Scenario

You may use your own employment context, or that of another organisation with which you are very familiar, to base your assignment and you must cite clear recommendations for improvement.

You must produce a portfolio, which is appropriately presented. Your Portfolio must comprise the following:

• Within your organization (or one with which you are very familiar) conduct an analysis and evaluation of the importance of aligning HR strategy with corporate strategy in determining HR plans and policies in support of organisational efficiencies and the effective management of people, including recommendations for improvement.

• Critically evaluate what is meant by organisational culture and discuss the relationship between culture, power, politics and conflict; and the relationship between culture and morale, motivation, empowerment and behaviour of employees, citing recommendations on how to influence the behaviour of employees.  Evaluate your own or your chosen organisation's welfare culture.  Give practical examples of the commitment to staff welfare and identify any areas for improvement.  Analyse the impact a commitment to staff welfare has on strategic objectives and on organisational values, staff morale and motivation.

• Critically evaluate a range of theories including, but not limited to, legal and organisational frameworks for grievance and disciplinary processes, for the management of people within an organization, you should explore the wider global context and, if appropriate, include reference to external agencies and alternative dispute resolution and recommendations for improvement.

• Critically evaluate a range of financial models that an organisation of your choice might use to assess the financial viability of a major global HR initiative.  You should include in your evaluation the potential impact of international financial factors such as foreign currency and interest rates.   

• Identify an event or incident which had a significant impact on an organisation's employees and critically reflect on your own learning in this module, evaluating how the theories and concepts influence your role as a leader and manager and exploring the potential impact on your organisation.  As a result, please identify any effects on your personal and professional development, citing actions which you now need to take and any potential barriers.  

Analysis and evaluation of HR policies 

The importance of aligning HR strategies with corporate strategies

The HRM is one of the most important operations in any business organisation that deals with the workforce of the organisation. On the other hand, the Human Resource Management does not directly indicate the strategic business operation of the organisation in a particular industry (Stahl, 2012). However, the HRM policies and techniques help any organisation to build their competency level strong enough to develop and sustain in the industry while making increasing profit. Therefore, the major regulators of the strategic business operation namely mission, vision, operational ethics and integrity rely on the employees of the organisation (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). In another words for developing, implementing and sustaining an effective business strategic model, a company must align their workforce and the workforce management with the business strategy. This alignment of HRM policies and strategies are called strategic human resource management. Many benefits this alignment or strategic HRM can be highlighted.   

For any organisation, the Human resource management policies are the subset of overall organisational business policies that are not limited within the recruitment, training and development. At the same time, globalisation is the part of this strategic human resource that allows the parent organisation to handle the diversity management of the dissimilar environment simultaneously (Bratton & Gold, 2012). The five P’s Model allows any company to develop their strategic HRM model. The components of 5 P’s are Philosophy, Politics, Programs, Practices, Process. Philosophy refers the statements of the company that hold the value and ethics of the company and how they treat their employees and their cultures. Policies refer the initiation and implementation of shared values and guidelines for various related business issues. Programs refer the group of activities that are used to initiate and perform an organisational change or effort to achieve certain objectives (Brewster et al., 2012). Practices refer the regular behavioural operations that allow the workforce to execute their regular activities in a certain way. Processes are a group of synchronised activities that defines the way of executing the operation for the workforce.  

The HR strategies and policies of the organization globally

The Globalisation phenomenon is a essential aspect that must be highlighted during the strategic business planning of a internationalised company like Addax Petroleum. Generally, the global phenomenon emphasizes the Global Communities, Global Markets, Global Production, Global Economy, Global organisation and Global Socio-ecology. Therefore, an internationalise organisation has to considers this factors. Along with this global phenomenon, the most crucial aspect within the organisational operation is Global Strategic Human Resource Management that allows the company to handle the diversity of labour market and employees of the dissimilar environment simultaneously (Liu & Lee, 2008). In another words, Global HRM refers to managing the organisational operation outside the domestic boundaries; comparative HRM practice, functions, system in different countries; managing international workforce in domestic environment, managing people under the influences of globalised environment.

A globalised organisation has to face some challenges to perform their HR activities such as adopting the HRM policies of operational nation, preparing the flawless unitary HRM policies that fit in every corner of the world, managing strong Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), preparing global leadership, identifying skill for local level and adopting the business compliances. The essentiality of these factors differs as per the complexity and environment of the national regulations and code of conducts enforced by the nation in which the particular branch or subsidiary of parent company is performing. Within all of these factors cross cultural environment is the major constrain for diverse operational environment. When a company spread the branches into different cultural part of the globe, they must consider and prepare the strategic tools to handle a workforce of racial and cultural diversity (Tahvanainen, 2010). This diverse work environment occurs both overseas and domestic brunches of the business depending on the integrity of strategic intervention of the globalised human resource management. Apart from that, the company should also aware of the local laws for the hiring and other HR policies while managing the remote workforce. In order to fulfil the business objectives with strategic HRM the company should develop the global competence, cross-cultural awareness, sensitivity, agility and humanity.  

The effectiveness of current HR policies

Addax Petroleum Limited is an international company that manages and control global workforce while considering the cultural diversity within the work environment for both domestic and overseas platform. The major tactics that the Strategic HRM of Addax International utilises is attracting the workforce towards the global business objectives that makes the strong bound within the organisational culture and collective performance. For this company the workforce competence is the major regulator that influences the risk management, CSR operations, inclusion and employee relations of the company (Dix, Forth & Sisson, 2009). For this same reason, the company also promotes its talent acquisition, employee retention, recognising and rewarding within their workforce. Another individuality of Addax Petroleum is its utilisation of competitive risks and potentials in HRM. Although the origin of the company is china this company has made many effective strategic decision within their workforce policies that made them strong enough to penetrate the west Asian and African market of petrochemical exploration and production. Addax Petroleum changes their strategic HRM policies in every 4 years to sustain the quality and efficiency of the strategic choice and implementation. The reviewing and revising strategic HRM plan allows the company to establish optimal fit between the organisation and environment.

When it comes to the organisational structure development in a wider business platform the strategic human resource management helps Addax Petroleum to increase their productivity by performance measurement while keeping the balance within the organisational culture, power and politics. One of the most essential practices in this SHRM is performance measurement while analysing the cultural and political competence level of the Workforce that are involved in the development and sustention of the operational integrity within the organisation (Harris, Tuckman & Snook, 2012). This strategic implementation of standard HR management is also appropriate for the organisational change management. Addax Petroleum Limited is a company where an employee has to work with his or her colleagues from different cultural and social background that also promotes the ‘unity among diversity’ concept. On the other hand the internationalise operation sometimes makes unwanted conflicts between different financial plans and value change models where the budget of each individual operating centres are different.  Negotiating with local supplier and other business partners is the key activity that the organisation performs when needed (Rich, Lepine, & Crawford, 2010). This type of negotiation have been proven very effective when the deal with the cross-cultural environment of middle-east countries.  

Recommendations for improvement

Addax Petroleum Nigeria as well as Addax Petroleum International Limited has many strategic procedure to manage their Human Resource system in a globalised environment while considering the cross cultural conflicts and negotiations. However, there are some other factors that can improve the overall strategic implementation and performance level of their existing Human Resource Management.

As a multinational farm Addax Petroleum can implement simulated knowledge sharing that can allow the organisation to train and develop a large range of employees. The simulating knowledge sharing can also reduce the operational cost of the overall strategic HRM implementation. The company has enough wider platforms and verity of   environments that will allows the management to implement this simulating knowledge sharing concept (Lipsky, Seeber & Fincher, 2003). Selecting appropriate experts within the workforce who can show the other workers how to process and implement the skills while sharing the knowledge. While managing this knowledge sharing will be implemented through simulated environment, Addax Petroleum should focus on their talent recognition procedure.

Informational integrity is one of the major issues in recent years when it comes to the globalised human resource management of a multinational farm. Addax Petroleum can improve their leadership model by implementing best fit model within it while making appropriate performance and concept within their work process and business activities. In this regards, enforcing strong and effective organisational structure is also important (Purcell, 2014). The transparent human resource allocation is the key tool to achieve this goal of strengthening the organisational structure. Every employee should know the roles and responsibilities under the terms and conditions of the organisation.

Building a conductive social and cultural architecture within the employee relationship is one of the most essential part of developing the optimum SHRM for any multinational company. Addax Petroleum has workforce from diverse cultural and social diversity, where cross-cultural workforce management and communication can solve any operational conflict (Saundry et al., 2014). To improve the performance and integrity of different operational centres across the globe Addax Petroleum should building a conductive social and cultural architecture within their core organisational operation of human resource management.

Organisational culture, power, politics and conflict: 

The term organizational culture is referred to the values as well as behaviors of the employees in the workplace that contribute to the unique psychological as well as social environment of an organization. The organizational culture of a company represents the collective values, principles and beliefs of the employees and is a  product of factors that includes history, product, market, types of employees, technology , vision, mission and values of a specific company and the management style followed by the management of that company (Robertson & Marwick, 2009).

Relationship between culture, power, politics and conflict

In spite of the fact that Power, politics and conflict are three more unwanted part of the organizational culture, in majority of organizations these three factors are found to be the most prevalent as well as real valued. Power, politics and conflict has the potential to influence the behaviour of the employees and impose an adverse impact on the decision making process of an organization. According to Schein, (1985) there prevails three levels of culture that includes corporate culture, social enterprise culture and organizational and sub culture. Corporate culture can be defined as a set of tacitly understood, broad rules that helps the employees to handle adverse as well as unimaginable circumstances. In contrary, organizational culture holds the organization together by focusing on values, beliefs as well as expectations that members of that organization are entitled to share.   Power politics and conflicts are three parts of both corporate as well as organizational culture that needs to be managed and eradicated by the management.

When it comes to power and conflict three different approaches, namely, unitary, pluralistic and radical approaches are followed by organizations to deal with the two mentioned factors. Three approaches can be segregated with respect to zero sum and non zero sum power. Zero sum power theory can be defined as the theory where the gain and loss of an participant is exactly balanced by the losses and gain of other participants (Armstrong, 2014). On contrary, non-zero sum power theory includes a situation where the gain or loss of one decision maker does not impose any impact on the gain or loss of any other decision makers. The Unitary approach of power falls under the zero sum power while the pluralistic and radical approach falls under non zero sum power theory.

According to the Pluralistic theory, there should be more than on one source of power in the organization. For instance, Unions are often a central component to the pluralistic approach that seeks a balance of power between leadership and employees. According to this theory, conflict in an organization is inevitable and plays a major role for innovation as well as growth of the company. On contrary, the unitary theory suggests that all that the purpose of an organization should not remain confined within the leaders only but should be shared with stakeholders and employees as well. Therefore in unitary approach, the power is concentrated in the top level of management (Brewster, 2008). The basic difference between pluralistic approaches an unitary approach is that while in unitary approach the power belongs only to the leaders, in pluralistic approach the power is defused between the employer as well as the employees.  The radical approach of power and politics is somewhat similar to that of the pluralistic approach. Like the pluralistic theory, this theory also suggests that conflict is inevitable. However according to this theory, conflicts between the workers results from the capitalist nature of the society and hence to avoid conflict, appropriate regulations should be developed buy the management that will ensure the safety as well as fair salary of the employees (Budhwar & Debrah, 2001). The term politics is closely related to power and is defined as the activities taken within organizations to develop, acquire and use power in order to obtain preferred outcome in situations where there is decencies or uncertainty about the choices.

Relationship between culture and morale, motivation, empowerment and behaviour of employees

The culture of an organization highly regulates the morale, empowerment, behaviour as well motivation of the employees. Lesser is the conflict and politics in an organization better is culture of the organization. An organization with less number of conflicts and politics demonstrate an employee friendly environment. Work friendly environment, in turn, enhances the commitment of the employees towards the organization. Not only that, positive environment in the workplace encourages positive relationship between the employees and thus enhance their commitment towards the organization. The leadership style, which is a major part of organizational structure of a company, is another factor that regulates employee motivation, empowerment and behaviour. According to researchers, organizations that follow radical and unitary approach of power are less likely to suffer from employee attrition compared to organizations that follows unitary approach of leadership (Crawley, Swailes & Walsh, 2013). This is because, radical and pluralistic approach provides higher empowerment to the workers, which are considered to be a highly crucial motivational factor. Organizations that allows employees to take active part in the decision making process, enjoys high employee commitment and responsibility. Nor only that, transparent and politics free decision making process makes the employees feel empower and act as an intrinsic motivational factor. High morale of the leaders in an organization is another crucial factor that enriches the culture of organizations. Organizations that are famous for making ethical decisions are less likely to suffer from employee attrition (Alfes et al., 2013). Another crucial aspect of organizational culture includes acknowledgement of the effort given by the employees. This factor imposes immense impact on employee motivation. There exist two types of employee motivation namely extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Motivation that is associated with external factors like monetary enhancement is known as extrinsic motivation. In contrary, motivation associated with self satisfaction is known as intrinsic motivation (French, 2010). While extrinsic motivations include enhancement in incentive scale of the employees or provision of a commendable performance appraisal, intrinsic motivation is comprised of provision of justified amount of leaves, implementation of work of home or celebration of festivals together.

Evaluation of organizational welfare of Addax petroleum

The Addax petroleum company follows unitary approach when it comes to organizational development. This approach imposes both positive as well as negative impact on organizational welfare of the company. The chief advantages of unitary organization approach include unity between the employees as well as the employers of the organization. The work environment of the Addax petroleum is highly employee friendly. A mutual respect prevails between the employees and the employers of the mentioned organization. However, considering the fact that managers are the key leaders of the organization, Addax petroleum often suffers from conflicts between the employees and the employers due to managers who lacks appropriate leadership skills. Power difference between the employers and employees is another major issue associated with organizational welfare (Holden, 2002).  Conflict due to power imposes negative impact on the productivity and performance of the employees. Lack of productivity not only results in deterioration of the overall revenue of Addax petroleum but also is a major reason behind employee attrition of the company. Besides that, another issue associated with the organizational welfare of Addax Petroleum is the high workload faced by the employees. Considering the fact that the unitary approach of organizational management involves unquestioned decision making by the leaders, the managers of the mentioned organization are imposing excessive pressure on the employees in order to deal with high employee attrition (Bingham, 2016). This excessive workload is not only destroying the work life balance of the employees but also giving birth to several health issues. Thus, excessive workload is hampering the organizational welfare of the organization.

Recommendation for improvement

In spite of the fact that there prevails a good relation between the employees of the organization, several improvements are needed in the organizational culture of Addax Petroleum in order to enhance their overall revenue by implementing an effective organisational culture. In the following paragraph, some effective recommendations for the mentioned company have been discussed:

• In order to improve the relationship between the employer and the employees, the mentioned organization should change its approach of organizational culture. According to researchers, multinational organizations should implement the pluralistic approach to minimize the issues leading to conflicts.  According to the pluralistic theory, given working environments consist of different workers of different beliefs, culture, skills, attitudes and knowledge (Lane et al., 2009). Unlike the unitary approach, pluralistic approach will help the management to distribute the power between the employees and the employers. This distributor of power will empower the employees of the organization and as a result of this occurrence of conflict between the employers and the staff will reduce significantly.
• In order to prevent excessive employee attrition, the HR department of Addax petroleum needs to implement several employee motivational techniques. For instance, an effective incentive plan needs to be drafted in order to motivate the employees who are working overtime. At leart two work from home per months should be provided in order to further reduce the stress of the employee (Stahl, 2012).
• In order to gain competitive advantage, the management of Addax Petroleum should keep their salary scale slightly higher than its competitors. This will not only prevent employee attrition but will also attract skilled employees who have the capability to enhance the revenue of the organization.

Legal frameworks for Grievance and disciplinary process 

Legal and organisational framework

The workforce of any organisation has the responsibility to maintain the positive and respectful relationship with each other while keeping the legal and regulatory framework in mind. The ethical environment of any organisation determines the competency of the organisation where the regulations and procedures are enforced within the workforce practice. The strategic human resource management needs to consider the legal framework of the company while recruiting, training and developing an employee. The employee relationship, occupational health and safety measures are chiefly dependent on the role of formal procedures in regulating employee relation under the legal framework to avoid occasional conflicts and operational disputes (Tayeb, 2005). Grievance and Discipline are the two major aspects of the enforcement of legal framework of any organisation. In Addax Petroleum Limited the organisation has to aware of the compliance procedure of every nation they are operating in. From the countries of Middle-East to African continent each nation has their own set of rules and regulations for human resource, labour rights, human rights, workforce health and safety (Friedman, Dyke & Murphy, 2009). Therefore as a multinational company, Addax Petroleum has to align their strategic human resource practices with the individual regulatory frameworks across the globe where taking care of their core organisation ethics and values about employees.

Grievance processes in the organisation

The grievance in organisation environment refers the concerns, problems and complaints that employees raise against each other or against the employer. Every institution has their own code of conduct to deal with any grievance situations. Fairness and transparency are the most essential factors that determine the work ethics within the workforce of an organisation. Some components of legal frameworks provide the outline for the grievance dealing procedure of an organisation namely Grievance resolution options, responsibilities of employees, principles, professional leading and support from the managerial level. Two types of grievances resolution process should be considered to develop the legal framework namely Formal and Informal Grievance (Shen & Chanda, 2009). The informal grievance resolution process aims to reach a resolution acceptable to complainants and respondents while formulating the solution by discussion between both parties. The formal grievance resolution process requires more systematic and detailed procedures prioritising the evidences and findings. Addax Petroleum Limited follows both formal and informal way of processing the grievance depending on the situation and importance of the breaches or operational discrepancies. However, Addax Petroleum Limited developed their standard grievance process in a way that can deal with the tension of command and control verses employee engagement.

Disciplinary process in the organisation

Disciplinary procedures define the standards of conducting specific legal activities under the ethical consideration of the organisation to provide fair method for dealing with failure and breaches. Encouraging the employees to improve their legal and ethical perspective about work process and environment is another aim of the disciplinary process. Addax Petroleum Limited follows some basic disciplinary processes such as prohibiting informal complaint from employee side about management, prohibiting unauthorised discussion and meeting without informing the authority, prohibiting managerial domination against any appeal (Camerer & Vespsalainer, 2007). The key principles of the disciplinary process are providing confidentiality, indicating unethical or unauthorised action, informing employees of all level about the existing code of conduct, responding immediately after getting informed with evidence against illegal activities. The aim of the disciplinary process is to provide healthy environment to all employees where the workers would have their rights to stand against any unethical issue while ensuring the disciplined actions or procures (Lewis & Sargeant, 2013). In any organisation all the employees should aware of the legal significance of the disciplinary procedures considering the capability, conducts, redundancy and violations. Addax Petroleum Limited strictly prohibited any unfair dismissal of employee while prioritising the accusations from the employees against the supervisors or management.  

Difference between Grievance and Disciplinary process:

Recommendations for improvement

Addax Petroleum Limited has developed their induction training and development procedure in a way that can successfully make the new employees aware of the roles and regulations. However, being a global organisation Addax Petroleum Limited should also consider some additional factors that can enhance their workforce efficiency.

Addax Petroleum Limited can implement Mediation as a structured discussion between the complainant/s and respondent/s designed to troubleshooting the issues in a predetermined process to reach the resolution. Considering the fact that Mediation may not be appropriate in all cases Addax Petroleum Limited should also plan their other voluntary resolution options (Hatch & Cuncliffe, 2013).

During developing the disciplinary procedure, Addax Petroleum Limited should also consider the effectiveness of alternate consequences or failure that causes the unexpected regulation when the formal conduction is under process. Choosing the right way to manage rather than avoiding the conflicts is the key strategy to handle this kind of the situation (Steward & Rigg, 2011).

Addax Petroleum Limited should appreciate the employees who follow the codes of conduct and the disciplinary process to stand against any misconduct under the organisation. It will encourage the other employees to follow the disciplinary procedure in similar situation.

At the very beginning stage of the training and development process Addax Petroleum Limited should train their novice employee about the code of conduct for grievance and disciplinary procedures that have to be maintained (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2010). At the same time, the employees should also be informed about their rights.  

Financial factors and HR infinitives 

Financial models for global HR policies

Along with the productivity, legal and cultural aspect the strategic HRM should also take care of the financial aspect of the Human Resource operation that deals with the profitability, liquidity and risk in the performance of the workforce from both collective and individual perspective. Better employee performance leads to better profitability while changing the revenue, cost, share price, cash flow and payroll expanse simultaneously. For a global organisation like Addax Petroleum Limited, the national and international level monetary vale exchange policy and economical cardinality play a major role in total performance indicator or TPI (Acas, 2009). Within the total performance indicator the major variable is financial performance indicator or FPI that includes the resultant profit, revenue, cost, ROI, cashflow and share price regulated by the performance of the existing workforce. When it comes to the financial outcomes of workforce one of the major part is payroll or the remuneration structure of the employees (Harvey & Moeller, 2009). For a multinational company collective bargaining of local level has essential impact on international level profit generation.  During analysing the net profit the taxation is another important factor that is enforced for both international trading, business operation and even for human resource operation. Fitzgerald and Moon's Building Block Model is widely used performance measurement model considering the Intangibility, perishability, inseparability, variability of the company as well as the transfer of ownership.

Financial models for HRM in the organisation

Addax Petroleum Limited uses many performance measurement and improvement models to enhance their overall financial performance. One of the major models utilised by this company is performance recognition and appraisal model that allow the management of Addax Petroleum Limited to find out the most productive employees and to apprise the employee as motivational and encouraging activity (Thite, Wilkinson & Shah, 2012).  The company has their own set of performance indicator that helps them to determine the most productive and cost effective employees within the local and international workforce. Addax Petroleum Limited provides both Extrinsic and Intrinsic rewards to their employees for their motivation and encouragement. Addax Petroleum Limited also utilises the internal recruitment process as their tool of rewarding and appraisals (McKenna et al., 2010). Measuring the financial benefit of the current HRM policies prioritises the 3 Es model consists of Economy efficiency and effectiveness. The effectiveness is divided into three variable components namely input, output and impact. An optimal input output balance is also called Value For Money of VFM that depends on the investment on the workforce operation, payroll, performance appraisal, rewarding, training and development procedure. For financial performance measurement, Balance Scorecard approach is also used. In this approach, a scorecard consisting individual attributes or performance indicators represent the performance of an individual employee or a department by summarising the individual scores gathered by the competitors (Hollinshead, 2010). Through this tool, Addax Petroleum Limited can easily determine the strength and weakness of an employee or department while visualising the collective performance level.  

Impact of internal financial factors

There are multiple factors that regulate the internal financial performance of an organisation. For a multinational company the attributes, which regulate the financial performance of the company and their operational subsidiaries, are National wages regulation, regulation for employee compensation, value of different currencies, economical functionality of different countries and ROI or return on investment. Return on Investment is also considered as a unit of financial performance measurement. Mathematically the ROI emphasise the percentage of profit divided by the total capital employed (Sullivan, 2012). The efficiency and productivity of the workforce directly regulates the profit through their productivity and capital employed by minimising the needs of training and development cost. Therefore, the performance of the workforce can change the value of return on investment or ROI. Another two major variable for multinational companies that regulate the financial performance is taxation and interest rate.

Each country has individual taxation system and rate in their trading, human resource, wages land, monetary or assets transaction and other business operations. Country with low taxation regulation and rate provide better financial performance of the business while higher taxation rate and regulations can decrease the overall financial performance in spite of having effective manpower and profitable business operation. On the other hand, the economical development and status also determines the interest rate of a country (Lawrence-Wiles, L. & Ashmore, 2014). To formulate and execute the overseas business operation Addax Petroleum Limited has to take loans from the national and privatised banks. However, a country with higher interest rate for loan decreases the net income while having a high gross profit. Addax Petroleum Limited chooses African countries for their business operation in order to avoid the high taxation and interest rate.

Recommendations for improvement

The financial performance measurement model of Addax Petroleum Limited is already strong to control and manage the global business. However, some changes or alteration can increase their profitability in terms of domestic and national business operations.  

Addax Petroleum Limited should ensure that the employees are taking ownership of the standards where they need to participate in the budget and standard setting process. It will allow them to accept the standardisation constrains more easily while boosting the workforce morale and achievability (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). On the other hand, Addax Petroleum Limited should also set the limit to avoid resultant consequences such as budget slack for unlimited participation.

Addax Petroleum Limited should clearly describe their mission, vision and business ethics to their existing employees and new employees for both domestic and international operating centres. While initiating the work process in change management Addax Petroleum Limited management board should also remind the workforce about their objectives with respect to their job roles. This process will keep them motivated while performing any specific and measurable operation.

Addax Petroleum Limited should also focus on their 6 regulatory factors namely Competitive performance, Financial performance, Quality of service, Flexibility, Resources and innovation. However, as a petrochemical company Addax Petroleum Limited has limited opportunity to initiate innovativeness within their performance. However, they can formulate their organisation structure and management in innovative way that can lead to optimum profitability.

Addax Petroleum Limited should also strengthen their existing workforce performance through implementing the Total Quality Management. Total Quality Management or TQM is an advanced way of enhance the equipment, workforce, management and innovation strategy by utilising various advanced facilities like Information Technology (Iles & Zhang, 2013).  Addax Petroleum Limited should perform virtual training and leadership tools through social media in order to reduce the operational cost and increase financial performance.

Personal and professional development 

Description of the incident

While I was posted as the HR manager of the Addax Petroleum, I evidenced an incident of racial discrimination. The incident took place in the branch of Annax petroleum located at Iran, Kurdistan. Considering the fact that a good number of Nigerian employees were transferred to Kurdisthan, the ratio of Nigerian employees to the Iranian employees were 1:2. During a project, an Iranian employee showed disrespect to an Nigerian employee of his team by abusing him with respect to his color. This conversation took the form of a conflict and as a result the entire team got divided into two sides, one supporting the Iranian employee and another group supporting the Nigerian employee. As a result of this conflict, the project got suspended and the company suffered from a huge amount of financial loss. Not only that, the all the Nigerian employees demanded termination of the mentioned Iranian employee.

Feelings

The chief emotion that dominated me at that point of time was anxiety. I had been HR manager of Annax Petroleum Iraq for 2 prolonged years and these are the kind of situations that made me feel highly uncomfortable. In my mind, I was constantly searching for a way out to solve the situation. However, in order to pacify the crowd, I ensure them that stern step will be taken in order to deal with the mentioned issue. Despite of that, I felt guilty about the occurrence of the incident, since as a HR manager it was my duty to prevent the mentioned issue. I felt that the company had undergone the huge loss due to my reluctance.  

Evolution

Being the HR manager of the branch, my role was to prevent as well as minimize any kind of conflict occurring in the institution. I was unhappy of the fact that employees of the organization lacks respect towards each other orientation and culture. I also evaluated that lack of education about cultural diversity and training that encourages employees to develop respect for each other can be considered as a major reason behind the conflict. Moreover, the stigma that a good number of Iranian employees poses about the complexion and standard of their fellow Nigerian peers can be considered as another major reason behind the mentioned conflict. Hence I evaluated that improvement in the cross cultural environment of the company is highly required.

Analysis

According to Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, the culture of the society in which an organization is located imposes immense impact on the culture and behavior of employees in the organization. Thus, it can be understood that cultural rigidity in Iran is one of the major reasons behind the issue. Lack of cultural competence between the Iranian as well as Nigerian employees of the branch is another crucial reason that enhanced the conflict. According to the researchers, in order to prevent cross cultural and racial conflicts between the employees in an organization, employees should be educated in order to develop respect for each other’s culture. However, n significant training or education was provided to the employees are provided to the HR department of Annex Petroleum, Iran. Moreover, in order to develop an effective bond between the employees, both formal as well as informal communication should be encouraged between the employees. However, no such initiatives were taken the company. In spite of the fact that the situation was specified by me by assuring the termination of the employee, I understood that this is not a permanent solution to the mentioned issue. I furthermore understand that, the company will not be able to last longer in this field if immediate step to eradicate the issue is not taken by me as a HR manager.

Conclusion

From the incident, I learned that development of respect for each other’ culture between the employees is a highly crucial factor that imposes direct impact on the revenue and reputation of an organization. Hence, I took the decision of taking stern steps in order to ensure that each and every employee respect their peers so that such incidents do not take place in future.

Action plan

In order to ensure that such incident do not take place in future I will definitely implement an effective education and training plan to educate the employees about the importance of respecting their peers from another cultural orientation. Secondly, I will ensure to include strict penalty and legal steps against the employees who will disrespect or insult their peers based on racial discrimination. Finally, I will introduce several ice-breaking sessions so that the employees can develop the ability to know each other.

Conclusion 

From the above discussion it can be said, that the Strategic Human Resource Management allows Addax Petroleum Limited to build and maintain the Human Resource Management aligned with the strategic business operations. Strategic human resource also implies the inter relationship between the people, organisation, culture, environment, financial benefit and brand equity. For its cultural and ethical values, the management of Addax Petroleum Limited believes that prioritising their business ethics through which the company can evolve to the further level and defines the integrity of the employee relationship along ensuring the interaction and understanding of all stakeholders. The five P’s Model allows Addax Petroleum Limited to develop their strategic HRM model. The components of 5 P’s are Philosophy, Politics, Programs, Practices, Process. The global phenomenon for a company like Addax Petroleum Limited emphasizes the Global Communities, Global Markets, Global Production, Global Economy, Global organisation and Global Socio-ecology.

From the above discussion, it can be said that the essentiality of Strategic Human Resource Management differs as per the complexity and environment of the national regulations and code of conducts enforced by the nation in which the particular branch or subsidiary of parent company is performing. Addax Petroleum Limited is an international company that manages and control global workforce while considering the cultural diversity within the work environment for both domestic and overseas platform. When it comes to the organisational structure development in a wider business platform the strategic human resource management helps Addax Petroleum to increase their productivity by performance measurement while keeping the balance within the organisational culture, power and politics. The culture of a global organization like Addax Petroleum highly regulates the morale, empowerment, behaviour as well motivation of the employees. The ethical environment and legal framework of any organisation determines the competency of the organisation where the regulations and procedures are enforced within the workforce practice. Along with the productivity, legal and cultural aspect the strategic HRM should also take care of the financial aspect of the Human Resource operation that deals with the profitability, liquidity and risk in the performance of the workforce.

According to Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, the culture of the society in which Addax Petroleum Limited is located imposes immense impact on the culture and behavior of employees in the organization. From my occupational experience I have learned that development of respect for each other’ culture between the employees is a highly crucial factor that imposes direct impact on the revenue and reputation of an organization. As per the personal and professional development plan, I will definitely implement an effective education and training plan to educate the employees about the importance of respecting their peers from another cultural orientation.

References: 

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