Work and Diversity Report: AXA and Wesfarmers Policy Analysis

This report provides a detailed analysis of workplace diversity, focusing on the policies of AXA and Wesfarmers. Part 1 examines AXA's diversity initiatives, emphasizing the importance of diverse workforces and stakeholder involvement, including HR managers, directors, and employees, in implementing these policies. It explores how diversity enhances knowledge sharing, innovation, and market understanding. Part 2 shifts to Wesfarmers, evaluating its diversity goals and policies, particularly those concerning the disabled workforce. The report outlines the benefits of a diverse workforce, the company's goals, and the action plan for implementing the disabled workforce diversity policy, including timelines, budgets, and stakeholder feedback. It also includes a stakeholder communication letter and discusses tools for planning, measuring impact, and monitoring the policy's implementation. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of reviewing the policy's effectiveness and ensuring ongoing improvements.

Running head: WORK AND DIVERSITY
WORK AND DIVERSITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

1WORK AND DIVERSITY
Part 1
Procedure:
Ans 1. Diversity is the ability of an organization to support people from various race, nationality,
gender, religion, ethnicity and culture in the work environment without any kind of
discrimination on any basis. Diversity helps organizations by assimilating different ideas,
viewpoints and opinions that increases the knowledge base of the company (Barak 2016). The
companies acting at a multinational level needs to cater to different kind of population who are
diverse by demographical standards. The inclusion of a diverse workforce in the management
and work process helps the company understand the needs of the people from different culture
back grounds. Management actually means managing people so that the total productivity of the
company can be increased, a diverse work force and a management team with people from
various cultural back grounds help in knowledge input, innovative contribution in problem
solving methods, and understanding of the need of the market which constitutes of people from
different cultural back grounds (Harvey and Allard 2015). In all these ways the policy of work
force diversity will help the AXA in improving its business in a sustainable way and will help in
expansion of its business globally.
Ans 2. The stakeholders of the company include the directors, the managers, the employees, the
shareholders, the investors, the clients and everyone who is directly or indirectly involved with
the process of the business. In this case the important stakeholders who can help in implementing
and enforcing the policy throughout the organization are the human resource manager, the
directors and the employees. The decision made by the directorial board to enforce the policy of
work place diversity will ultimately be given to the human resource manager to be implemented
on the ground level. The human resource department of the company comprising of the human

2WORK AND DIVERSITY
resource manager and the human resource executives will take positive actions to increase the
diversity of the company by appointing employees from culturally diverse background. The next
step is to initiate awareness programs to educate the existing employees about the positive effects
of work place diversity. “Communication campaign” and “executive level involvement” will be
employed to increase the awareness of diversity among the people. Diversity in new recruitments
and dispersing the diverse workforce throughout the organization in different departments. The
whole process will be tracked by documenting the developments and the highest management
will be monitoring the progress closely.
Ans 3. The process of implementation will be designed perfectly so that the workforce diversity
policy can be implemented properly throughout the organization. First of all, the employees
within the organization will be educated through awareness programs and different
communication campaigns about the positive effects of workforce diversity (Patrick and Kumar
2012). In the next step the creation of a workplace that is integration friendly and that which
allows and helps in better employee engagement will be built by enabling “diversity themes” in
the processes. All these actions, their implementation and their progress will be documented. The
recruitment process conducted by the HR department will focus on recruiting employees from
diverse background from different cultures. Cultural diversity in the workforce also helps in
exchanges of new ideas and better risk management because of innovative problem solving
abilities of different people from different cultural backgrounds. Human Resource department
and the Human Resource manager are most important in enabling and enforcing diversity in
workforce because recruitment and retention are both functions of the HR department
(Guillaume et al. 2017). The awareness program that will be taken up within the company will
have seminars, sessions and campaigns that will highlight the importance of diversity of work

3WORK AND DIVERSITY
force within an organization, and case studies will be analyzed of the existing famous companies
that have implemented workforce diversity in their company and reaped its benefits.
Ans 3. This policy is framed keeping in mind all the points but still it needed minor changes in it
as, the policy framed does not clearly state that it encourages equality on the premises of the
gender (Haile 2012), and in addition, it had also not mentioned any sought of discrimination or
other type of act that needs any disciplinary action. The disciplinary actions should be more
precisely mentioned.
Ans 4. This policy differs from the diversity policy of my previous workplace as the present
policy has planned to promote awareness of diversity policy with the help of effective
communication campaign which lacks in the previous one. The previous office only used to
enforce the diversity in the recruitment process. However, the post the recruitment process it is
required to ensure that the diverse workforce be made comfortable in their position and no
discrimination is made on any grounds.

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Part 2: Policy for Wesfarmers
Stage 1
Answer 1
Wesfarmers aims to create a diverse work environment by implementing an inclusive
policy for people belonging to different gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation,
family responsibilities, cultural background and disability. It also has polices for including the
indigenous people in their workforce. Diversity increases productivity of the organisation
(Saxena 2014).
Potential benefits of the diversity policy of Wesfarmers can be:
 Widening the experience and skills of the workforce pool, from where the company can
employ the best resources to meet the organizational goals
 Provision of better alignment with the needs of the customers from different background
 Improvement in creativity, innovation and invention, and
 Creation of a model of corporate citizenship.
Answer 2
The major goals of the company are to ensure the delivery of satisfactory returns to the
shareholders and stakeholders through financial gains and efficient management system. The
diversity policies help to follow the core values, that is, integrity, accountability, boldness and
openness. Through the implementation of the diversity policies, the company includes resources
from different background that help to achieve them integration among different cultures,
accountability of the talents to perform better, bringing boldness in the characters that helps in

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decision making and openness is achieved in welcoming people of different background, which
ensures cultural bonding.
Answer 3
The company has a diversified business portfolio and it has been successful to develop a highly
focused, disciplined and unique business culture. The stakeholders want to have a diversity
policy for including more disable people in the workforce, irrespective of their culture or
background for making their lives better. These are valid points that can enhance the diversity
policies if implemented.

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Stage 2
Answer 1
Disabled workforce diversity policy 2018
Purpose To enhance the disabled workforce diversity across the Wesfarmers Group
Policy
application
Policy principles should be complied with and incorporated in all types of
business units and corporate offices
Policy a) Wesfarmers Board and Management will devise and implement
policies for increasing the number of disabled people in their human
resource pool across the organization to promote the diversity
between the disabled and non-disabled workforce.
b) Measurable diversity objectives will be designed and implemented
to:
 Foster an inclusive and cooperative workforce
 Improve the talent management
 Ensure equal pay
 Improve the lives of disabled people
c) The Wesfarmers Board must annually set the disability employment
target as per the Disability Employment Services Reform 2018, by
the Australian Government and must see if that has been met or not.
d) The HR department should implement the new rules to bring more
disabled employees, based on their skills, into the company.

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e) All offices should comply by the rules and delegate responsibilities
to the disabled employees as per their level and type of disability.
Policy
amendment
The policy needs the approval from Wesfarmers board before any
amendment.
Last amended August 2016
Answer 2
Action plan for policy implementation
POLICY ACTIONS RESPONSIBL
E
TIMEFRAM
E
BUDGE
T
BUDGET
SOURCE
STATUS
Disabled
workforce
diversity
policy 2018
Provide an
orientation
to all the
employees
about the
new policy
Wesfarmers
Board,
Wesfarmers
Management,
Wesfarmers
Human
Resource
Department
August 2018 AU
$1,000
Wesfarmer
s internal
capital
funding
To be
effective
from July
31, 2018.
Provide
training to
supervisors
for handling
more people
with
disabilities
Training
Department
August 2018 AU
$5,000
Wesfarmer
s internal
capital
funding
With effect
from
August 3,
2018.
Selection
and
recruitment
of around
1000
disabled
people
across
Human
Resource
Department
October 2018 AU
$50,000
Wesfarmer
s internal
capital
funding
With effect
from
Septembe
r 1, 2018.

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Australia
and other
countries
Providing
training to
the new
recruits
Training
Department
December
2018
AU
$10,000
Wesfarmer
s internal
capital
funding
With effect
from
November
1, 2018.
Answer 3
To get the feedback from others regarding this draft policy and action plan, these are sent
via email and the concerned persons were asked to reply what they think about the policy. From
the feedback it is found that, people have welcomed the policy and they are willing to cooperate
with Wesfarmers Management to incorporate more disabled persons among themselves and
provide the necessary support to them. Regarding the action plan, people from the Wesfarmers
Board have asked to lower the scale of the budget as that will put pressure on the budget for
other departments for the current financial year.
Answer 4
Disabled workforce diversity policy 2018 is an extended part of the diversity policy of
Wesfarmers. Till now, they have focused on gender diversity and increasing employment of
indigenous people. From July 1, 2018, Wesfarmers will start implementing the policy for
increasing the workforce diversity by increasing the number of disabled people in the human
resources. In addition measure to stop any discrimination or bullying to them would be enforced
(Leng and Yazdanifard 2014)

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Answer 5
As per the feedback from the Wesfarmers Board, the budget for the all the actions are
reduced. The orientation budget will be AU $500, cost of training to the supervisors will be AU
$2000, recruitment cost will be AU $35000, and cost of training to the new joinees will be AU
$3000.

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Stage 3
Answer 1
To,
The stakeholders,
Wesfarmers Group.
Sir/Madam,
We are glad to inform you that, Wesfarmers has decided to implement a new diversity policy
following launch of the Disability Employment Services Reform 2018, by the Australian
government. As suggested by you all in the last meeting, we are going to introduce Disabled
Workforce Diversity Policy 2018. This policy will not only benefit the community by improving
their lives, but will also benefit the company through the contribution of their special skills in
various departments. The policy will be implemented from July 31, 2018. We hope to inform
you about the positive effects of the policy once the new plan rolls out.
Sincerely,
Wesfarmers Group.
Answer 2
The unintended impact of the policy implementation would be a cut down in the budget
for other departments in Wesfarmers for the present financial year. To adjust to the fall in
budget, these departments should cut the costs, which might lead to reducing the number of
existing employees.

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Answer 3
There are several types of tools and indicators that can be used for planning, and
measuring the impact of the policy implementation. For the policy planning, various
communication tools, such as, positioning mapping, and policy influence tools, like, 4 P’s of
influence, networking, public participation etc. can be used. For this policy, the economic and
socio cultural indicators are more suitable for measuring the impact. Costs of operation,
maintenance, capital and user cost are economic indicators that will measure the economic
feasibility of the policy. Public acceptance, participation and stimulation of sustainable behavior
are socio-cultural indicators that measure the impact on the workforce of the company (Adler
and Seligman 2016).
Answer 4
To monitor the implementation of the new policy in Wesfarmers, the performances of the
new as well as experienced employees will be monitored and measured by using KPI and other
monitoring tools and models, such as, real time business monitoring, metrics etc. (Grindle 2017).