Managing Cultural Diversity: Addressing Complaints and Facilitating Team Communication

Question 1:

An employee has complained to you that some members of your team have not made any effort to accommodate non-Christians in this year’s Christmas celebrations. The employee feels excluded and disappointed that an opportunity to bring the team together has instead divided the team along religious lines.

How would you address the employee’s complaint?

In your written response to the above question:

Describe at least two pieces of JKL Industries’ policy or procedure that conflict with the team’s behaviour towards the employee.

Identify the relevance of one piece of relevant legislation.

Describe how policies and processes can help to promote cultural diversity, ethical values and relationship-building.

Describe any changes or additions you would make to JKL Industries’ policies, processes or communications to further promote cultural diversity and ethical values.

Describe how you would approach the team and any suggestion you would make to resolve the issue fairly and consistent with organisational policy.

Question 2:

To respond to the issue described in question one, you have decided to meet with the team to directly address the behaviour.

How would you prepare for and approach this meeting?

In your written response to the above question:

Describe what potential problems you anticipate from the team.

Describe how you would confront the team with their unacceptable behaviour, while maintaining trust and avoiding the impression of taking sides.

Describe your standard or default communication style. What communication style would you consider adopting for this scenario?

Describe a previous situation in which you adapted your communication style to meet the needs of others in the workplace or achieve a work goal.

Question 3:

As a manager new to the Brisbane area, you feel that you need to develop contacts with people internal to the organisation, such as managers, and external people, such as suppliers, business networks, managers’ networks and mentors.

How would you approach networking to achieve goals?

In your written response to the above question:

Describe how networking with internal and external people could help you build positive relationships to achieve organisational and professional goals. What networking or networks would you suggest?

Describe a situation in which you joined a network to achieve an organisational or professional development goal. Describe the network. How did you build stronger relationships within the network? What was the result of the networking for you and your organisation?

Addressing Complaints and Promoting Cultural Sensitivity

How would you address the employee’s complaint?

The complaint was that in the Christmas Party some non-Christians were excluded from the celebration. This was the excellent opportunity for the team to bring them together as a team but the employees have brought religious division instead of this. Therefore, the complain has to be solved as soon as possible to regain their profitability in business.

The vision of the company was to provide value for the customers, investors and employees while in this case the value of some employees has not provided. The company’s policies regarding the diversity management is to give a cultural sensitivity among the employees and every employee should be considered as only the employee rather representative of any religion or cast. However, in this case, the employees were discriminating between Christian and non-Christian members to attend the party. According to Yoder, (2014), Australia is a multicultural country and the people of this continent have the right to live according to their own culture. Therefore, a cultural diversity is followed in every organisation within it while the JKL Industries has been deviating this rule. The government has implemented a policy called Multicultural Access and Equity Policy to ensure the diversity of culture in every sector considering the leadership, capability, performance, responsiveness, engagement and openness (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). Therefore, the Manager of this branch has to implement some strict rules and regulations as well as have to revise older policies to reduce this issue. The employees should take part in the interaction and express their views on it to solve it mutually. It will increase the awareness of their ethical values to resolve the problem sooner within the team.

In order to solve the problem mentioned in the first question, the Manager of Brisbane should arrange a meeting with the team members that is suffering from the cultural differences among the members. According to Laschinger et al. (2014), a leader should take the initiative to solve the problems in the team regarding any professional issue. It is the responsibility of managers to manage their team members with powerful leadership management skills. Leaders are required to know and use the inter communication skills, which helps them to interact with the team members to understand their views (Mitchell, 2013). In this case, therefore, the manager of Brisbane branch has to implement their communication skill to improve their internal relationship. The manager should arrange a meeting in which the communication should be very personal way. Personal way means that the communication should be very softly. The talking process always affects the relationship and trust making with someone. Therefore, manager should not use any forked language to interact with thee employees. It will create a bonding with the employees that enable them to feel free to share their views directly without any hesitation.

In this case, the manager has faced the problem of communicating with the employees who has faced the issue of cultural division in attending the party. Manager has to identify first the mistakes that were conducted in last time when they have discussed the organisational policies and regulations (Barak, 2013). The manager should revise the policies regarding the behaviour to provide all the employees same regulations. This meeting will hold based on a particular communication style that should be adopted by the manager in this scenario. Therefore, if the manager can implement a very frank environment in the workplace that the employees can share their own views with the authority of JKL Industries, then the problem will be solved.