Organization Behavior, Structure, and Process in an Insurance Company - Assignment Example

Section 1: Why the Company was considering a change to work and jobs A small insurance company was having problems with the way its departments were managed. The current organizations structure consists of separate departments that collects premiums, change beneficiaries, issue policies and process loan applications; but then , the company has a several problems associated with its management. One of the major problems of this insurance company it is experiencing a high rate of absenteeism and turnover. In the other case, the insurance company’s employees designated in their specific departments complained that their jobs were very much insignificant, boring and monotonous. They also feel that, though the management has a genuine interest in their welfare, the trivial nature of their jobs contradicted that feeling. All these problems occur as a result of the company’s incompetency in various work practices, such poor work design by their seniors which brings about luck of employee encouragement like offering benefits which can make them achieve a balance between their personal lives and work. The other problem is that the employees at this insurance company works and commutes for longer hours or even distance to reach to their work place. The company is lacking a flexible work arrangement for its employees. The employees are also overworked. These is reflected where some of the employees site that their jobs are monotonous and they do the same jobs over and over again. Job design does not exist in this company and therefore the employees are not organized. As a result of this, each and every employee’s duties are not clarified and this leads to the employees’ inefficiency. The quality of work life concept is not practiced in this insurance company and hence the philosophy of management that introduces the culture of change in an organization, enhances the employees’ dignity and improves the emotional and physical well being of the employees such as providing growth and development opportunities are not realized. This is made evident where the company experiences high absenteeism and high turnover. The company is also not sensitive about its employees’ vital needs and the problems and frustrations that are associated with their needs. The lower-level and upper-level needs of the employees are not adequately met and satisfied. The employees also lack the practice of teamwork in their daily work functions in the organizations and thus they lack job motivations which results in fatigue and job boredom. Job stress is another contributing factor of the company predicaments. The management does not practice the telecommuting arrangement which we could oversee the employees work from their homes full of part time and reduce the level of job monotony and stress. Section 2: How core characteristics of employees’ jobs will be changed incase the consultant’s recommendations are accepted. The management consultant recommended that for the insurance company management to effectively redesign jobs and human costs associated with highly specialized tasks reduced, the company’s the organizations structure has to be changed from a functional to a client basis. As a result of work redesigning, the employees will embark in the combination of various responsibilities and duties of the jobs of other departments and thus they will need additional resources and skills to cope with the increased variety of the other additional variety of jobs. This skills and accompanying resources will eventually reduce their perceived sense of work insecurity and even assist them in assuming more decision making roles within the organization structure. They will be able to cope well with their jobs and feel more in control as they will have more autonomy in making decisions and a variety of choices of how to conduct their jobs. Among the core job characteristics that will arise as a result of job redesigning includes task identity, feedback, autonomy, task significance and skill variety. These are the characteristics associated with direct transformational leadership effects on the task performance supplemented by the effects on followers’ perception of core job characteristics. These perceptions eventually predict goal commitments and fundamental motivations which are related to the outcomes. The increased job variety will be experienced by the employees by using the number of different talents and skills in their jobs. The identity aspect of it will be practiced in the case where the employee will be required to complete the whole of the assigned task from beginning to end. The significance characteristics mean that the job has a significant impact on other people’s lives while autonomy is whereby the job provides absolute freedom. With the feedback characteristics, the job will be able to offer clear information on the levels of performance. The employees will be internally motivated in the performance of their jobs which is known as the self-perpetuating cycle of the positive job motivation. This motivation is made possible as a result of good work and is self generated. The autonomous, challenging and importance eventually becomes intrinsically motivating. As a result of intrinsic motivation, the employees will engage themselves in the higher levels of task performance and derive satisfaction from their work accomplishments and hence improving the work quality. The forms of task withdrawal will also be reduced by the intrinsic withdrawal and thus increasing the work efforts. The employees will increase the work quantity and develop the acquisition of other work related skills by choosing to work on meticulous jobs at specific times. Employees will also find the jobs very important, broader in scheme of things, significant, and requires a complex high level of skills to perform. The employees will also have a motivational desire to perform well in their jobs and feel unsatisfied incase they perform poorly on their assigned pieces of work. They will also work hard on their jobs to achieve their perceived goals. The employees would want to assist themselves by helping and assisting their absent colleagues to accomplish their duties and also strive hard to maintain the organizations good image and improve its functionality. Section 3: Job redesign alongside the new EDP system should proceed and be implemented. The job redesign alongside the implementation of the EDP should proceed to realize the organizations work output improvement. It is also necessary so that it can eliminate the problems created by the emergence of poor organizational outfit. Job redesign will improve employee satisfaction and help them achieve a balance in their daily work routine and their personal lives. It will also help the organization to motivate, attract, and retain the highly skilled and valued employees in their several key job categories. The combination of job redesigning and the installation of the EDP will put the Sociotechnical theory in practice and thus combining social issue with technology in the job design practice. These are two compatible concepts which will brings about the emphasis for job design practice necessary to provide feedbacks, identity, autonomy identity and significance. Work redesign will bring to an end to the following changes and problems to the insurance company: Excessive conflict: the needless friction among the internal groups relationships will cease. The lack of coordination and unclear units about the responsibilities within the organization will be solved. Employees who are not sure about there roles and functions in the organizations will be clear of what is expected of them. There will be no more misused resources and the individuals’ skills will be fully utilized. There will be no more cumbersome and disruptions in the work flow thought the process. Proliferations of extra-organizational units will be a thing of the past as the organization will not need to rely on committees, special project groups to deal with arising company challenges, task forces and inadequate design. Though a daunting task, organizations sometimes have no choice but to invest in expensive ethnologies, activities and processes and pay a high price to keep their most valued assets (employees) from leaving the company. They however have to work hard in order to maintain the employees’ loyalty and satisfaction in order to increase the company’s profits and revenues. They achieve all these by: Creating teams and getting to know the employees better: taking their time to instill accountability and trust, protecting their obligations to the business and laying out clear expectations. Build a working together culture that helps the employees in creating new advantages and meeting their challenges alongside propelling the business to greater success. Educating, training and mentoring employees: they should be provided with the coaching and education that makes them feel that you have their interest at heart. Consistent, clear and concise communication: the employees should be kept informed of the company’s challenges and issues, progress, position and guided how they should positively contribute to the company’s success. Reward for their contribution and monitor progress: they should be motivated so that they can strive to reach higher performance levels by realizing their potential to measure up to expectation. Avoid procrastination in regard to dealing with performance issues within the company. Exercise respect: every team member should be accorded respect in the company. Provide the best information, tools and equipments your employees. Regular honest feedback provision: give regular feedback to your employees regardless of the situation and not only at the time of crisis. Constructive input should be given in the employees’ performance across the board including a variety of issues, challenges and building loyalty to new levels of performance. Section 4: Implications of technology ‘overhaul’ in organization and the impact of people, process of work requirements. The harmonization of organizational change and worker skill: Management methods and concepts are undergoing a revolution due to the rapid increase use of technology. Major changes are experienced in various job departments of all categories due to the use of machines which are taking over the complex activities. The employees’ work life is affected by these automation methods which bring about changes in an organizational structure. To the higher management, the technology will affect the decision making process and functions. Regardless of the most affected jobs, computers will finally change general working procedure in any organizational set-up. The technologies implications on people, processes and work requirements: The collective technology changes will impact processes, people and other job requirements in the entire organization structure of the insurance company i.e. Collecting premiums, Policies, change beneficiaries and Process loan applications departments. Organizations will need to appraise fiscal departments such as financial extracts, human resources and accounting the business implementations, transactions and decision making. Organizations will have to adapt to new ways of conducting business from the old ways and routines so as to realize the economic impacts of the evolution. The organizations ought to develop strategic approach and make decisions I order to accommodate the changes by investing in education, preparedness and planning. The introduction of technology in any business outfit will always bring about a remarkable impact on people. From accounts receivable to auditing, from claims to customer service which makes them recognize the operational areas which might need some level of change and the resistance and stress that will accompany it. The three primary areas that needs to be considered in the implementation process consists of providing the adequate training for the utilization of resources, ensuring that the relevant resources are available and managing the impacts that will be brought about by the implementation processes. Organizations must be willing to incorporate the people (team) wanted to ease the continuous progress as this requires a great deal of time. The correct implementation of technology changes is always a challenge and will determine the success or failure of the project. People are always needed to use the proven management change methods and help manage the change effects to make changes. The use of people and process to bring about the technology success: The technology brings about changes in all the core departments in an organization, this requires a strong and clear understanding of the process and people to help in the support of the organization to assess the hi-tech impact of amendments and establish the appropriate methods of accomplishing those changes. Therefore these premeditated technology plans has to be approached by a substantial implementation plans such as buy, build and partner approach. Existing technology environment has to be thoroughly examined against the changes needed to accommodate new network flows, data and new people prior to implementations thus allowing the organization to identify any gaps in the hardware and software architecture. References: Gibson .J.L. 2006 Organizations: behavior, structure, process, 12 Edition. Chapter 13, pp. 367-391. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, c2006. Read More