HRM Report: Manager Transition to Australian Banking - Challenges

This report addresses the HRM challenges faced by a manager transitioning from a UK bank to a major bank in Australia. It covers employee relation issues, potential human resource concerns stemming from cross-cultural differences (corporate company culture, professional industry culture, and national ethnic culture), and managerial work-life balance. The report emphasizes the importance of HRM support through Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and the manager's proactive role in understanding and adapting to the new cultural environment. It also considers the impact of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banks and the importance of effective managerial communication, referencing Hofstede's cultural dimensions to provide a framework for understanding Australian cultural values. The report concludes with recommendations for both the manager and the organization to facilitate a smooth transition and maintain healthy employee relations, promoting a positive and productive work environment.

Running Head: HRM ASSISTANCE
HRM assistance
August 18
2018
Managerial issues at
work place

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Case scenario..............................................................................................................................2
Employee relation issues............................................................................................................2
Human resource issues...............................................................................................................3
Corporate company culture....................................................................................................3
Professional industry culture..................................................................................................4
National ethnic culture...........................................................................................................4
Managerial issues in work life...................................................................................................5
HRM concern for managers work-life balance..........................................................................6
Managerial communication and Impact of culture....................................................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Human resource management is the key element of an organization which assesses all the
managerial activities related to the human resource of the organization. All issues related to
the human resources of the organization are assessed by HRM and then the use of strategic
planning is made for overcoming such issues. When an employee is recruited in the company
it is HRM’s responsibility to assess all the issues that he or she might face as per his or her
designation in the organization (Stone, and Deadrick, 2015). In order to analyze different
issues and their impact on new employees in the organization, HRM uses different theories
and tools of Human Resource Management.
In this report, different issues related to employee relation and HRM that a manager may face
in a banking organization are discussed. Furthermore, their impact on the newly appointed
managers in this context is discussed for evaluating the consequences of these issues as well
as their impact on the organization.
Case scenario
In this case, this organization is operating in the banking sector. Recently this organization
has recruited a senior manager who has worked in a major bank of the United Kingdom. In
this case, now he has to shift to the home country i.e. Australia. For this recruitment, being an
HR manager, I have to assess all the issues related to employee relations and another issue of
the managerial role that may impact the employee’s working life in this new environment.
Employee relation issues
This newly recruited manager has worked in the same industry that will be a beneficial aspect
for him to maintain good relation with his employees. In the banking sector, whole work is

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interrelated. Being a manager, it is essential for him to maintain good relation with employees
working under his supervision. These employee relations will encourage the employee to
work efficiently that will ultimately enhance the performance of the organization as well as
his individual productivity or performance (Gelfand, Aycan, Erez, and Leung, 2017). Such
improved performance will provide incentives to the employees. These employee relations
established by the manager will impact the working life of the employees in a positive way
by making him comfortable in a new organization (Arshad, 2016). The use of Warwick
model will ensure the identification of environmental influences on human resource
management. It will further assist the manager in exploring the manner in which human
resource management adapts to changes in the context. When this model will be adopted by
the manager in the organization by way of achieving an alignment between internal and
external contexts will be able to achieve growth and performance.
Human resource issues
In the given case, manager is shifted from his previous working lifestyle in the United
Kingdom to the new working environment. In this case, when human resource management
has to assess the issues, the manager may face difficulties due to this shifting into a new work
environment of a different country. When people migrate from one nation to another, the
biggest challenge that they may face are the issues of cross-cultural differences. These
differences may be of different kind for example, language issues, the difference in policies
and practices, difficulties in integrating with new people, new resentments of the country in
multinational organizations, and cultural domination in work life as well (O’Reilly, and
Benson, 2016). These issues in the form of challenges are faced by the managers and are
categorized in three categories namely corporate company culture, professional industry
culture, and national ethnic culture.

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Corporate company culture
In this category, HRM issues like company history, the experience of the organization,
leadership style of an organization, development and business diversity stage of the
organization and ownership of the organization are to be counted for the detailed analysis.
Such corporate change for the manager will lead to a lack of understanding about the
organization policies and practices (Stahl, and Tung, 2015). These corporate cultural issues
are most influencing issues for the manager’s working life. Corporate life of managers
completely depends on the corporate culture in which they are working, therefore, such
changes will affect their life and most of the time, and these changes result in decreased
productivity of managers at their workplace.
Professional industry culture
These cultural differences are mainly comprised of two elements i.e. functional oriented and
industry norms. In functional oriented cultural differences, all the industry culture or
behavioral issues are considered such as industry growth, industry segment, and its trends in
the global market. On the other hand, industry norms are policies and practices that vary from
industry to industry. And these policies and norms also vary within the industry (Vaiman, and
Brewster, 2015). Professional industry culture prepares managers to work in a particular
industry environment in which they are working in order to reach the level of excellence.
National ethnic culture
These are the typical cultural issues that managers may face while switching to a different
cultural life. This includes the cultural elements that make two nations different in terms of
cultures such as education, country history, religion, social organization, and philosophy
(Xing, Liu, Tarba, and Cooper, 2016). In these terms, an organization’s behavior changes
completely for managers so that they need to understand the new cultural behavior and its

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ethnic element to make their working life smooth in the new working environment
(Kosmützky, and Putty, 2016).
All these major differences in cross-cultural working life could be categorized into two
dimensions. Cultural dimensions that could dominate the value system of human behavior
can be seen through a set of other cultural dimensions. Such value systems affect the thinking
power, feelings, actions, and an overall behavior of human beings. These value systems and
cultural dimensions can be grouped into different categories like,
 Relation with new people
 Attitude towards cross-cultural change
 Motivation oriented dimensions
Managerial issues in work life
In this case, the managers had worked at the managerial post in a major bank of UK and now
he has to work at the same designation but in a different cultural environment. These changes
will be mostly similar to the above mentioned cultural differences that are explained in
different cultural dimensions (Spector, Liu, and Sanchez, 2015). These cultural differences
will make the manager’s work life more challenging in establishing good relations with their
employees.
Such efficient management of work life for employees can be provided by the organization
through employee assistant programmes (Flatten, Adams, and Brettel, 2015). Managers can
also manage their work life at their own through working on some key management points,
for example, improving knowledge of foreign culture, respecting the new culture, taking
helpful decisions to get the trust of employees, try to ignore the cultural difference as much as
possible, and managing the differences in a strategic and effective way (Tarhini, Hone, and

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Liu, 2015). The contingency theory will allow the manager to take the decisions in
accordance with the given situation rather than making the use of “one size fits all” method.
The important aspects of the changed current situation will be taken into consideration by the
manager with the help of this theory.
The Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banks-
The Royal Commission invites the people or organisations to conduct public submission by
the online form. This is required by those, who want more help by the email or telephone.
The object of submission was to recognise reasons of unproven misconduct, factors that led
to occurrence of misconduct and actions to be taken to solve the matters. In this way, Royal
Commission conducts an inquiry in the relevant method. After the inquiry, it makes a report
on the misconduct in banking and financial industry. The Royal Commission has rights to
induce witness and recommend the charges related to crime. The enquiry of Royal
Commission significantly affects the employment of managers in bank.

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HRM concern for managers work-life balance

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Employee relations are very important for managers in the banking sector, therefore to
maintain healthy relations with their employee managers will need some HRM assistant
along with their maximum efforts to mitigate other cross-cultural issues that may affect their
work life relations with their employees. For HRM, assistant organization can plan for some
Employee Assistant Programmes. Through these programmes, management of the
organization will provide some assistance to new people in the organization in understanding
the cultural differences and provide different ways to overcome these issues (Farndale, and
Sanders, 2017). With these programmes, management can help the newly migrated managers
from different cultures to help them in establishing healthy relations with their employeesThe
manager should consider the Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory with regard to Australia. It
will offer knowledge to the manager regarding six aspects namely power distance,
masculinity, individualism, indulgence, uncertainty avoidance and long- term orientation.
The score of Australia in power distance is 36 which show the reliance of managers on
individual employees and teams for attaining excellence. Australia scores 90 in individualism
which further provides that Australia is a highly individualistic country where the employees
are expected to display initiative and be self- reliant. Australia is a masculine society with 61
as a score where the main goal is to achieve success and to resolve the conflicts at the
individual level. Moreover, the score of Australia in the context of uncertainty avoidance is
intermediate i.e. 51. As far as the long term orientation is concerned, the score is 21 as
Australia has a normative culture. The people in Australia give prime importance to their
traditions and focus on the achievement of quick results. High score of 71 is achieved by
Australia in indulgence which will provides the manager with the information that a positive

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attitude is possessed by the employees and they have a tendency towards optimism.
Figure 1 Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions in Australia
Managerial communication and Impact of culture
Managers migrated from different cultures are required to manage their work life according
to the new work environment. In the given case the new manager is from the UK appointed to
work in Australia. This requires him to adopt the new cultural environment to establish
healthy relations with employees. For the same, an organization can help them through EAP
but they need to work on their own work-life attributes and professional skills required in the
new culture.
Marinating healthy relation with employees at the workplace also needs an effective
communication that can vary from culture to culture. In different cultures, the communication
channel and style varies according to their cultural behavior and responses. For a new
manager who is migrated from the UK to Australia may face issues in communicating with
his employees at the workplace. These aspects of cultural difference in communication may
affect the communication style in different cultures. In order to maintain a better work life

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and healthy employee relations, these managers need to understand the intercultural
sensibilities of the employee. Such issues can affect the work life this manager a lot (Sarala,
Junni, Cooper, and Tarba, 2016). The communication model of Shannon and Weaver
provides that the proper encoding channels or processes which should be applied by the
managers for establishing effective communication. It will also assist the managers in
overcoming the barriers to communication by designing and delivering a message that get the
proper attention of the employees, relate with the common experiences and provides a way
for meeting the personality needs of the receiver. Another communication theory provides
that the barriers to effective communication can be overcome by the seven Cs communication
namely creditability, context, clarity, content, channels, continuity, and capability.
Recommendations
This new manager has worked in the same industry but in a different cultural environment,
therefore, he has to adopt the cultural environment at the new workplace. Along with this, the
manager should increase his knowledge about new culture and adapt to these changes as soon
as possible. To help the manager, organization can also use the EAPs as mentioned in the
above report. This will help him to understand the cultural differences at the professional
level. Along with this, he should spend some time to understand the cultural environment of
the organization in this new culture. To maintain a healthy relationship with the employees
this manager should work on the communication channel to make it more effective for his
understanding and understand the employees’ expectation of him as a manager. He can make
a separate communication channel for his branch that can establish an effective
communication with his employees.

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Conclusion
From the above report, it can be concluded that cultural difference affects work-life of
managers a lot. With the globalization, these issues are faced by most of the managers. An
organization can enhance its business growth with the help of professional expert from
different culture by providing cultural assistance to the managers. These professional experts
from different culture are also required to work on their individual skills and cultural
attributes to adapt to a new culture. This globalization requires these professional experts to
migrate from one culture to another, therefore, they need to enhance their knowledge for
different cultural values and ethics to maintain a healthy relationship with an employee at the
new workplace.