Reference no: EM133535870 , Length: word count:1500

Learning Outcome 1: Evaluate organisational processes that can enhance organisational performance.

Learning Outcome 2: Evaluate own managerial knowledge, skills and abilities to assist in your development as an effective manager.

Learning Outcome 3: Analyse the relationship between management thinking and the practice of management in contemporary organisations.

Learning Outcome 4: Define the purpose and the range of activities associated with the effective management of people in organisations.Course Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate effective communication and teamwork skills.

Learning Outcome 6: Justify decisions and judgements that address a complex business issue considering the ethical and social consequences.

Background
You have been engaged as a consultant team by an organisation (the ‘Client') that welcomes thousands of students to their different student accommodation locations across university campuses around Australia. The mission of the Client is to help students make the most of their years at university by offering a combination of modern facilities, social opportunities, and a general environment where students can study and have fun.

The Client employs nearly 1000 people in various functions and roles to fulfil its mission at both the strategic and operational levels. A point of difference of the Client is its diverse staff of different ages, genders, and countries of origin. The Client is thus able to engage students on different cultural, language, demographic, and other interest levels to help the students use their accommodation as a platform to grow and succeed during their time at university.

However, in the last three years, the Client has observed a decline in the work engagement of its employees. Key reasons cited in their annual staff engagement survey were that a) individual differences appear to be not be valued and diversity is perceived as tokenistic, and b) the lack of reward initiatives for their engagement. Connecting employee engagement and diversity to business performance requires considerable effort and top management focus. It is to a large degree how you do it. This is where your team comes in.

The key to this assignment is to provide advice how the CEO of an organisation can ensure appropriate motivation strategies to address and embrace diversity in the organisation.

Instructions
You have been engaged as a consultant to produce a 1,500-word report with diagrams and tables for the CEO of an organisation which embraces diversity. The organisation manages student accommodation facilities on university campuses around Australia and it is located in Perth. It employs nearly 1000 people of different ages, genders and countries of origin. The purpose of your report is to provide advice to the CEO to how the organisation can ensure that appropriate motivation strategies address this diversity. Discuss your assumptions and the positives and negatives of the various motivational strategies for this diverse employee group and provide recommendations. In your report, you will critically research and evaluate three (3) effective strategies on how general management and/or human resources (HR) can embrace the diverse workforce, and present two (2) actionable recommendations on how management may re-ignite their employee engagement to leverage their point of difference.

Your team should ideally have 3 or 4 people. If your team decides to have more members, please seek approval from your facilitator beforehand. To convince the client of your arguments and recommendations, you need to demonstrate both your research skills and the ability to construct arguments from academic research as well as work together as a team.

This report (product) should be approximately 1,500 words (please indicate the word count on the first page of your assignment; plus, or minus 10% words is acceptable) in length, using both scholarly publications and professional articles. The process component is not included in this word count!

Key components:

Group Report (Product)

The report must consist of the following key components:

Title page
Table of contents.

Introduction
First, you need to set the boundaries of your report. Bring some key research here why diversity is a debated issue and why it has gained so much attention in recent years. There are many different definitions of diversity and based on research, define what diversity is for your group. Your whole argument will be in the context of that definition. Also briefly explain why it needs to be managed.

Make the aim of the paper clear. Be explicit. For example:

"the aim of the paper is to analyse motivations strategies that managers can employ to promote diversity and provide recommendations of how to apply those strategies in student accommodation facilities on university campuses around Australia/or Perth".

With this introduction, you provide a good background of why we need to understand diversity and what you are presenting to the reader.

Findings from the textbook and the literature
In this section, your team wants to address: What are motivation strategies? Fundamentally, a motivation strategy is an approach and way, which management can use to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. There are many different strategies managers can use, for example, leadership. By practising inclusive leadership towards the differences that employees have, they will embrace those differences much more and contribute to this positive environment. On the other hand, leadership, if not exercised properly, can lead to polarisation and people are treated as separate and different.

Be critical about the strategies that you use; they all have advantages and disadvantages. At the same time, choose which ones you deem the most relevant or interesting for your team. Please make sure that all your arguments are research-supported! Simply making claims will not do and will result in mark reduction.

Important: You are not making recommendations here. You are providing a well-researched overview of the strategies that are at your disposal. Please remember: LESS IS MORE. This means, perhaps choose around 3 strategies and explain those in-depth, instead of providing 5-6 with barely any explanation.

You need at least 15 sources of references. However, this is for a pass. A good distinction and high distinction have around 25 - 30 sources.

Your research should include recent peer-reviewed journal articles. At least fifteen (15) or more relevant scholarly articles are expected. Remember that you must choose scholarly articles (otherwise called ‘peer-reviewed or academic') from the ECU Library electronic databases or the Google Scholar databases. You may additionally add professional articles (Forbes, Economist, Bloomberg, etc) to support your arguments. Remember: An opinion that is backed with good research carries more weight!

Recommendations
Here, you can be creative. Propose how you would apply some of the strategies you analysed to managing accommodation facilities? How would you encourage the strategies as a manager? Why do you recommend it?

Conclusion
This can be quite short and should summarise what the assignment has covered. It is also an opportunity for you to look into the future and perhaps theorise why diversity will continue to be important in future workplaces and why.

Reference List (not part of the word count)

All reference sources must be acknowledged within the body of the text (in-text citation Links to an external site.) and listed at the end (end-text reference Links to an external site.). Standard APA 7th edition referencing style should be used. It is NOT acceptable to cut and paste material from source directly into your assignment. Please ensure you understand how to paraphrase and reference correctly.

Appendix
Here you will place all the evidence of your teamwork. We are looking for (i) three meeting minutes, as this shows both the accountability of the team and that the tasks for the project were accomplished.

In summary you must demonstrate that you have worked as a team.