The Effect of Organizational Structure on De’Ath Insurance

The paper looks at De’Ath Insurance a family owned company that has grown to be a successful company indulging in providing insurance policies in vehicle, home, pets, life and life insurance policies since its early establishment. It analyzes the problems experienced in the company and relates them to related theories in history in a bid to explaining their origin. It digs deeper into how the organizational structure, culture, classical management, and leadership management affected the general working conditions of the insurance company. Conclusions have been drawn from the analysis with sensitive issues facing the company singled out. Remedies have been developed regarding necessary ways on how to execute them suggested to do away with the problems.

Change had to be incorporated when the company began to stagnate in progress of profits over the years. Therefore, the management had to go ahead and create a position for Chief Operating Officer. I was the best candidate for the position owing to my academic and experience credentials besides growing up in and insurance oriented environment for the better part of my life. Additionally, I was a friend to the family that owned the organization so at hand; I had the most appropriate tools to which I could use to revive the company back to its foot.

Organizational Culture

In regard to the general performance of the organization as per the time I found it, its culture to a greater extend really determined its proceeds. After learning the organization’s culture as developed by the workers for six months in terms of practices, I landed on a conclusion that there was need to change it. As assessed earlier people believed and subscribed to the notion of tackling what was of straight benefit to the organization rather that also on the indirect ones that would have proved essential to it (Denilson & Mishra, 1995). This was depicted when I set up an event that targeted to solve the problem of customer service and satisfaction to the products offered by the organization. It was received much criticism from the workers.

According to the comments received from them after the party, it signified that there culture was more inclined considerably more to the attitudes, opinions, or beliefs of individual members rather than on whatever they practiced in enhancement of the company’s success. The culture was rich and diverse and as such, I was obliged to listening to the organizational members to understanding corporate culture which formed my basis of coming up with the solutions (Cameron & Quinn, 2011). I identified key negative influencers among the workers who I perceived were contributing to development of a bad culture and advised them accordingly to make a choice. It was with the reason that those that could not cope up with conditions could just opt out for formation of a conducive environment to those willing to remain.

Classical Management

In classical management, the company was headed by the family who were on the very top of the hierarchical structure. These were still the owners as stipulated by the theories. However, there was no middle management to help in management of the company. That is why the company began to experience problems of stagnation of profit margins after some times. As demanded by the classical theory, management has to be composed of three sectors. At the topmost there should be the owners who delegate the duties to the board of directors and executives who aid in formulation and implementation of the objectives and goals of the company. The middle management is charged with the duty of overseeing the subordinate who execute the goals at the department level to ensure that they fit within the boundaries of the budgets set by the management.

Due to the above disorientation, I set up a Sales Call Center with majority of the workers on a full-time basis to effectively cater for the peak time seasons and keep the operational cost at minimum as required by the classical management theory. Large tasks were broken down to smaller ones that could easily be carried out by the number of workers that we had acquired. Workers could now be able to full have a better understanding of their roles and typically specialize in a single area to maximize on the output in production ensuring that both quality and quantity are of the desired standards (March, 2013). This helps increase productivity and efficiency at the same time eliminating the need for employees to multi-task that had led to low returns in the previous financial years.

Though theories recognize that the primal motivator for workers is the financial rewards, I tried on an occasion to reward basing on other material substances of things that didn’t concern work to enhance their social character at large.  However, the negative responses that were attracted from the workers suggested that employees will only work harder and be more productive at work if they are rewarded based on their work performance (Essays Uk, 2015). Therefore, I changed the mode from the one I used initially to motivate them using the financial tactic may be able to achieve increased production, efficiency and returns for the company.

Organizational Structure

Development of the Sales Call Center led to division of the organization’s structure for the purpose of leadership and management purposes since it would have been cumbersome trying to formulate the rules to go by (Hersey & Johnson, 2007). The Sales Call Center was split and each unit led by a leader who was to manage 10 Call Handlers whose responsibility was to check the breaks in control, in charge of training new team members, listening into calls to maintain their quality, to manage performance of the call handlers, answering the questions from the handlers, be accountable to the higher supervisors in the next level of the activities happening in their departments, and to a greater extend check the attendance of the  call handlers.

Leadership and Management

The selection of the team leaders was based on the leadership management theories that try to outline the characters of a leader. As suggested by the trait theory, those who had the desire to accept responsibility and were perceived to have inborn leadership qualities were the best preferred candidates (Fiedler, 2006). Behavioral theory of leadership was also considered in which those who had the academic and experience credentials in a certain area. It implies that leaders in this case are made but not born (West & Turner, 2018). As per the context of this kind of leadership management theory, it takes into account the characteristic s of the work, the most educated in a specific area is chosen to lead the rest

Following the previous approaches in behavioral model I assumed a participatory mechanism by the management whereby the team leaders could be able to freely interact with the other call handlers so that their various needs could be addressed, workers are involved in making decisions, although this was not always the case as I came to learn later (Shafritz et al, 2015). I also encouraged functional leadership management among the team leaders in order to keep their primary responsibility of assessing whatever that was done by the call handlers and to ensure that their needs were met.

The De’Ath insurance company had grown to be a big company through the years up to the time I was absorbed to be one of them. By that time management problems had begun to creep in. as such, I had to come up with the idea of splitting the various departments and assign each under a single supervisor who would oversee the activities executed by the other workers. They were accountable to those that were above them in rank just to ease the running of the company (Mate, 2017). In regard to the systems theory, any part of the company will always affect the other especially when it came to decision making process. Small changes in a group of ten call handler always brought a larger impact on the management.

I had aimed to deal with conflicts that arose every time in the company due to the diverse workforce by the use of contingency theory that accorded conflicts to be manageable though unavoidable (Keep, 2018). According to the work environment I had also anticipated to achieve, there was much resistance from the workers with little cohesion where subordinates never accepted easily and tolerated the managerial authority exercised over them as traced from the neoclassical theory which stipulated the obedience of subordinates of the authority as an indicator of equilibrium maintenance. The latter contributed to responses from workers that were unpredictable. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, those workers who were identified to be rude and never regarded team work to be of no essence going ahead to hang-up on customer’s telephone calls, and those who were unable to give a feedback to the customers even for the questions that were simple, were given an on job training and taught the necessary skills of how to handle customers through involving them in seminars (Simon & MARCH, 2006). Those that were unable to fit in the new organizational culture opted to seek job in other insurance companies.

Secondly, culture plays an integral part in enhancing the performance of workers. This is seen when the “we are all heroes” day workers displayed all they thought about in relation to the introduction of the new culture. It indicates that not all workers would respond positively to changes in an organization. Some can even go a notch higher by quitting the job or transfer to some other organization and destroy the reputation of the company (Linnenluecke & Griffiths, 2010). When the open office layout was incorporated into the insurance system, a lot of conflicts developed with some team leaders experiencing lack of space in carrying out their activities. Problems of privacy were also on high rise which were not preferred by many of the workers.

Programming of the nature of the job whereby call handlers were only allowed to answer the customers as per the answers provided by the computer system was a greater danger to sustaining workers since most of them preferred interacting with the clients directly. Threats were also detected when workers proved to be reluctant in embracing changes in regard to the payment system where it was based on individuals’ evaluation of work performance.

Recommendations

The above analysis require that

1. The culture of the insurance company has to be looked into on a deeper perspective so that the workers of the organization both the new and those who have been there for many years are flexible enough and able to adjust accordingly with the changing environment. This will make it easier to adapt to any change that might occur at a later time. It can be addressed through extensive education on the importance of embracing changes at work, delegation of duties, and organizing regular seminars and workshops for workers.

2. Leaders in an organization should be selected in accordance to the leadership qualities that they possess in addition to the influence they yield toward the group that they exercise their power. It aids in reduction of the friction that might result to conflicts between the workers and their seniors. It also builds up respect which enhances smooth running and how they exercise their control. The selection can also be through assessment of their academic credentials and the experience gained in leadership positions.

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