Conflict Management at Westpac: Role of HR and Employees

This report discusses about conflict management at Westpac workplace. Role of human resources, employees’ role, and importance of conflict management training are discussed.

Running Head: CALD 0
Business Communication for Managers
Student Details
3/31/2019

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Executive Summary
Cultural and Linguistic Diverse (CALD) people at workplace are important for the growth of
the company as diversity is seen as an opportunity for an organization now days. But
diversity also causes conflicts at workplace sometimes. Westpac is one of the biggest banks
of Australia. This report discusses about conflict management at Westpac workplace. In this
report, role of human resources, employees’ role, and importance of conflict management
training are discussed. Human resource department of Westpac manage workplace conflicts
through effective communication and paying attention to the needs of employees by listening
to their requirements. Employees are provided with the conflict management training by their
managers so that they are able to resolve conflicts by their own.

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Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Conflict Management at Westpac..............................................................................................3
Role of Human Resources......................................................................................................4
Role of Employees.................................................................................................................5
Conflict Management Training..............................................................................................6
Develop Strong Employee Relations.....................................................................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Minimizing Conflict Framework...........................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
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.
Conflict Management at Westpac
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:

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Role of Human Resources
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

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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.
Role of Employees
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

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are some guidelines for managers and supervisors to teach employees about conflict
resolution:
 Set guidelines for employees in case they face conflicts;
 Employees should be told about to try resolving conflicts before seeking help from
managers;
 Provide training to the employees on conflict resolution;
 There is need of creating a workplace where conflict management is seen as core job
competency instead of role of employees in the organization (MSG, 2019);
 Managers should make sure that they are not expecting solution of every conflict form
the employees on their own.
Conflict Management Training
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).
Develop Strong Employee Relations
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

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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.
Recommendations
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.
1. Effective Management: A strong leadership team ensures better and quick
management of conflict. Therefore, appointed leaders should poses appropriate
leadership skills that have the ability of recognising poor behaviour from employees.
2. Careful Hiring: Westpac should be more careful about its hiring processes as it is the
best and key strategy of avoiding employee relations problems. Hiring process of
organization should have decent interviewing abilities and selection processes and
pre-employment screening consisting of background investigation.
3. Training for Managers: Along with employees, managers should also provide
training regularly to make them capable for identifying issues and seek advice from
experts before taking any action.

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4. Performance Management and Feedback: Review of performance occurs once a
year. During this time mangers provide feedback to the employees about their
performance. It has been noted that frank and constructive communication from
managers develops stronger workgroups and strengthen individual performers.
Therefore, honest feedback should be provided to the employees by their managers in
order to avoid misunderstandings, dissatisfaction, and conflict.
5. Fair Termination Processes: It is common issue in every organization so in Westpac
too that employees often complaint about not receiving fair treatment from their
seniors.
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.

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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.

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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/.