MPM731 Business Communication Report: CAP Energy Teamwork Analysis

This business report analyzes the teamwork challenges faced by CAP Energy Limited, an Africa-based oil and gas company, focusing on its culturally diverse workforce. The report examines issues such as communication gaps, coordination failures, and lack of cooperation among employees from different ethnic backgrounds. It delves into the principles of clear and constructive communication, highlighting the company's efforts to address these challenges through language training, diversity awareness programs, and policies promoting equal opportunities. The report also provides recommendations for improving workplace safety and remuneration policies. It also emphasizes the importance of flexible work hours and addressing discrimination in pay to enhance team spirit and overall employee performance. The report draws on various academic sources and provides a comprehensive overview of teamwork dynamics within a multinational corporation.

RUNNING HEAD: BUSINESS REPORT
BUSINESS REPORT
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Introduction:
CAP energy limited is Africa-based Oil and Gas, Mine Exploration Company, which
manufactures fossil fuel (Capenergyplc.com 2020). In other words the company is the supplier of
energy to many of the large industries manufacturing building materials, to the automobile
companies all over the world. The business sector refers to the expenditure of energy sector. The
company has expanded its branches in many of the countries all over the world other than the
home country of the company, which is Africa. Again, CAP energy limited also recruits
proficient employees from other countries, like managers, oil and Gas packaging workers,
chemical Engineers and accountant in a company branch. Naturally, the company has to deal
with the issues like team work as well as workplace diversity (Capenergyplc.com 2020). During
its long journey the company exhibited a steep growth in the productivity. According to the
current CEO JP Chalasani, the increase in the productivity as well as employee performance in
the Asian branches of the company can be attributed to its efficient management of the human
resource, teams as well as culturally diverse workplace. The purpose of this study is to delve
deep into the issues of teamwork faced by the company and the way the company manages
issues associated with team work efficiently. In this context clear as well as constructive
communication principles to deal with the issue of teamwork as well as cultural diversity in
workplace. This is again followed by a couple of recommendations to accelerate improvement in
managing teams and a culturally diverse workplace as well (Capenergyplc.com 2020).
Issue of teamwork in a culturally diverse workplace:
There are several issues that the company used to face during its initial period or the
period after the inception of the company. Since the initial days the workforce of the company is

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enriched with employees belonging to different ethno-cultural group. One of the greatest
problem encountered by the human resource managers while managing diverse talent within a
team, is to foster flawless communication process and develop a concrete infrastructure for a
better understanding. The difference in the language or mother tongue of the employees from
diverse ethno-cultural group, often created the problem of understanding among the members of
a team. Hence communication gap is one of the issues that the company used to face during team
work. The issue of communication gap again casted upon a spill-over effect on the matter of
coordination among the team consisting people from distinct ethnical as well as cultural
employees. This often leads to coordination failure, especially during the commencement of the
international projects the company ventured into. This indicate to the fact that coordination
failure is the other issues encountered during the management of teamwork. Coordination failure
in turn used to give birth to a couple of issues. The most significant of them is the is the delay in
the completion of the multi-staged project as well as flaws in the relevant as well as essential
information conveyed from the members handling the technical aspect of the project as well as
the members involved into the fieldwork. Another notable issue occurred during h management
of the teamwork is the issue of deadline miss. Often a project related information conveyed by
one of the team members, became incomprehensible due to communication gap this delayed the
necessary action. Hence the problem of understanding followed by the problem of coordination
failure in the team work often delayed the whole work and degrade the performance of the entire
team. Lack of cooperation is the issue faced during teamwork by CAP energy limited
(Capenergyplc.com 2020). Lack of cooperation or dearth in the cooperative attitude of the native
employees to the employees who do not share same ethnic, cultural as well as religious
background; is often attributed to the narrow mindedness, superstitious mentality of the native

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employees. Due to the narrow mindedness, superstitious mentality of the native employees, often
the native employees tend to bully the employees from diverse ethno-cultural background. This
also become a barrier in the path of cooperation among the members of the team. Eventually, the
degradation in the performance of many teams, during the initial days in CAP energy limited,
was the result of the lack of cooperation among employees of diverse cultural background
(Capenergyplc.com 2020).
Principle of clear and constructive communication to deal with teamwork:
In order to delve deep into the principles associated with the construction of a concrete
framework to deal with team work issues, firstly, several facts related to the human resource
management of CAP energy limited needs to discussed. After its initial phase the company
started to expand, its wings. New branches of CAP energy limited were introduced in the country
of Australia (Pischke 2017). In the process of running the new branch in Australia, CAP energy
limited faced multiple team work issues and found that in order to deal with the communication
gap, coordination failure, lack of cooperation, lack of understanding among the culturally diverse
workplace in Australia, a concrete framework consisting of clear and constructive principles of
communication as well as human resource management needs to be developed.
Gradually, the company developed a concrete framework to manage team work
effectively in a diverse workplace. The framework consisted of several policies. Firstly, the
company provided English language training to the Australian workers as well as the native
Australian employees who are transferred to Australia from the home country Australian and
assigned with the responsibilities of the operation management in the new branch in Australia.
Secondly, CAP energy limited started training their native as well as the Australian employees
about the importance of a culturally diverse team in the growth as well as development of the

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company (Al-Shatti 2018). This training was conducted under the guidance of the human
resource managers (Capenergyplc.com 2020). CAP Energy Limited also arranged for the
training programs in order to transform the narrow-minded attitude of the employees, more
specifically the native Australian as well as employees from other countries regarding the
cooperation among the employees of diverse ethno-cultural background, who have to work as a
team for the improvement of the performance of the entire company (Capenergyplc.com 2020).
Key principles for effective teamwork in a culturally diverse workplace also involved
making sure whether the each of the employees feel valued irrespective of his or her cultural
background (Munjuri and Maina, 2013). This reflected in the designing of then company’s new
human resource policy, which allowed the African as well as the Australian workers of CAP
Energy Limited, paid leave during traditional festivals. This involve African traditional festivals
like Serengeti, Jinkinya Mash-West Mbira Festival of the Arts and Culture, again also for the
Australian traditional festivals like- WOMADelaide, National Folk Festival and so on. This
policy was also applied by the employees who employed in the countries other than their home
countries. This policy will help all the employees to maintain balance between their personal life
as well as professional life. This policy paved the way for the equal benefits for both the native
employees of CAP Energy Limited as well as the employees from other countries who work in
Australian branch of CAP Energy Limited (Capenergyplc.com 2020). Further CAP Energy
Limited arranged several employee engagement programs including sports, indoor as well as
outdoor games among several teams consisting of the employees of distinct cultural background.
This eventually increased the team spirit among the employees of diverse cultural background,
they performed together during the commencement of the indoor as well as outdoor games, with
the aim to make their team a winner. This strengthened the relationship as well as unity among

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the employees of diverse cultural background. This principle was implemented with the purpose
of making provision for the equal opportunities for all the employees as well as strengthening of
the relationship as well as cooperation among the members of the diver ethno-cultural of a team.
CAP Energy also declared that the coordination failure, bullying as well as insulting employees
of different cultural background are subject to penalization which may also lead to the ejection of
the employee from the job and compensation of a fat amount as well (Capenergyplc.com 2020).
Conclusion and Recommendations:
Like other multinational organization, CAP Energy Limited also faced incidences like
sexual harassment of the female workers from countries other than the home country of the
company. Till now CAP Energy Limited has not strengthened policies regarding safety as well
as security of the female employees of distinct culture (Phakathi 2017). Empirical studies have
revealed that, the ignorance of the company regarding the safety as well as security of the female
employee of diverse cultural background in employed in mine, has resulted into the inactivity of
the female workers within the team, which often led to coordination failure and a low grade
performance of the team (Al-Shatti 2018). Hence one of the principles which could be suggested
is to arrange flexible work hours, workplace safety for the female workers of the different
cultural background. This policy should also make provision for the penalization for committing
such offense. Again, female workers at the mine as well as office premises should be provided
wireless alarm which they can use to ask help at the time of encountering any danger. This will
make the female workers secured as well as valued and enhance their team participation. Several
studies have revealed that CAP Energy Limited had been ignorant about the increment of the
salary of employees other than the native employees. Discrimination in terms of remuneration
among especially for the employees of distinct ethno-cultural background, had curbed the quality

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of the performance as well as team spirit, of the employees from diverse cultural background.
Hence another principle which the company should implement immediately is the removal of the
discriminating remuneration increment policies for the employees of diverse cultural
background. This will not only encourage them to be responsible to the company, but also
motivate the m to perform well and maintain coordination among the team.

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References:
Al-Shatti, L.Y., 2018. Investigating the Impact of Teamwork Quality on the Effectiveness of
Managing Multiple Projects in the Oil & Gas Industry (Doctoral dissertation, The George
Washington University).
Capenergyplc.com (2020). Welcome to CAP ENERGY - African Oil & Gas Exploration.
[online] Capenergyplc.com. Available at: https://capenergyplc.com/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2020].
Munjuri, M.G. and Maina, R.M., 2013. Workforce diversity management and employee
performance in the banking sector in Kenya. DBA Africa management review, 3(1).
Phakathi, S.T., 2017. Introduction', Production, Safety and Teamwork in a Deep-Level Mining
Workplace (pp. 1-24). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Pischke, E., 2017. Understanding Perceptions of Barriers to International, Interdisciplinary
Scientific Teamwork and the Expansion of Mexican Oil Palm Plantations.

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