Westpac is an Australian Bank providing financial services to its customers. It is founded in 1817 and headquartered in Sydney. It is first and oldest bank of Australia serving around 14 million customers and 40,000 employees working for it. Employees working in Westpac are from different cultures, countries, regions, and religions who speak different languages, share different beliefs and values. This report discuss about cultural and linguistic diversity at Westpac. Cultural and Linguistic Diverse (CALD) workplace is the place where people from different countries speaking different languages, having different backgrounds and regions work together (Australian Government, 2015). Due to this, several conflicts arise at workplace of Westpac due to cultural and linguistic diversity. I am working as a management consultant, provided with the task of developing recommendations for the Board of Directors related to the conflict management and effective communication for managing conflicts at the Westpac’s workplace and create a more harmonious workplace for the employees.
Employees at Westpac are from different countries, backgrounds, and regions having different opinions, attitudes, needs, interests, thought processes, and finding it difficult to adjust with one another. When employees start perceiving thing in different ways, it leads to conflict arising. Then it becomes difficult for any organization to survive if its employees start indulging in continuous fights and conflicts (MSG, 2019). Avoidance of conflicts at workplace helps in developing healthy and competitive environment. For any organization, its employees are its assets and thus they must feel motivated in order to perform well. Below are the some methods suggested for managing conflicts at Westpac:
Human Resource team of Westpac has the responsibility of developing and creating policies and procedures for managing conflicts at workplace. Some of the major causes of conflicts at workplace includes miscommunication, relationship issues, leadership style, and work expectations. The main reason behind conflicts is found as miscommunication or poor communication. Therefore, HR of Westpac should start employee communication on conflicts. HR department of Westpac receives conflict-resolution training and should provide this training to its managers and supervisors in order to make them capable of handling conflicts between employees and their teams. HR professional should participate in settling of conflicts if managers and supervisors failed in doing so (Shen et al., 2009). In many cases of conflicts, it has been observed that HR fails to learn about workplace conflicts until issues have escalated. Therefore, HR of the company should be more aware about workplace conflicts before turning of them into larger problems.
As mentioned above that communication plays an important role in conflict management, thus it an important factor for HR to develop skills in employees to communicate effectively with each other. Verbal communication between people develops meanings and relationships with each other. In multicultural organizations like Westpac, the way employees communicate with each other set the learning culture foundation. The major communication barriers which affect the CALD people are limited knowledge of language, different educational, social, and linguistic backgrounds, and stress (Amani, 2012). Therefore, employees of Westpac should be taught about effective communication ways while communicating with one another in the organization. Four simple steps need to be followed by employees to achieve effective communication, these are keep an open mind; should know about people’s cultural background; practice active listening; and mind their non-verbal communication. The way in which people comprehend, communicate, and make decisions play important role in different types of cross-cultural backgrounds. Organization should place emphasize on acceptance and open mindedness concepts. An organization’ success and harmonious workplace environment are assured through understanding and accepting the differences among multicultural teams and employees (Shen et al., 2009). Therefore, employees should be provided with diversity training to create organizational awareness which makes its employees to learn to be mindful against culture and more adaptable while communicating with different background people.
Another, thing that Westpac should know about the need of employees of feeling valued instead of just accepted. Attentive listening of concerns and viewpoints of employees make them feel valued and developing confidence in them. Attentive or active listening suggests paying attention to both verbal and nonverbal gestures. Before talking to CALD people, one should keep in mind about their own limits of knowledge and employees should avoid stereotypes and assumptions (Polaron, 2015). One should seek knowledge about cultural practices from reliable and multiple sources such as books, colleagues, and community group.
Although it is the responsibility of supervisors and managers to resolve the conflicts of workplace but employees are the first one who can take steps for settling differences. Organizations need more employees who are able to handle day-to-day issues on their own, identify problems, think and analyse and find solution for problems, and take steps to implement those steps. This requires managers to coach the employees about resolving conflicts. Initially it might be time consuming for mangers but this can help in long run where conflict management is considered as everyone’s obligation (Ayoko & Konard, 2012). Below are some guidelines for managers and supervisors to teach employees about conflict resolution:
Some HR professionals and managers are turning towards conflict management training in order to prevent the effects of conflict. This kind of training can be provided in many forms such as small-group facilitations, one-day workshops, and one-on-one sessions. It is the responsibility of HR professionals to select a right approach depending upon the type of workplace conflict (Australian Government, 2018). This kind of training helps employees in controlling their passive-aggressive behaviour who are continuously involve in conflicts. Even if training is not enough for some extreme angry employees, then employers are required to refer workplace violence prevention program to ensure security of other employees (Ayoko & Konard, 2012).
It is well know that prevention is better than cure. Therefore, efforts are made to make an environment where conflicts occur less likely and this kind of culture is created through employee relations (Training Industry, 2015). This defines developing strong relationship between employees and managers which is based on trust, fairness, and mutual respect. Development of such kind of environment takes time, money, and effort but a good employee relations climate ensures loyalty, motivation, and high performance among employees.
Minimizing Conflict Framework
Various tools are used to promote employee engagement and to minimize conflict. Based on the above discussion, some recommendations are listed below for Westpac to minimize conflicts:
Written Policies, Rules and Agreements: Westpac should prepare its written handbook, agreements, contracts, and HR policies for guiding them about the organizations’ expectations in resolving workplace conflicts. This kind of agreement also helps in understanding about employment relationship.
Therefore, it can be concluded from the above discussion that, there are not specific tools for conflict management related to cultural and linguistic diversity, but it is most important issue as it might lead to intolerance and emotionally attached perceptions. This report includes recommendations for Board of Directors of Westpac in order to prevent and eliminate conflict issues occur at its workplace. Cultural management is important for Westpac because an organization needs employees who are potentially capable of performing tasks and increase revenue of the business. Multicultural workforce provides valuable internal resource to the organization which can be utilized to a competitive advantage.
References
Amani, E., 2012. Cross Culture Conflict Resolution. [Online] Available at: https://hr.fullerton.edu/documents/professionaldevelopment/ubi/workshopmaterials/2012_2013/UBI-Cross%20Cultural%20Conflict%20Resolution-Fall%202012.pdf.
Australian Government, 2015. Working with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) adolescents. [Online] Available at: https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/working-culturally-and-linguistically-diverse-cald-adolescents.
Australian Government, 2018. Employ people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds. [Online] Available at: https://www.business.gov.au/people/hiring/employ-people-from-culturally-and-linguistically-diverse-backgrounds.
Ayoko, O.B. & Konard, A.M., 2012. Leaders’ Transformational, conflict, and Emotion Management Behaviors in Culturally Diverse Workgroups. Equality,Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 31(8), pp.694-724.
MSG, 2019. Conflict Management at Workplace. [Online] Available at: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/conflict-management-at-workplace.htm.
Polaron, 2015. A Guide to better Communication with CALD communities. [Online] Available at: https://polaron.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/POLARON-Language-Services_Guide-to-better-communication-with-CALD-communities-1.pdf.
Shen, J., Chanda, A., D’netto, B. & Monga, M., 2009. Managing Diversity Through Human Resource Management: An International Perspective and Conceptual Framework. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(2), pp.235-51.
Training Industry, 2015. Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Communication within the Workplace. [Online] Available at: https://trainingindustry.com/blog/performance-management/strategies-for-effective-cross-cultural-communication-within-the-workplace/
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