Essay: Diversity Policies Of Qantas Airways - An Overview.

You are to research and produce a written report, highlighting diversity of an Australian award winning organisation from AHRI website.  You are to select one of the companies from the https://www.ahri.com.au/awards/ahri-awards/awards-finalist/workplace-diversity-finalist page.

Once an organisation is selected, search for the organisation’s Diversity Policy.

In your report, include the following guidelines:

1.  Introduction of the research report  

• The purpose of the research report
• Introduction of the organisation
• Reasons why you have chosen this particular company

2.  Discuss the diversity within your chosen organisation

• Explain the diversity policies of the chosen organisation
• What are the chosen organisation's diversity strengths
• Implementation of the policies to the specific work context and that they are understood by all parties
• Diversity of staff, customers, suppliers, business partners, community or as relevant to the organisation

3.  Discuss specific issues which apply to the chosen organisation.

• Allegations of harassment and how the chosen organisation address complaints according to established organisational procedures
• What sort training needs established to address issues of difference (conflict) in the team

4.  Discuss the benefits of productive diversity of the chosen organisation

• How do the chosen organisation promote workforce diversity
• Case study of diversity within the chosen organisation - person or program (present a Case Study of the Diversity of at least one person or a community program within the company)

Diversity Policies of Qantas Airways

The following assignment is about discussing the various diversity policies and making a thorough overview about the diversity aspects of the selected organization. The selected organization for this assignment is Qantas Airways, which is the largest and most popular airline company in Australia. The services of this airlines stretches from domestic to the international and connecting important cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Auckland, Christchurch, London, New York, Madrid, California, Mumbai, New Delhi and many others. As this airlines company operates in many countries to link the big cities, it covers a huge area of land and comes across various types of people. So, diversity is an inseparable part of this organization. That is why this organization has been chosen.

As Qantas Airlines is the largest and the most popular airlines organization in the country, their service area is very widespread (Qantas.com 2017). People from different countries and continents use their services. This is why they have to manage this diversity at a greater scale. In order to cope up with this, Qantas has taken up several diversity policies (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016).

• They treat people of different countries with dignity and respect.
• They always develop good inclusive leaders who give value having a good understanding of diversity and inclusiveness (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016).
• They communicate their progress towards diversity and inclusion across the group and external regions as well.
• They follow the Reconciliation Action Plan2015-2018 as well.
• They challenge and mitigate biasness among the different classes of people.
• Measurable objectives that support the strategy have been developed.

Some serious steps have been taken to manage the diversity in the organization and they are building up opportunities for the lagged people, improving the scenarios to give new hopes in the minds of the disabled people, they also participate in the monitoring of these classes, they have made partnerships with other business organizations so that they can utilize the senior female talents and also motivating the employees (L?z?roiu 2015). They also convey various programs that encourage a wide range of cultures, languages, backgrounds and many different things. These strengths will help the organization to look into the matters of diversity with strict actions and punish the guilty if any one of the disabled person has been victimized.  These have been serious steps to promote the diversity in the organization and make space for all sorts of people to work in. This provides a safe working atmosphere for all (Murrell 2012).

The implementation of the policies that were taken up by the Qantas airways has been so much successful and they have been implemented in a fantastic way by the administrative team of the organization. Actually, this organization had gone through a great loss at the end of the 2014-15 financial year and their target was to turn around in a tremendous manner (Bodie 2013). As their customers were primarily from different countries, they had planned that they had to make a Transformation Plan. They gave great respect to all the passengers from other countries and introduced the sense of diversity among them. They showed films of different countries in their airbuses, they played music of different parts of the world and this catered to the improvement of their brand image through managing cultural diversity (Banks 2015). They also proved to be an extremely safe working environment and they hired people of different countries with different cultures (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016). This helped to gain the trust of the customers and they became aware that Qantas could be a safe service provider for them.

Managing Diversity at Qantas Airways

The diversity in the organization has not only included the customers who use the service of Qantas Airways, but it includes the staff members, the brand media partners and the business partners as well. They have managed to deal with various multinational organizations across the countries that have helped them to establish a global platform. They have collaborated with organizations like Make-A-Wish Foundation, UNICEF, e-Motion 21, Mardi grass and many others (Unicef.org 2017. Another great initiative that they have undertaken is to engage with customers in charitable giving through the Qantas/UNICEF Change for Good program and Jetstar’s StarKids initiative (Jetstar.com 2017). Their brand reputation has gone up and gained them a perfect position in the aviation industry to compete with its rivals and gaining a huge competitive advantage (Wagner and Hollenbeck 2014). They have also supported the marriage equality in Australia by collaborating with an organization with Mardi grass (Robinson 2013).

The issues of harassment and non-ethical works have been a regular part of the Qantas airways. It is an obvious fact in almost every industry. Qantas has taken proper steps to deal with these processes. They have always fought against major risks of corruption with the help of their anti-corruption framework. They have set up an executive-led group that is constituted by several people coming from cross-cultural ethnicities (Shiraev and Levy 2016). They have made many policies and strategies for the safety of their customers. They have also set up an ethics based network that has helped the customers to be compliant against the threats posed by such people. They have established initial corruption control assurance program so that their customers can feel safety. They have also consulted with their key stakeholders and revised important documents like the code of conduct and ethics. They have also set up anti-harassment cells against the people who try to make the environment a harmful one.

The incidents of conflicts between the employees can take place at anytime. They have sorted some ways as well by which they will be able to deal with these things. They have engaged all their employees in the Transformation program and this has been helpful to build an integrated team performance by them (Belbin 2012).  Their organizational structure has comprised of the different social milieu that include women with almost 40% positions. More than 50% women have been female graduates who are working in the organization and there is a good percentage of women working in the top positions of the company. Their leadership and talent development programs have catered to develop a solid team work based workforce (Belbin 2012). This has reduced the amount of conflict between the employees.

4. Benefits Productive diversity in Qantas

Impact of Diversity Policies on Qantas Airways

The workforce of Qantas airways promotes diversity in great ways. They have celebrated the essence of diversity in great many ways (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016). They have given opportunities to both men and women in equal ways. They have encouraged gender quality among their staffs and the cross-cultural management they have introduced has worked miracles for them to promote diversity (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016).

In one case, in the year 2013, it has been found that one Muslim employee occupied the post of technical engineer and he used to keep long beards as it was the religious custom of Islam. It was against the rules and regulations of the company. He had been served notices for quitting that habit. He did not do so as it would hurt his religious beliefs. Thus he would not quit that habit and this led to him being ignored by the administration and getting the facilities that all the employees used to get. He was abused and insulted several times. This event hurt him as his salary was not incremented. Then he resigned from his position and this left a bad impression about the company. After this event, they used to promote the diversity (Devarakonda and Powlay 2016).

Conclusion

In the concluding part, it can be said that the entire assignment talks about the diversity issues in Qantas airways. They had gone through losses in the previous years. They introduced several plans and policies of promoting diversity within the organization that led to the welfare and good amount of profit by them. It can be recommended that they should continue in this manner that would enhance their social responsibilities and also increase their profits. All types of racism relating to skin color, religion should be abandoned so that they can become the leading airways in the world.  

References

Banks, J.A., 2015. Cultural diversity and education. Routledge.

Belbin, R.M., 2012. Team roles at work. Routledge.

Bodie, Z., 2013. Investments. McGraw-Hill.

Devarakonda, C. and Powlay, L., 2016. DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION. A Guide to Early Years and Primary Teaching, p.185.

Jetstar.com. (2017). Jetstar Asia - Singapore | Jetstar. [online] Available at: https://www.jetstar.com/sg/en/home [Accessed 5 Jun. 2017].

L?z?roiu, G., 2015. Employee Motivation and Job Performance. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, (14), pp.97-102.

Murrell, K., 2012. Ergonomics: Man in his working environment. Springer Science & Business Media.

Qantas.com. (2017). Fly with one of the world’s most experienced airlines | Qantas IN. [online] Available at: https://www.qantas.com/in/en.html [Accessed 5 Jun. 2017].

Robinson, R.K., 2013. Marriage Equality and Postracialism. UCLA L. Rev., 61, p.1010.

Shiraev, E.B. and Levy, D.A., 2016. Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and contemporary applications. Taylor & Francis.

Unicef.org. (2017). UNICEF Home. [online] Available at: https://www.unicef.org/ [Accessed 5 Jun. 2017].

Wagner III, J.A. and Hollenbeck, J.R., 2014. Organizational behavior: Securing competitive advantage. Routledge.