Businesses are increasingly under pressure to remain globally competitive. To secure success, decision-makers must recognise the need for fundamental change in organisational structure, management of diverse workforces and corporate culture.
Business managers, especially HR managers, play a central role in organisational change. These managers, who increasingly act as change agents, need to recognise the importance of the cultural diversity in workforces and manage it for the benefit of the organisation. Today's diverse workforce includes peoples from all over the world and especially neighbouring countries.
In New Zealand, the country's local employees are from different indigenous origins and cultures. With the many different languages and cultures in this country, it becomes a complex task for any manager to accommodate all cultures.
In order to implement any organisational and/or cultural change, a non-threatening, participative and gradual implementation process must be designed that does not demoralise local employees, but recognises their individual differences as assets to broaden perspectives and resolve common issues.
A diverse workforce, organisational culture, cultural changes and organisational development across international boundaries have obliged a rethink of the shape and the nature of organisations.
The multiple stakeholders are questioning the traditional hierarchical structures and demarcations of activities, functions, responsibilities, authority and effectiveness of organisations. Changes are then implemented to accommodate these multiple stakeholders' needs and interests.
The purpose of a recent empirical research, was to analyse the role of Human Resource (HR) departments in organisational development, the management of diverse workforces and cultural changes in order to identify ways of ensuring that New Zealand businesses stay globally competitive.
In 1994 a questionnaire was jointly compiled in New Zealand and Australia and used for a survey to identify the future role and quality of HR in those countries for the year 2000 for use by the Human Resource Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ, 1994).
Topics covered in the questionnaire included human resource goals, roles and activities, human resources staffing and implications of changes in the business environment.
Various sections of the questionnaire were used to compile the results on employee/industrial relations, work/family programs, employee/manager communications, workforce planning and workforce productivity. Furthermore a comparison of responses for current (2000) and future (2010) was also recorded.
More than two thirds of the respondents were from larger organisations (500 or more employees). The importance of this information is that most large companies in Australia and New Zealand have an HR department.
More than two thirds of the respondents in this study are HR practitioners which make their responses valuable in terms of predicting their future role in any changes in organisations.
Implications for managers
Workforce planning
HR should not be neglected as a sub-strategy in strategic workforce planning. HR practitioners want more flexibility in the deployment of diverse workforces.
Workforce productivity and quality output
Only 3 per cent of respondents regarded workforce productivity and quality output as satisfactory in 2000 and 50 per cent saw it as a top priority in 2010.
Employee/Industrial relations
Trade unions have not been very active in recent years in New Zealand and are normally open and willing to negotiate for any changes. Managers will nevertheless need to keep trade unions and all other stakeholders involved in the negotiation of change processes.
Work/family programs
Issues around work and family balance are expected to increase. The purpose of these programs is to ensure that the organisation adheres to high standards of ethics and integrity in all HR-related matters with all constituencies throughout culture and organisational changes.
Employee and manager communication
Respondents want better and more effective communication in businesses in the future. When managers under-communicate or send inconsistent messages, they fail to achieve their desired goals or desired changes.
Management's leadership
As change agents, managers have a proactive role in anticipating and shaping the environment for change. Respondents supported this important role of managers as change agents in implementing HR programs for cultural changes, organisational changes and organisational development.
Expect to see in successful organisations a new kind of manager and a new kind of employee in the future because of global competitive environments. The new kind of manager will have to develop the capacity to handle a complex and changing business environment to outgrow their rivals.
They will need to practice the art of inclusion, involving competent employees at all levels during the changing process.
They will have to be ultra sensitive to the challenges posed by diversity, recognising the nature of these different workforces, and must be ready to implement the necessary strategies to ensure successful organisational change.
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