Emotional Performance and Customer Service

Discuss about the Emotional Performance and Customer Service.

The presence of diverse set of people coming from different socio-cultural backgrounds and working together in the company is referred to as diversity in the workplace. The cultural factors such as age, color, race, gender, physical ability and ethnicity are included in the factors of ethnicity. Diversity is inclusive of all the people across all the levels in the company. Diversity enables the embedding of an organizational culture wherein each of the employee can achieve their career aspirations regardless of the inhibition of race, gender, nationality, religion or other factors which are relevant to performance. The enabling of diversity in the workplace is known as diversity and it is promoted in the workplaces in order to enable the workforce to perform to its full potential by allowing the positive work environment wherein no one group has advantage or disadvantage in comparison to the other groups (Cascio 2018). The bringing of diverse people into the workplaces enables the different talents, viewpoints as well as interests to work together and work for the benefit of the organizations. The non-promotion of diversity in the workplaces will lead to the failure of the organization to work effectively and the organization will not be able to take a holistic approach in order to efficiently eliminate the discrimination from adversely affecting the employees and the customers. The different employees who are hired by the organization are given cross-cultural training about the different cultures of the world and making the employees aware about the discrimination and biases which the employees of a different culture might feel due to the ignorance of the employees of the organization (Gabriel et al. 2016).  The managers and the other employees also need to be given training regarding the diversity of the employees. The different organizations impart practical and real life training to the employees in order to make them aware about the necessity to handle the situations, which can arise due to cultural differences.

Cultural beliefs, which are infused in a person from the childhood, shape the perceptions of the person regarding the world and these perceptions become the reference point for the persons, which they use in analyzing the world and the day-to-day activities. People are often unreasonable in understanding the culture of the people who are different from their culture. People with ethnocentric viewpoint often fail to respect and understand the different cultures of the other people. The culture shock is defined as the reaction which the person gets when the person moves in to a different environment as compared to his/her familiar environment. The immediate issues faced by the person includes feelings of frustration, paranoia, critical of local people, culture and customs, loss of sense of humor, changes in the eating as well as sleeping habits. If the manager of McDonald’s is shifted to a different location then it will become difficult for his/her cultural adjustment. There are numerous stages in the cultural adjustment phase. The first stage is the honeymoon period, which is the initial period which is spent in anticipation of shifting to the new place. Then comes the crisis phase which is the experiences bearing the brunt of the culture shock (Bratton and Gold 2017). It is followed by the recovery phase which is the travelers becoming adjusted to the new lifestyle. Then comes the adjustment phase wherein the traveler develops the ability to function in the new environment and culture.

The reformation of the McDonald’s organizational structure was done on the 1^st of July, 2005 and this was done to improve the handling of the company’s global operations (Shields et al. 2015). The organizational structure performs the important work of coordinating the organizational components  in order to achieve the business objectives. The arrangement or the various patterns of interaction among the various business areas are performed by the McDonald’s organizational structure. McDonald successfully manages the efficiency and the performance in the operation through its efficient organizational structure and establishes its name as a reputed global fast food restaurant (Ranjan 2017).  The company’s objectives are achieved based on the efficiency and the productivity of the employees of the organization. There are four common types of team structure which are commonly seen. These include-

1. Problem-solving teams- The smaller teams comprising of 5-10 members and who belong from a particular department and who meet every week in order to discuss and solve the problems of the individual department functioning. The members present their individual suggestions for improving the processes and after due deliberations, give their feedbacks and suggestions for implementation in the future.
2. Self- Managed Teams- The duty of the problem solving team is to provide suggestions and feedbacks in order to improve the working of the organization but the implementation is done by the Self-Managed Teams (Sheehan 2014). The Self-Managed teams were created with the objective of addressing the challenges and deliberating on the issues.
3. Cross-Functional Teams- The employees from diverse buniness functions come together to achieve a common objective of completing the task and this team is called the cross-functional teams. The members of the organization who come from diverse backgrounds come together as a team and bring their expertise in order to accomplish the task.
4. Virtual teams- Internet has enabled teams to operate in a virtual environment and in virtual teams, there is online collaboration, which facilitates the working of the organization in a much flexible and fast manner.

There are various barriers which can hinder the meaningful participation in a cross-cultural workplace. These barriers can be on the basis of language and culture. Often, it is noticed in a diverse workplace there exists different groups of people who are engaged in communication with each other as well as the clients. These workers might be from  different backgrounds and there is possibility of difficulty in communication if the workers and the employees are from non-English speaking backgrounds. In order to solve the problem, the proper training can be  arranged for the workers to solve the communication problems. The barriers of culture shock while shifting to an entirely different country is experienced by the workers and the employees (Farnham 2015). The McDonald’s being a global brand operates in a number of countries. The employees and the workers need to shift to new countries and the cultural shock which they receive is immense. The culture shock can be in a variety of factors such as religion, language, dressing, people, time zone as well as a number of other factors. It is very difficult for the people to adjust in a new environment and work culture due to the existence of a wide range of problems (Kavanagh and Johnson 2017).

ANS- Shifting to a new country brings with it a new set of challenges for the organization in the long run. The same case applies to that organization which is shifting their initial workforces in China. This is due to the fact that the employees of the organization are subjected to a wide of culture shocks which becomes difficult for the workers to adapt considering the fact that majority of the worker base are from non-Chinese backgrounds. The first noticeable issue, which confronts the employees of the organization, are the changes in the dress code. The dress and the attire of China is completely different than the rest of the world and it is no surprise that people from different parts of the world find Chinese attires and dress completely unique. The next culture shock which confronts any person who visits China is the Language Barrier with the people facing great difficulty in understanding and comprehending Mandarin, the local spoken language in China (Tyson 2014). The time zone in China is also one of the many barriers which challenge the people visiting China for the first time in their lives. There is only one official time zone followed in China and even though China is a big country and stretches several miles, still there exists only one time zone. The religion in China is very uncommon. There are many adherent s of different religious groups in China with the majority being from Buddhism as well as Christians, Muslims and atheists as well. The women in China are also held highly in the Chinese society and the Chinese concept of beauty is referred to as ‘baifumei” which literally means white and wealthy. Women in the Chinese communities play a crucial role in the running of the organization and compared to the other countries, the Women in china play a much bigger role (Cooke, Saini and Wang 2014).

The employees and the workers who have been working in China or any place of the world, face a lot of difficulty upon returning to the home countries. This is because the repatriates expect the home countries to be the same as when they left the country. The country of origin has since gone through several changes and developments and this has led to the repatriates facing a lot of challenge in accepting the changed environment and adjusting to the changers in their country of origin (Armsrtong and Taylor 2014). The constant experience of living overseas has made the people adjust to the norms of the foreign countries therefore when they decide to relocate to their country of origin, they have great difficulty in adjusting to the changed environment and norms of the country of origin (Paillé et al. 2014). The people staying in the foreign countries have some expectations from the country of their origin and  upon returning to their home country they might be surprised to see either some positive changes or some negative changes. These changes might be difficult to acknowledge and adjust for the people coming from foreign countries into their country of origin. There does not exist any bad things, there exists only different lifestyles and preferences and people simply have to adjust.

1. Lack of face-to-face meetings lead to the lack of proper relationship to flourish in an organization and this leads to the work culture becoming monotonous and devoid of human interaction and social networking.
2. The virtual work leads to the lack of proper dialogue and interaction amongst the employees of the organization and this leads to the employees not getting the chance to develop meaningful relationships, which can provide a long-term base and support amongst them in the organization.
3. Stifled-diversity, which is the forceful recruitment of diverse people in the organization and this, can destroy creativity in the organization.
4. The old-school leadership and the practice of outdated management theories and teachings can be inappropriate in the modern context and may lead to discrepancies in the working of the organization.
5. Time-zone resentment or the difficulty in arranging meetings amongst different people who live in different parts of the world and in different time zones.

The need to develop the capability of building and uniting the global workforces is now considered a major necessary factor for global leaders. In order to perform this duty, the leaders are required t o have a global mindset with a high level of awareness regarding their self as well as their own strengths, values and beliefs as well as the bias which emerge when conflicted with different opinions and beliefs (Marchington et al. 2016).

The employees need to be more cooperative and collaborative and the leaders of the organization need to make sure that the members of the organization are heard and their different opinions are respected and accepted after much thinking and deliberation. The employees of the organization are also needed to be open and curious, willing to learn the values, attitudes, customs and norms of different cultures, preferences and gender.

The ability to influence people, groups and organizations with different intellectual and psychological capabilities is known as global mindset. Colloquially speaking the global mindset is the ability to think globally and locally at the same time. The leaders and the employees with a global mindset have the ability to understand both the global as well as the local standards which are needed in order to run the organization. The McDonalds being a global brand have the ability to understand the global standards which are needed to maintain the reputation of the organization and to enable it to become a globally reputed brand (Reiche et al. 2016). On the local aspect, the global mindset is the ability of the leaders as well as the employees of the organization which enables the organization to function in the local environment and function in the local environment. The ability of the organization to adapt in the local environment is because of the ability to possess global mindset. The global mindset can enable the organization to function effectively in the global setting. The possession of the global mindset is considered an added advantage for the organization because the organization is able to function effectively and chart its way of functioning in an efficient and productive manner.

References

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