, Hewitt should set up a Diversity Council which will supervise the diversity issue at workplace, ensure diversity is taken care of , in recruitment and promotion areas as well, and take care of employee grievances cropping out of cultural differences (Livermore 2016). It is also recommended that the company should organize various interactive group activities, fun games and get together sessions, which will involve the participation of diverse cultural groups. This will help in creating bond and building rapport amongst different employees through participation in the interactive sessions and mutual interaction.

Conclusion:

There is no point denying the fact that cultural diversity at workplace helps in providing a competitive edge to an organization, and helps it to sustain in the long run, through increased employee engagement as well as better brand recognition. By following the above strategies as adopted by two of the business giants of the world, Hewitt will be able to ensure the unique exposure of employees to cultures, languages and sections of society that allow access to new markets and ideas.

Reference List:

Ang, S. and Van Dyne, L., 2015. Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge.

Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

Brannen, M., Moore, F.I.O.N.A. and Mughan, T.E.R.R.Y., 2013. Strategic ethnography and reinvigorating Tesco PLC: leveraging multicultural teams using ethnographic method. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry, pp.282-99.

Brannen, M.Y., Moore, F. and Mughan, T., 2013, September. Strategic ethnography and reinvigorating Tesco Plc: Leveraging inside/out bicultural bridging in multicultural teams. In Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2013, No. 1, pp. 282-299).

Holden, N., Michailova, S. and Tietze, S. eds., 2015. The Routledge companion to cross-cultural management. Routledge.

Jaeger, A.M., Kim, S.S. and Butt, A.N., 2016. Leveraging values diversity: the emergence and implications of a global managerial culture in global organizations. Management International Review, 56(2), pp.227-254.

Livermore, D., 2016. Driven by difference: How great companies fuel innovation through diversity. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Otaye-Ebede, L., Priola, V. and Yerby, E., 2014. Diversity in organizations: HRM and international practices.

Plaut, V.C., Thomas, K.M. and Hebl, M.R., 2014. Race and ethnicity in the workplace: spotlighting the perspectives of historically stigmatized groups. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), p.479.