Employee Relationship and Cultural Intelligence †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Employee Relationship and Cultural Intelligence. Answer: Introduction: An in-depth reading of the JKL industries would show that the poor diversity and networking condition. The case study reveals that the main business of the company consists of selling medium sized trucks. forklifts and ancillary parts. The company is shifting into overseas operations and looking forward to close its rental to strengthen the former business. This new business requirements of JKL would require the company to undergo a rapid change which has made it important for management to gain employee support. The employees suffer from lack of cooperation from the leaders and as a result did not trust them. The managers were not sensitive towards the cultural sentiments of the subordinates. This resulted in hostility among the managers and the subordinates and the latter used avoidance method to avoid conflict or confrontation with the former (Cascio 2018). The networking within the company was very weak due to this lack of understanding and trust. This resulted in weak communicat ion and business network with the external stakeholders which prevented the company of taking advantage of the business opportunities arising in the market. JKL is an Australian trucking company based in Sydney selling small and medium sized trucks and their spare parts. The mission of the company was to enhance the value of the customers and investors by the performing highly in the trucking market. The vision of JKL is to develop the potential of its human resources to ensure high organisation position in the market. The value of the company are high performance, value maximisation of stakeholder groups like invertors, employees and customers. The company also sought to bring about diversity management and sustainability in its business operations (Rice 2015). JKL industries worked in three business areas namely, sale of small and medium sized trucks, offering trucks on rent and providing aftersales services to its customers like spare parts. The company had a tall organisational structure under the leadership of the managing director who supervised the operations manager and finance and administration manager. The HR Manager and the senior business partner and the branch managers reported to the operations manager. The finance and accounts manager oversaw the operations of the accounts manager who in turn supervised the accountants. The branch managers oversaw the operations of the three lines of business namely sales, services and rentals under the leadership of their respective managers. The sales managers, the service managers and the rental managers had individual reporting departments (Trax, Brunow and Suedekum 2015). The financial requirements of JKL industries is $ 13 million. The policies of the trucking company showed that it had well laid organisational policies like risk management policies and diversity management policies. However, in contrary to following these policies, the managers were not sensitive towards the sentiments of the employees. The internal policies of the company showed lack of communication between mangers and their subordinates. The reason for these lacks of network, communication and prevalence of conflicts among managers and employees could be attributed to the tall structure of the organisational which prevented smooth flow of information within the company (Barak 2016). The given situation mentions that JKL Industries have both Christian and non-Christian employees. The situation presents that the non-Christian are suffering from sense of lack of belongingness due to lack of accommodation for them on the eve of Christmas. The anti-discrimination policies and equal opportunity policies of the company seek to enforce equal opportunities for all employees. The policy open with the information that the company values diversity among employees and look forward to create an organisational sans discrimination. The second piece of policies which upholds diversity management in the company is that all the employees can apply for training irrespective of their cultural backgrounds, age or any other discriminating grounds (Kraidy 2017). The policies JKL follows regarding anti-discrimination with the organisations follows the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The act enforces equal opportunities to all the people living in Australia in the areas of profession, business and acquiring properties. The act overrules any state law that promotes discrimination in any form. Policies and processes prevailing in the organisations can contribute towards building of cultural diversity, ethical relationship among employees and strong inter-employee relationships. The anti-discrimination policies encourage managers to treat their subordinates equally and promote cultural diversity within the organisation. For example, the organisations can make facilities for non-Christian employees during Christmas. This would promote sense of importance among the non-Christian employees as well and enhance their relatedness to the organisations. This would create stronger bonds among the both the Christian and non-Christian employees which would ultimately lead to high organisational performances (Cahn and Abigail 2014). A change that be made within the policies, processes or communication to promote cultural diversity within JKL Industries is celebration of non-Christian festivals among the employees. This step would enable the non-Christian employees to relate to the organisation. The teams like the apex managers and the middle levels managers should be approached for approval regarding inclusion of non-Christian festivals within the organisation. The higher level managers can be communicated about the suggestion by holding meetings and sending them formal email (Goetsch and Davis 2014). The potential problem which can be anticipated from the senior managers is lack of approval to celebrate non-Christian festivals in the organisation. The case study mentions clearly that the senior managers lacked understanding about the cultural sentiments of the subordinates. One can infer in the light of this fact that the senior managers are most likely to oppose celebrating non-Christian festivals. The resistance of the team of senior managers regarding celebration of non-Christian festivals can be confronted by arranging a cultural training sessions for them. This strategy on one hand would promote cultural awareness among the managers and equality of treatment of employee irrespective of background within the organisation. The communication style to be adopted would be formal. The formal style of communication proved successful when the company adopted the decision to pull out of the truck rental market to concentrate on the truck sales market (Hon, Bloom and Crant 2014). Building of strong communication network with external stakeholders like customers and internal stakeholders like employees would enable positive personal and professional relationship between them. For example, if a strong communication network is developed within the organisation, it would develop higher levels of understanding between managers and their subordinates. Moreover, this approach communication would enforce stronger relationship among the departments which would translate into higher customer services by the company. This high level of customer services would generate high revenue that would ultimately enable the company to pay high returns on investments to investors. The company would be able to pay higher employees, thus ensuring their professional development. Moreover, it would enforce higher coordination and understanding among the employees, thus enforcing healthy personal relationship among them (Zahariadis and Exadaktylos 2016). However, the suggested networkin g channel should be formal like meetings and emails on official ids of employees which would enforce transparency as well. Managers join networks to deal with urgent situation like prevalence of lack of communication and conflict among the employees and their reporting managers. The networks are formal and the parties to the conflicts are trained to enhance their internal understanding. Trainings, meetings and mentoring development stronger relationship between managers and their subordinates in these situations. The networking built through training and mentoring pave ways better reducing conflict and enhance stronger coordination among employees and their managers, thus boosting overall organisational productivity (Karlsen 2015). Networking activity Person Schedule Description/Rationale of networking activity Accompanying seniors on client visits Sam and Alex 1 month This would enable developing understanding how to approach clients, deal with them, know their needs, how to adapt the companys products to their needs and ultimately convert them into customers Product training Sam 3 weeks Development of sound knowledge on the products Going on sales calls under senior supervision Sam and Alex 1 month Development of their own skills in customer relationship building and acquisition. Visiting existing clients for service and new business generation Alex 2 months Develop understanding of repeat business, gaining more in depth knowledge of client requirements, gaining references from clients etc. The role play of the HR business partners would be improving the organisational culture within JKL Industry. The case study mentions that the company is pulling out of the rental market to strengthen its position in the truck sales market. The business opportunity necessitates the company to acquire and retain talent to align them with the business strategies. The employees on the contrary suffer from insecurity which results in high employee turnover. The role of the HR manager in this case would be training the employees according to the new business requirements instead of making them feel insecure and ultimately leading to their resignation (Zahariadis and Exadaktylos 2016). The strategic and operational plans of JKL Industries show that the goals of the company is to benefit its stakeholders like customers and investors. The objective of JKL Industries is to developing and enhance the potential of its employees to enhance the satisfaction of customers and ROI of investors. The main stakeholders of the company can be divided into two groups, external and internal stakeholders. The internal stakeholders consists of employees, middle level managers and apex management. The case study mentions the external stakeholders of the JKL Industries are the investors, customers, suppliers and the government. The customers of JKL can be divided into three groups based on its three business lines. The customers of the sales division are the companies using medium and small sized trucks like the logistics companies. The rental customers are once again commercial organisations which hire trucks to serve their business needs (Hon, Bloom and Crant 2014). The servicing customers of JKL are the business organisations which buy spare parts and obtain servicing from them. This group also includes business organisations using trucks of other companies as well (Goetsch and Davis 2014). The apex management and the HR manager of the JKL Industry should plan a peer guidance session for the employees to deal with their mounting insecurity. The following is the plan for role play for peer management guidance session: Activity 1: The managers and the subordinates should introduce themselves to each other. Activity 2: They should introduce each other to their cultures, traditions and perceptions. Activity 3: The HR department should hold training session about culture and other aspects. The training sessions should include brief about the major cultures and religions in the world. Action/Activity Time frame Person/s responsible Description of the strategy/tactic/rationale for action plan: Resources, if required Managers meeting with employees of their own department 1 day Departmental heads The managers would get to know about the attributes of their team members like their experiences, knowledge, cultural backgrounds and so on. Training rooms Managers meet each other 2 days Apex management Development of interdepartmental coordination. Meeting rooms Inter-departmental employee meetings 3 days Departmental heads Enhanced peer relationship Meeting rooms The HR manager should interact with each employee to know about the perceptions, capabilities and cultural background. He must advocate mutual respect among employees irrespective of designations and departments. He must plan social event between employees which would allow the employees of different culture interact and develop better cultural understanding among themselves. These steps would help in reducing manager and employee conflicts and create a calmer environment among employees in the organisation. The managers should be encouraged to develop a more receptive and cooperative attitude towards employees (Kraidy 2017). The HR manager at JKL Industry should adjust his personal style of communication to meet the emotional and technical needs of the employees. He should be cooperative and understanding to the needs of the employees. As far the technical aspects of communication are concerned, the HR manager at JKL should adjust his communication style to the needs of the individual employees. For example, for employees who are not very tech-friendly, the HR manager should opt for face-to-face meetings to deal with their insecurities (Zahariadis and Exadaktylos 2016). The HR manager should ensure that the JKL follows the relevant legislations like Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Commonwealth). The next procedure which he can adopt to reduce and manage organisational conflict is that he should train the employees and enhance their skills. This would enhance their competencies that would enable them to perform highly, thus helping their managers to achieve high level department performances. The third procedure which the HR managers should adopt to minimise employee conflict is enhanced interaction and teamwork among employees (legislation.gov.au 2018). The HR manager should adopt the strategy of holding meetings with the managers and the employees to recognise the root causes of the conflicts between them. Then they must collaborate with each other to resolve or at least minimise the conflicts. The HR manager should collaborate with all the managers and their subordinates to develop an action plan to resolve issues like lack of cultural intelligence among the different teams as mentioned above. They should form a list of activities along with the time within they have to be achieved along with the person responsible and the description of tasks as shown in the appendix shown above (Hon, Bloom and Crant 2014). The role play of the HR manager at JKL should continue for a week. The place of the role play would be the training or any external venue arranged to enforce more social interaction between employees across departments (Zahariadis and Exadaktylos 2016). References: Barak, M.E.M., 2016.Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications. Cahn, D.D. and Abigail, R.A., 2014.Managing conflict through communication. Pearson. Cascio, W., 2018.Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education. Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014.Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.. Hon, A.H., Bloom, M. and Crant, J.M., 2014. 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