People Culture & Contemporary Leadership in Cochlear

Question

Task: There are two core components to this activity: to develop a draft report framework (plan) as an in-class
activity and then using that framework (plan) create an individual report based on the
organisation’s/companies organisational performance relating to: organisation culture change and
innovation, employee engagement, performance and reward.
Assessment Description
PART A (In-Class Draft Report Framework)
In Week 3/4 you will need to select an Australian organisation/company of your choice from the
Australia’s top 200 listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). You can find the list of companies
at https://www.asx200list.com/
However, you CANNOT select organisation/company from the Banking, Airline, Supermarkets or the
Telecommunication Sectors. You should not be choosing a Franchise Company. You should discuss your
ideas with your Facilitator before commencing

PART B. (Individual Report)
By looking at the organisation’s/company’s website, business articles and Annual Reports, you will be
able to see whether it is possible to access enough information about its organisational practices to
address the following:
1. How is your selected organisation/company trying to improve the performance of its workforce?
• Include at least one performance related initiative and one way in which its success could
be measured
2. How is your selected organisation/company trying to improve its culture?
• Include at least one culture-based initiative and identify the type of culture prevalent within
the organisation/company
3. How is your organisation trying to improve their rates of employee engagement?
• Include at least one employment-based initiative and the likelihood of success?

Answer

Part A- In class activity
Draft Report Framework: As per a contemporary definition, contemporary leadership is known to be a dynamic relationship within the collaborators and the leaders related to a common purpose and mutual influence. This eventually leads both the parties towards high motivation along with moral development as they might evoke a real change. According to Genty, (2019), the contemporary leadership approaches involve leader member exchange; transformational leadership; authentic leadership and several others. However, its counterpart seems to be the transactional approach of leadership where the leader tends to focus on getting their staff to acquire the goals of the organisation.

Thus, the present study is to study the interrelationship within the people; culture as well as contemporary leadership to understand certain concepts within the human resource management for the organisational systems. In recent days, effective contemporary leadership is considered to play an important role within the development and growth of the individual and also motivates the employees of the organisation. This makes contemporary leadership and management to be used interchangeably for depicting someone who can manage the team of an organisation along with its people. The present study highlights the organisation of Cochlear Ltd, Sydney Australia presenting the main concepts used within the human resource department. The respective study can help in assessing along with applying the contemplation of human resource in the decision making process of the business. This can also help in gaining knowledge regarding the knowledge of contemporary leadership based on management of talent; principles related to people management as well as cultural change.

Table 1: Framework of the activities to be taken up for the completion of the following report on contemporary leadership
(Source: Developed by the author)

Part B- Individual report 
Introduction 
As stated by Dempster, (2019), a contemporary leader is known to be an individual who makes use of the personal influence for inspiring and developing the people to acquire the goals and objectives of an organisation along with the creation of a difference within the community. Leadership can help in shaping the culture of an organisation along with aligning the group members. Both the people and culture of the organisation drives performance. The present study evaluates the importance and aspects of people; culture and contemporary leadership within the organisation of Cochlear related to its human resource department as well. 

Cochlear Ltd deals in medical device organisation, which manufactures, designs and supplies the implant of nucleus cochlear, hybrid electro-acoustic implant and similar others to the market. It is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and also promotes the wireless accessories of Cochlear (Cochlear. 2020). The vision of the respective organisation is “to be the provider of choice regarding hearing implants along with rehabilitation within South Australia with the help of progressive practice; accessible and responsive delivery of service as well as excellence within a person and the family centered care”.

Performance related initiatives 
The performance initiatives of an organisation are known to be designed for helping the organisations in responding for an increased uncertainty which can surround the mission of the company. As per the views of Coulson-Thomas, (2019), the respective initiative is considered to focus on helping the overall organisations within each of the sectors based on government, economy, business as well as charity. In the recent days, it has been evidenced that organisations like Cochlear have cut back their spending and increased a focus within their profitability. According to Gallup, 87% of the global workers have been considered to be either dissatisfied or de-motivated within their recent position. Thus, for removal of these things, the CEO of Cochlear has decided to build an organisational culture where all the employees can be comfortable with their job. Initiatives have been taken up to introduce improved performance appraisal systems within the company, to encourage and motivate the employees to perform for increasing the profitability of the company as well as being satisfied with their own efforts.

Implementing improved performance appraisal system to boost the performance of the company
As evidenced by Shen et al., (2019), appraising the performance of the employees is essential for employee engagement and satisfaction as well as for maintaining organizational profitability as well as productivity.

Communication of clear expectations
This ensures that the employees are clear about everything which results in communicating their expectations as well. Continuation of managing whatever is expected with frequent communications. This ensures that when employees might explain the objectives, this seems to be a good chance for the employees to execute a job. 

Highlighting the successful employees
The organisation ensures the recognition for the success of the employees when balancing their work and life (Campion and Wang, 2019). This is done within the company through emails; conference calls and newsletters as well, as a measure for performance appraisal.

The success of the initiative might be measured with the use of an assessment tool as well as with the increase in the rate of employee engagement and employee satisfaction within the organization. These are able to become extremely documented and detailed with the logic in nature. Most of the assessments are found to result in a certain score which might be presented within a radar chart or other continuum. On the other hand, as opposed by de Jonge and Peeters, (2019), the useful assessments can show the scoring operation through benchmark or rather the best practice derived data which can correlate the results of the work performance for a best comparison.

What are the culture related initiatives based on the contemporary leadership? Discuss.
The culture is composed of the shared values and beliefs that are established through the leaders along with being communicated as well as reinforced by different methods; while shaping the perceptions of the employees; their understanding and behaviour. As opined by Carvalho et al., (2019), a culture of an organisation is known to set the context related to each and everything that is done in a company. However, the culture initiative of the respective organisation has been mentioned below:

Employee health initiative
Most of the organisations are known to hold the wider health challenges and consist of different initiatives as compared to the previous ones. The respective organisation seems to be much more interested to lead towards the measurable processes that might lead towards overall well-being; to be healthier, to track technological progress. For instance, providing the customers with a higher quality bone-anchored hearing aids and prosthetics can be considered. On the other hand, as put forward by Pass et al., (2019), choosing some of the days for providing organic lunch to the employees can also contribute towards the respective initiative. Nevertheless while encouraging the progress for the health goal, the concerned organisation also seems to hold a challenge of fitness along with providing the employees with a time period for being prepared for a re-test. This can, eventually, challenge the employees for improvement of the performance. This type of friendly competitions might help in encouraging the employee morale along with emphasizing on a greater personal health with competition. This can create a positive culture within the organisational environment. This can eventually afford the respect of the employees while encouraging collaboration. 

However, each and every organisation consists of a different type of culture. The initiative that has been considered by the respective organisation of Cochlear can be related to the clan culture. The particular culture is mainly rooted within the collaboration where the organisational people are found to share their commonalities (Chen and Chen, 2019). Here, leadership is known to take the form based on mentorship while the company is considered to be bided with the traditions and the commitment as well. 

Engagement related initiatives 
Leadership is considered to focus on the employee engagement initiatives. The employees might have confidence within their leaders along with being inspired as well as engaged by them. This also resembles that the employees might want their own leaders for recognising the significance based on the organisational people for the respective journey. For the present organisation of Cochlear, the practice of employee engagement seemed to be an approach designed by the HRM for ensuring the employees to be committed to the objectives; goals and values of the organisation for encouraging in the contribution of the success of the company. However, as opined by Upadhyaya and Bhat, (2019), at the same time, these are able to enhance the sense of well being. One of the best initiatives that has been planned within the respective organisation is mentioned below:

Community involvement
Community involvement consists of the main benefit based on community involvement or rather the corporate social responsibility practice seems to allow the companies to engage their employees within various levels that can ultimately drive the all-over engagement within the organisation. Community involvement seems to be a power for bringing a measurable and positive change for both the communities where the individuals can operate within the business (d'Aragó, 2019). For instance, this involves financial and in-kind donations; days of employee volunteerism along with enduring the non-profit partnerships and similar others. This initiative seems to be significant as being active within the community encourages the members to build a team; building community relationships, employee retention along with the promotion of similar values based on the business. This can eventually allow the customers within the community to know regarding the involvement that takes place. When the respective organisation decides in which community event to get involved in, they tend to consider the strengths of the employees and the business along with the selection of volunteer activities which can draw the particular strengths forward. As stated by Suganthi, (2019), this type of social responsibility is found to create a positive social impact along with community engagement as well.

Conclusion 
To conclude, the present study has evaluated the engagement of people; culture and contemporary leadership within the organisation of Cochlear related to the aspects of human resource management. This has considered the significance of performance related initiative for the respective company along with culture based initiative and engagement related initiatives as well. The study has eventually highlighted the areas associated with improvement with the abilities and skills of leadership. 

The study can also help in learning the theories related to talent management and recruitment along with practicing the activities related to the particular initiatives. This has represented a mutual influence along with a common determination for reaching the objectives and goals for the employees as per the concerned company. This, in turn, can lead to a better collaboration within the teams. Thus, the present study has considered the change of perspectives for much more openness that can result in being important within the higher levels based on motivation. The concerned ideas based on contemporary leadership seem to bring a real change within the culture and people for the world society that has been observed in the particular study.

References
Campion, L.L. and Wang, C.X., 2019. Collectivism and Individualism: the differentiation of leadership. TechTrends, 63(3), pp.353-356.

Carvalho, A.M., Sampaio, P., Rebentisch, E., Carvalho, J.Á. and Saraiva, P., 2019. Operational excellence, organisational culture and agility: the missing link?. Contemporary leadership Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 30(13-14), pp.1495-1514.

Chen, M. and Chen, C., 2019. Servant Leadership and Employee Engagement in Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives. Academy of Management Global Proceedings, (2019), p.246.

Cochlear. 2020. Cochlear Australia | Hear Now. And Always. Available at: [Accessed 13 April 2020].

Coulson-Thomas, C., 2019. Board leadership of innovation in contemporary circumstances. Effective Executive, 22(1), pp.26-37.

d'Aragó, C., 2019. Attraction in buyer–supplier relationships: Improving supply network performance through purchasing recognition and proficient collaboration initiatives.

de Jonge, J. and Peeters, M.C., 2019. The vital worker: Towards sustainable performance at work.

Dempster, N., 2019. Leadership for learning: Embracing purpose, people, pedagogy and place. Contemporary leadership In Instructional Leadership and Leadership for Learning in Schools (pp. 403-421). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Genty, K.I., 2019. Interpersonal Relationship and Global Leadership Mindset. In Contemporary Multicultural Orientations and Practices for Global Leadership (pp. 165-182). IGI Global.

Pass, S., Watling, D., Kougiannou, K., Ridgway, M. and Abe, C., 2019. Exploring the role of line managers in developing and maintaining employee engagement levels.

Shen, Y., Chou, W.J. and Schaubroeck, J.M., 2019. The roles of relational identification and workgroup cultural values in linking authoritarian leadership to employee performance. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28(4), pp.498-509.

Suganthi, L., 2019. Examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility, performance, employees’ pro-environmental behavior at work with green practices as mediator. Journal of cleaner production, 232, pp.739-750.

Upadhyaya, G. and Bhat, K.S., 2019. Association of interacting quality initiatives and quality awards with performance; the effect of context. Contemporary leadership International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 26(3), pp.353-370.