MBA401: Analysis of BHP Group Leadership, Culture, and Performance

This report examines BHP Group's initiatives in leadership, culture, and performance, focusing on the impact of digital transformation and employee engagement. It analyzes performance-related initiatives, such as the adoption of digital models to improve cost, safety, and volume, with the balanced scorecard as a key performance measurement tool. The report explores BHP's culture-related initiatives, including the annual engagement and perception survey (EPS), highlighting how the company fosters a collaborative and inclusive environment. Furthermore, the report investigates engagement-related initiatives, particularly the use of leadership skills to encourage employee participation and engagement. It concludes that BHP's focus on these areas is crucial for its organizational development and success, leading to higher productivity, employee satisfaction, and retention rates. The report also suggests the use of behavioral KPI to measure the impact of culture-based initiatives.

RUNNING HEAD: PEOPLE, CULTURE AND CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP
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People, Culture and Contemporary Leadership
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Introduction
BHP Group Limited operates in mining industry, petroleum and metals industry and founded in
Melbourne, Australia. The company ranked as the third-largest mining company in the aspect of
market capitalization. BHP explores and mines minerals such as iron, coal, gold, ore, nickel, and
cooper properties with that the company offers petroleum exploration, refining services, and
production. BHP Group serves customers worldwide. The company distributes its products
through its global logistics chains such as pipeline and freight transportation. In 2019, the
company has 72,000 employees for production and distribution and management
(BHPBilliton,2019). In this report, three aspects are discussed that include performance
initiatives used by the company to improve its workforce efficiency, culture initiative taken by
BHP to enhance its culture, and at last initiatives taken by the company to ensure employee
engagement.
Performance Related Initiatives
The performance of the company depends on many factors such as employee satisfaction,
productivity, impact on society, and satisfaction of shareholders and customers. BHP Billiton
takes many initiatives in order to improve its overall performance and to satisfy its stakeholders.
According to Connelly et.al,2019, the performance of any organization depends on many aspects
such as finance, operations efficiency, legal aspects and organization development. BHP in order
to improve financial performance and operational efficiency adopted a digital model in order to
improve three pillars that are cost, safety, and volume. The focus on building an environment in
which employee safety is higher and tragic incidents are less. For that, the company invested in
technology advancement such as mines using technology vehicles for detection and rolling. This
improved morale of 340 employees. Further, digital transformation created many opportunities
for BHP Billiton and efficiency in production improved with saving up $20 million (Williamson
and Wilson, 2019). In a nutshell, digital initiatives taken by BHP Billiton improved the
performance of the organization in some of the aspects that are financial performance,
operational efficiency, and employee development.

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Dawson, 2019, described a few measures that used for measuring performance in an organization
that is performance appraisal, 360-degree feedback, management by objectives, personal
development plans, reward and recognition, and balance scorecard. The performance initiative
that has been taken by BHP Billiton is the use of technology and digital tools in order to improve
the performance and efficiency of employees. The performance measurement tool that proves to
help measure the performance can be a “Balance scorecard”. A balanced scorecard is a
performance metric used to improve, identify and control business functions and outcomes
(Walters, 2019). Four perspectives are included in a balanced scorecard that is financial,
customer, internal process and learning and development. BHP Billiton in order to know the
performance and impact of its digital transformation, a balanced scorecard can be used. For
instance, the impact of digital transformation can be measure in all four perspectives that
includes the financial performance of Billiton, level of customer satisfaction and efficiency in
operations of the company. Hence, the balanced scorecard is a good measurement tool that helps
to identify, improve and control the performance.
Culture Related Initiatives
BHP Billiton employs over 72,000 employees and contractors across the world. The company
invests a huge amount in the development of people so that employees possess the right skills
and sustain an attractive culture at the workplace that is collaborative and inclusive. The
company takes many initiatives to build a culture based on collaboration and trust.
The initiative taken by BHP Billiton to improve its culture includes “annual engagement and
perception survey (EPS)” as employees of BHP feel proud to work with the organization as they
feel the working environment inclusive and collaborative (BHP Billiton,2019). The culture of the
company is open and flexible for employees and provides opportunities for personal and
professional development. With this initiative, the company saw positive outcomes that were
same treatment and chances for all employees, perceptions of employees, and how employees
perceived opportunities for development and growth. All these are part of the culture and lead to
the positive growth of the company. This initiative helps the company to improve its working
environment and ensure a high level of employee engagement. This leads to a positive
environment in the company and attracts a more skilled workforce (Meade, 2019). This helps the

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company to “gain a new and more diverse talent pool” that also increases the local workforce
community engagement. This also helps to improve culture and morale as employees shared
knowledge and skills with those who are new in the industry.
The measurement tool that can be used in order to measure the culture of BHP Billiton is
behavioral KPI. Behavioral KPI includes surveys that track how employee behavior changes
over time. This tool is useful because it represents a metric that comes from employees directly.
BHP Billiton encourages employees to participate and engage its employees so that the company
can gain a broad understanding and knowledge about its culture (Feng, 2019). For instance, in
order to know the impact of the EPS initiative, the company can use a survey that includes
behavioral questions in order to know the impact that culture has on the employee. Hence,
behavioral KPI can be used as a measurement tool to know the impact of culture-based
initiatives taken by the company. Further, at present, the company has a flexible, secure and safe
environment at the workplace and culture that ensure transparency and integrity with others.
Engagement Related Initiatives
Employee engagement is considered a way to encourage employees to participate and engage in
organizational decisions and activities. Meade, 2019, defined employee engagement as the level
or to what extent employees feel committed to the organization, feel passionate about their jobs,
and put discretionary effort into their work. Due to that, companies need to take initiatives that
ensure higher employee engagement.
BHP Billiton focuses on four key elements in order to ensure that employees feel values and
engage in organizational activities to a greater extent. Those four elements are leadership,
enablement, alignment and development (BHP Billiton,2019). With the help of strong leadership
skills, BHP Billiton communicates with their employees and take feedback on time in order to
know opinion and ideas of employees this helps the company to know the perception of
employees and to engage employees. Employees want confident leaders and want to inspire
them and follow them. BHP Billiton does the same and uses leadership-focused employee
engagement initiatives. In that, the company conducts synthesis sessions under this leader in
each department to communicate successes and challenges and opportunities with employees and
take feedback and opinion of employees in order to engage with employees.

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Further, it can be said that the probability of success of this employee engagement initiative
taken by the company will be not that successful in the long run as it is quite difficult to identify
whether all employees follow leaders' actions. Leaders can force employees to some extent to
participate and engage in activities but later on its choice of employees so this initiative taken by
the BHP Billiton is not that useful for the long run (McCrea, and Finnegan, 2019). Further, for
engaging more employees the company needs to adopt different engagement practices so that
employees feel that the organization values their efforts. Hence, the BHP Billiton level of
employee engagement improves through leadership skills but the probability of success of this
initiative is not that higher.
Conclusion
It is concluded from the analysis that BHP Billiton takes different initiatives such as for
improving its performance the company take the initiative of digital transformation and in order
to measure the performance it is suggested that balanced scorecard is a useful tool as this helps in
measuring the performance to identify the impact of this initiative. Further, BHP Billiton uses the
“annual engagement and perception survey (EPS)” for improving the culture of the company. It
is also identified that the company has a flexible organizational culture and provides an
environment for employees that promote the professional and personal development of
employees. At last, it is known that BHP Billiton focuses on leadership in order to encourage
employees to participate and engage in organizational actions and activities. Leadership based
employee engagement initiatives used by the company and this resultant in higher productivity,
high level of employee satisfaction and higher retention rate for BHP Billiton. Hence, people,
culture and leadership play an important role in the development and success of any
organization.

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References
BHP Billiton,2019. Annual Report for BHP Billiton. Accessed From:
https://www.bhp.com/-/media/documents/investors/annual-reports/2019/
bhpannualreport2019.pdf
Connelly, B.L., Lee, K.B., Tihanyi, L., Certo, S.T. and Johnson, J.L., 2019. Something in
common: Competitive dissimilarity and performance of rivals with common
shareholders. Academy of Management Journal, 62(1), pp.1-21.
Dawson, P., 2019. Reshaping change: A processual perspective. Routledge.
Feng, K., 2019. Research on the Transnational Investment and Financing Mechanisms of the
Belt and Road Initiative. In Regional Mutual Benefit and Win-win Under the Double Circulation
of Global Value (pp. 285-325). Springer, Singapore.
McCrea, N. and Finnegan, F. eds., 2019. Funding, power and community development. Policy
Press.
Meade, C.P., 2019. Leadership alive: Changing leadership practices in the emerging 21st
century culture. Leadership Alive, Inc..
Walters, K., 2019. Leading the way. Company Director, 35(2), p.66.
Williamson, M. and Wilson, M., 2019. Diversity and inclusion–moving the needle in Indigenous
employment and engagement. The APPEA Journal, 59(2), pp.753-755.