Question One: Managing Stress in the workplace

1. Workplace stresses and causes of stresses in the case study.

Stress can have negative impact on a company or an organization. It will lead to high turn-over rate, low job satisfaction, bad reputation, bad employer-employee relationship. Managers are morally responsible to eliminate stress in the workplace. Generally speaking, there are types of stresses including eustress and distress. Eustress might be a good thing because it will induce a positive stress reaction such as job promotion. It creates motivation for employees to work harder. Distress, on the other hand, is bad for both employees and the organization. For instance, in the case study, employees tend to communicate among their own racial and cultural group. New managers, especially Sammy expect that employees to remain humble but he fails to notice that humility is a desired value only in Asian culture. Without developing inter-cultural sensitivity and awareness, it is difficult for employees to accept and appreciate cultural differences. Besides, employees are also facing distresses in their daily work. Silas, one of the employee, says, “We can’t keep on fixing it. When can we get a new one?” It shows that the managing team does not effectively know what employees’ expectations or problems encountered actually are.

2. How to effectively manage stress in the workplace?

According to Folkman and Lazarus Model, problem-focused, support seeking, emotion-focused approaches can all be effective in resolving the problem. In problem-focused approach, confrontive coping is about using assertive or aggressive words or actions to reduce stresses. Planful problem-solving also allows managers to take actions to deal with stressors such as instruct employees to make a list of things to do. Moreover, in the support-seeking approach, employees can also receive supports or mental consoles from colleagues, family, friends or respective communities. In the emotion-focused approach, employees are advised to manage their own stresses by distancing, positive re-appraisal, accepting responsibility, self-control and escape-avoidance. Accepting responsibility, for example, means that they are good at accepting blames and meanwhile offer an apology. In addition, good self-control skill means that employees can effectively manage their own emotions.

Question Two: managing human resource and diversity

1. What is the major workplace diversity in the case study?

Diversity does present in the workplace. It is largely because each individual is unique and different. The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. Diversity usually includes differences in terms of ages, genders, races, physical abilities, etc. The major diversity in the case study is the racial and cultural differences. In the case study, the white staff usually “n congregate around the small staff swimming pool, play golf and tennis, eat together”. But employees from India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Korea and China stay more within their own racial groups and social circles. It shows that most employees in the company fail to accept and respect the racial and cultural differences. They do not successfully develop intercultural awareness, adaptivity and acceptance.

2. How to manage diversity?

In order to address the above-mentioned problems, Organizational Development (OD) practitioners or experts point out that it is important to develop a unique corporate culture to transcend ethnic or racial differences. In the organizational planning process, Lewin’s Change Model will be relevant in managing diversity and initiating organizational changes. The 3-step change model includes unfreezing, moving and refreezing stages. In the unfreezing stage, OD practitioners or HR managers should break down resistance to changes and create sense of psychological safety concerning changes. In the case study, Greta Schmidt, one of the stuff says, “This place isn’t the same anymore. Too many things have changed. This new HR stuff is absurd.” it shows that the resistance to change is very strong. Sammy and other key managers fail to break down such resistance. it is predictable that the ongoing change process will be very difficult. Moving is about bringing actual shifts in behaviors, It can be achieved through training or coaching. HR managers should provide necessary training courses such as cross-cultural management, psychological consoling sessions and coaching to tangibly reduce the undesired diversity. In the freezing stage, HR managers should implement a new evaluation system or performance management system to strength the efforts of organizational changes.