Origin Energy’s Sustainable Approach

Question:

Discuss about the Management of Multiculturalism for Origin Energy.

Origin Energy is a leading energy retailer operating in Australian market to meet the energy requirements of the country. They took sustainable approach for the energy production not only addressing the needs of the present, but also the future. However, the company is facing issues with their in their multicultural workplace that is leading to high turnover, low productivity and low morale among the employees. The company’s current chairman Giordon Cairns identifies the need of a more diverse workforce. However, he also talks about the issues that are faced by the company regarding the multicultural diversity present in the company as well as other ASX listed companies operating in Australia. The primary issue identified is the gender inequality present within the organization. Though both male and female performs equal duty for the company and sometimes delivers more work than the male employees, they are still largely stereotyped in this modern workplace. The salary provided to the women tends to be lesser than the male employee of the organization. It is important for the organization to attain equality in the diversified work culture to eliminate the moral and ethical issues faced by the organization.

PWC or Price Water Coopers is Australia top professional service firm that helps other organizations to increase their performance.  They provide advisory and tax services to the more than 155 countries and employs more than 223,000 people in their branches around the world.

ANZ or Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited is the fourth largest bank in operating in Australia.  This is an international bank operating largely in the Asia Pacific market working with a culturally diversified workforce.

Both the organizations work with a diversified workforce that is representing a culturally and emotionally diversity. The diversified workforce is embraced by both the companies as it helps in making good decisions. The usefulness of diversified workforce is that the team members working together come up with a wide range of ideas as individual think differently from one another and utilizes various approaches for solving a particular problem. It also helps the multinational companies to internationalize the firm (Moosmüller 2016).

Australia and New Zealand bank uses reconciliation Action plan that helps them outlining the organization’s commitment to social and economic participation in the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian. The diversity council helps them to ensure the deliverance of the commitments to their stakeholders (Anz.com. 2017).

ANZ’s Multicultural Workforce

PWC on the other hand is enjoying the power of differences by making their environment an inclusive one. The diversified cultural workforce enables them to satisfy their wide range of customers from different parts of the world. It is the responsibility of ever employee at PWC to ensure the sustainability of the inclusive work environment so they can release everyone’s potential to its optimum level.  It is because; each employee in PWC has a distinct opinion. More number of opinion increases the chances of success for the company as they can choose between a wide ranges of thoughts (PwC. 2017).

Cultural intelligence comes along with the diversity. It is the capability of relating and working across cultures. The concept was first proposed by Christopher Earley and Soon Ang (Groves, Feyerherm and Gu 2015). It is the cross cultural competence. The companies working with a diversified working force requires to increase the level of cultural intelligence among their employees to increase the competence which in turn will increase the organizational performance. Moreover, it helps in reducing the conflict between the team members in the multinational companies who belongs form different background. It will also increase the communication between the culturally diversified team members that is a common lag the multinational organizations face. Eliminating the obstacles by increasing the cultural intelligences will help the international organizations similar to the PWC and ANZ (Crowne 2013).

Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee (2013) described emotional intelligence on the other hand refers to the capability of the individual to control their emotion in the workplace. Level of emotional intelligence is calculated by the understanding one has about their own emotions and feelings. More they understand their own behavior, emotion and felling, the more they gain control over their behavior and attitude in the workplace. For example, the employees working in an airlines industry holds the highest level of emotional intelligence as they has to understand their emotions and control them within. They are expected to represent a humble attitude towards their clients and serve with a smile in their faces that is not always the actual representation of their emotions. Similar to the airline companies, PWC and ANZ have managed to increase their employees’ emotional intelligence for gaining success better performance (Druskat, Mount and Sala 2013). High level of emotional intelligence also helps the individual understand the emotions situation of the team members and can reform their behavior accordingly to avoid conflict within the team. Leaders with more high level of emotional intelligence tend to be successful in managing a diversified cultural team which is the case of PWC and ANZ. They hire the leaders with high level of emotional intelligence using different tools for personality.

PWC’s Cultural Diversity

Hence, the cultural diversity, emotional diversity and cultural intelligence have their own benefits in a multinational industry for controlling the workforce and increase the morale among the employees which will in turn increase the productivity of the organization.

This section of the report presents the analysis of the issues that was prevalent in ANZ and the PWC and caused the high turnover or multicultural tensions at certain point if time. The multicultural issues in any organization are capable of creating conflicts within the workplace which can result into high turnover and low productivity. The reference of the management of the multicultural issue can be used for Origin Energy in order to avoid the low productivity and high turnover. The emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence and the diversity are the three aspects of the management of the multicultural issue prevalent in the ANZ and PWC. It is the duty and the responsibilities of the management implement strategies and handle such issues with proper intelligence and skills.

The emotional intelligence refers to the co existence of the personalities, strengths and emotions of the person that is capable of influencing the workflow (Ciarrochi and Mayer 2013). Multicultural competence and the emotional intelligence are interlinked and interdependent. It is obvious that any national organization comprises employees from various cultures and the management of them is one of the important factors in the multiculturalism. However, the emotional intelligence is the process of suppressing he actual emotion underneath the display of the fake emotion through the emotional labor in order to maintain good and strong relationship with the other employees (Karimi et al. 2014). The management as well as the employees of the organization must understand the conception of the emotional intelligence to avoid any multicultural issues in the workplace. The findings from the ANZ and PWC indicate resolve of the internal conflicts among the employees regarding the different cultural practices and beliefs within the organization.

The next attribute of multiculturalism is the cultural intelligence which is referred as the strategy for the avoidance of the multicultural issues in the workplace (Ng et al. 2012). The cultural intelligence is important for the diversity management within the workplace. There are several multicultural issues present in the workplace of both ANZ and PWC. The implemented strategies for the avoidance of the multicultural conflicts within the workplace which is capable of the ensuring the low productivity and the high turnover of the employees include the cultural intelligence as evident from the presentation of the same by PWC. The management of the cultural diversity is therefore important in terms of the respecting the cultural values, practice and beliefs of the other employees. It is proved and evident from the implementation of the cultural intelligence in the stated two organization that valuing the cultural beliefs of the staffs not only reduces the chance of low productivity and high turnover, but also ensure a rich organizational culture and strengthen the bonding between the organization and employees (Olsen and Martins 2012).

Benefits of a Diversified Workforce

The diversity denotes the management of the diverse issues within the workplace. The diversity includes race, gender, culture, language and others. For both the organization, ANZ and PWC the gender diversity has been focused. The gender diversity refers to the management of the gender in terms of providing equal importance and facilities within the workplace. The gender diversity is one of the major reasons for the high turnover of an organization. It is found that the ANZ emphasizes on the gender diversity and has implemented effective strategies for ensuring the prevention of the high turnover (Haile 2012). The diversity management of ANZ focuses on the elimination of discrimination on the ground of the gender. The effectiveness of the strategies regarding the gender diversity has shown remarkable reduction rate inters of employee turnover.

The implementation of the multicultural management strategies for avoidance of the low productivity and high turnover has not only served their purpose but also has increased sense of moral within the employees. The implications for the multicultural issues are based on the effectiveness of the presentation of the emotional and cultural intelligence of the staffs in the ANZ and PWC. The managerial implication suggests that the managers of Origin Energy must focus and emphasis on the diversity management within the workplace in terms of handling of the multiculturalism. The management of the organization must ensure that there is strong morale among the employees. In addition, the management also needs to be sure about reflection of the emotional as well as the cultural intelligence of the staffs. The managers must follow the instances of the two discussed organizations for the understanding of the consequences of the multicultural issues as well as for the planning of the effective diversity management strategies for the same. It is found that gender and issue within Origin Energy is the most predominant among all the multicultural issues. Therefore, it is recommended to the management of the firm that it must implement some rules and regulation concerning about the gender equality as a part of the diversity management. On the other hand, the proper understanding of the cultural and emotional intelligence by the employees as well as the employers will ensure the elimination of the internal conflicts among the employees. In addition, the management also focuses on the ethical and legal consideration regarding the diversity management of the multicultural issues (Bratton and Gold 2012).

Conclusion

The findings from PWC and ANZ  can conclude that the emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence and diversity in a multinational organization have different degree of benefit in managing the workforce and increase the morale of the employees and the productivity of the companies. It will help the managers better understand the employees and manage each employee accordingly which will reduce the turnover of the company. The analysis shows that the implementation of these on Origin Energy will help the organization better handle the situation in the team-based projects with global partners from various countries.

Reference:

Anz.com. 2017. Cultural diversity | ANZ. [online] Available at: https://www.anz.com/about-us/corporate-sustainability/employees/diversity-inclusion/cultural-diversity/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].

Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2012. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Crowne, K.A., 2013. Cultural exposure, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence: An exploratory study. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 13(1), pp.5-22.

Ciarrochi, J. and Mayer, J.D., 2013. Applying emotional intelligence: A practitioner’s guide. Psychology Press.

Druskat, V.U., Mount, G. and Sala, F., 2013. Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: Current research evidence with individuals and groups. Psychology Press.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R.E. and McKee, A., 2013. Primal leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Press.

Groves, K.S., Feyerherm, A. and Gu, M., 2015. Examining cultural intelligence and cross-cultural negotiation effectiveness. Journal of Management Education, 39(2), pp.209-243.

Haile, G.A., 2012. Unhappy working with men? Workplace gender diversity and job-related well-being in Britain. Labour Economics, 19(3), pp.329-350.

Karimi, L., Leggat, S.G., Donohue, L., Farrell, G. and Couper, G.E., 2014. Emotional rescue: The role of emotional intelligence and emotional labour on well?being and job?stress among community nurses. Journal of advanced nursing, 70(1), pp.176-186.

Moosmüller, A., 2016. Cultural diversity in multinational corporations. In Re-thinking Diversity (pp. 121-132). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

Ng, K.Y., Van Dyne, L., Ang, S. and Ryan, A.M., 2012. Cultural intelligence: A review, reflections, and recommendations for future research. Conducting multinational research: Applying organizational psychology in the workplace, pp.29-58.

Olsen, J.E. and Martins, L.L., 2012. Understanding organizational diversity management programs: A theoretical framework and directions for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(8), pp.1168-1187.

PwC. 2017. Diversity and inclusion at PwC. [online] Available at: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/diversity.html [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].