People, Culture and Contemporary Leadership

This document discusses the initiatives taken by Wesfarmers, a retail brand in Australia, to promote performance, culture, and engagement in the workplace. It explores the company's focus on career development, diversity, stakeholder engagement, and provides recommendations for improvement.

Running head: CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP
People, Culture and Contemporary Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Performance-related initiatives........................................................................................................3
Culture-related initiatives................................................................................................................3
Engagement-related initiatives........................................................................................................4
Recommendations............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Reference List..................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
The company chosen is the famous retail brands in Australia called Wesfarmers. They
have one of the most well-developed work cultures. They make sure that they are taking all the
possible initiatives in order to promote the overall welfare of both their customers and their
employees as well. This is a very important aspect of modern day organizations. This is because
the nerve takes any of their responsibilities lightly. They always try to take and use the method of
job training so that the employees get the opportunity of learning along with carrying on with
their job.
Performance-related initiatives
Wesfarmers has started taking many innovative initiatives that will be helping them to
develop as one of the most important and well known companies in the industry. They are
recognized as the largest employers who provide employment to approximately 217000
employees. They are successful in providing employment to one in every 60 working people in
Australia. The greatest initiative that has been used by the company is giving an opportunity to
their people to develop their career and their performance at the same time (Group 2019). They
make sure that none of their employees is suffering in their career paths just in order to satisfy
their job-related duties. In order to improve their performance they provide the job-specific and
career development training opportunities that cover technical skills, customer service,
teamwork, leadership, and much more. They have adopted a new training and development
model that is based on innovation, simplicity, flexibility and collaboration. In order to make
sure that the employees are getting full guidance to improve their performance they provide the
bespoke 360-degree assessments and individual development plans for more than 60

general managers and leaders in critical divisional leadership team roles. The other initiative
to improve their performance is the focus over their talented team. Wesfarmers has
appointed a talented team that helps the organization to provide specialized training to the
managers and the leaders as well. This is helpful as it helps the company in understanding the
exact qualities that they need to see within their employees of today and the future as well.
Wesfarmers know that none of the strategies can be successful without proper feedback
and follow up is taken about the results. As they are using many strategies they have to make
sure that they also measure the amount of success that is obtained due to these strategies.TSR or
the total shareholder returns is the strategy that is used by them to measure if they are getting any
satisfactory returns. The key factor in determining the TSR is the share price of Wesfarmers that
can actually be influenced by many factors outside factors like the market sentiment, business
cycles, interest rates and exchange rates.
Culture-related initiatives
Wesfarmers thrives on providing a very unique and inclusive workplace for the entire
employee to work in. This is because they always try to appoint employees belonging from
different cultural backgrounds. This helps them in creating a gender-balanced work ambiance.
They also make sure that they include the indigenous people as well. The company sees this
approach as a multipurpose approach. The inclusion of the indigenous people in their workforce
will not only help them in getting g a culturally rich ambiance but they will also be able to
generate values for their customers and their shareholders as well. Different people belonging
from different cultural backgrounds will be helpful in understanding the demands of the
customers belonging g from a different background. Thus this will help the company to innovate

its manufacturing and production process in order to cater to the needs of all the customers.
Gender balance ambience is one of the major aspects of the cultural background of the company.
They make sure that they are hiring women in their high paying job positions as well. They have
made sure that about 28 percent of the executive positions of the company are being occupied by
men. RAP is one of the important strategies by Wesfarmers to ensure inclusion of the indigenous
people with their workforce. RAP was launched about 10 years ago and since then it has been
trying to include the level of Indigenous representation in their workforce (Carlson,O’Cass and
Ahrholdt 2015). The company follows the horizontal communication system. In other words
they supervisors and the managers make sure that their subordinate employees to be able to reach
out to them without any hesitations. They make sure that all the employees belonging from
different cultures are able to reach put to the supervisors without any hesitations. The low
level employees are able to reach the high level employees without any tough or lengthy
process. No matter how complex are the business decisions the superiors make sure that they are
involving their employees at all points of time.
Wesfarmers also make sure that there is no disparity between the indigenous and the non-
indigenous employees. They make sure that their company is being able to utilize the diversity
and the uniqueness that the employees coming from different cultural backgrounds bring along
with them. Their primary goal is to carry on with the policy of sustainable employment.
Wesfarmers have been capable of employing about 997 more indigenous team members, and
indigenous team members now total 5,228 which are 2.5 per cent of Wesfarmers’ Australian
workforce (Niesche and Ridsdale 2017). They make sure that there is no disparity in the pay
scale or the respect that is given to their employees. Wesfarmers make sure that the indigenous
employees are getting equal career development opportunities just as the non-indigenous

employees. The Clontarf Foundation has been supported by Wesfarmers since 2001 in order
to provide educational, life skills, and self-esteem goals for the indigenous young people by
using football as a foundation.
Engagement-related initiatives
Stakeholder engagement is one of the major aspects that are taken care of the
Wesfarmers. Bunnings continued to actively seek ways to collaborate with a wide range of
stakeholders on community awareness and sustainability initiatives. One of their important and
well known stakeholders is the New Zealand Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency
Management. In order to get a proper connection and engagement with them, Wesfarmers got
involved in the get ready week project. This project was mainly for the raising of the awareness
campaigns that would be needed in order to make the households aware about the safety and
preventive measures that they can take in order to save themselves from the natural calamities
like Tsunami, earthquake and others. The employee engagement is done by making sure that the
managers are listening to the ideas and the opinion of their employees. In other words, the
managers always involve the employees in their business decisions. Regular meetings are
conducted in order to make sure that the employees are taking part in the business decision. The
company make sure that they are not only listening to the ideas of their employees but are also
working upon them to bring in the desired change that is needed by the employees. They make
sure that their employees are having a voice in the company. The company does facilitate
channels where each employee can raise their issues and also give their feedbacks. Peer-to-peer

learning and the group discussion methods are encouraged by the company o that their employees can
learn from each other.
Wesfarmers also carried on many DIY campaigns and also many of the in-store displays
and workshops in order to engage their stakeholders. Wesfarmers also made sure that they are
capable of developing a proper engagement with the Water Corporation's Waterwise Garden.
Wesfarmers made sure that they are redeeming these vouchers and they also distributed the same
overall Australia through their two-year program. To make sure that they can engage properly
with the customers in their community, they have to do something good and useful for the
community as a whole.
They supported Australian charity Share the Dignity’s “It’s in the Bag” Christmas campaign
through which they made their customers make some contributions in order to distribute the
same for the poor and unprivileged women of the country.
Recommendations
 Adoption of the IT technologies must be used so that they can speed up their process of
billing. In order to stay in competition in this modern era, they have to use all the
scientifically and technologically advanced materials. They must switch onto the
automated use of the billing technology. This will help them in carrying on their
transaction process in a fast, soother and easier manner.
 Wesfarmers must realize that in order to stay in the competition they have to fight with
the other powerful competitors like Woolsworth, Foodworks and others. In order to
develop customer loyalty they have to provide offers like discounts, coupons, seasonal

vouchers and others in order to make sure that the customers are not switching over to
other alternatives.
 Wesfarmers has to develop an online string presence by developing their online shopping
apps. In order to retain their customer base they have to make the whole shopping
experience much easier and memorable. Wesfarmers can do this by making some online
shopping apps that will be helping the customers to browse through the app and then
make their purchases accordingly. The services like home delivery, self pick up must also
be initiated so that the customers can shop without losing any time.
 Wesfarmers has to make sure that they are recruiting people from all the diversified
cultures like indigenous cultures. They have to conduct much cross-cultural awareness
programs that will be helping the employees of the organization to understand one
another. The employees belonging from the non-indigenous backgrounds will be able to
understand and also respect the cultures of the ones coming from non-indigenous
backgrounds.
 Wesfarmers must start a policy of rewards or additional benefits like the flexible shifts so
that they can get better engagement and response from their employees. The efforts of the
employees must be rewarded so that they get the encouragement of connecting with the
company.
Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded that the company is doing good work in order to promote the
overall welfare of their customers and their employees. However in order to stay in this era of

tough competition, they have to use all the modern technological advancements in order to
provide better shopping experiences to their customers. They have to develop a very strong
online presence so that the customers can get a fast, error-free and smooth shopping experience.
This will help the customers in getting a very memorable

Reference List
Carlson, J., O’Cass, A. and Ahrholdt, D., 2015. Assessing customers’ perceived value of the
online channel of multichannel retailers: A two country examination. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 27, pp.90-102.
Cavallo, A., Diewert, W.E., Feenstra, R.C., Inklaar, R. and Timmer, M.P., 2018. Using Online
Prices for Measuring Real Consumption across Countries. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol.
108, pp. 483-87).
Group, D. (2019). Home. [online] Wesfarmers.com.au. Available at:
https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/ [Accessed 11 Apr. 2019].
Niesche, C. and Ridsdale, C., 2017. Commercial mind, social heart. Company Director, 33(10),
p.56.
Terry-Armstrong, N., 2015. Managing staff: Happy, safe and contented. Busidate, 23(2), p.2.