Job Design And Motivation: A Case Study Of Johor Insurance

Johor Insurance(JI) has a 127-year history in Singapore, starting as a friendly society (British Colonial Mutual Society) in 1890, which self-insured mutual fund contributors. Insuring mainly factories, exporters and shipping operators, they de-mutualised and became a publicly listed company (as JI) on the Malayan Stock Exchange in 1960. JI’s headquarters are still in the original location in Victoria St. When Singaporean and Malaysian currency interchangeability ended in 1973, JI was one of the first firms to delist on the Stock Exchange of Malaysia and Singapore (SEMS) and re-list on the newStock Exchange of Singapore (SES).

Over the next 100 years, JI’s business drifted into the major insurance markets of the day life insurance, home and contents insurance,and car insurance. Their market share, once close to 50% of the entire insurance market in
Singapore, had drifted slowly but steadily down since the 1955, after a change in Government policy that made the new Central Provident Fund (CPF) compulsory for all Singaporeans.

Moreover, the industry was fundamentally changing. The “rusted-on” customers, who generally didn’t change insurers due the inconvenience involved with comparing quotes, bargaining between providers, and negotiating  premiums, were now using free apps and websites to compare premium rates, and insurers were having to bid against each other for consumer-level policies, further driving down cash flow and profits.The management consultant’s recommendations surprised many board members. 

Analysis of Issues with Johor insurance

Human resource management is a key aspect for the contemporary organizations (Hendry, 2012). Any large or small organizations depend on their workforce to deliver their product or service. Organizations having alignment of human resource management with their organizational goals and objectives are the most effective and profitable ones. Job design is one of the key parts of human resource management.

Job design is important for effective accomplishment of the organizational activities. Job designs outline the process or method of performing any tasks (Truxillo, 2012). It helps the employee in having the idea of the particular task and the method of performing it. Therefore, employees will have the idea of what to do, which lead to increase in productivity of them.

This report will discuss about the suitable job design of Johor Insurance and its implications. Probable change in the organization due to the change in the job design will also be discussed here in this report. Motivation level of the employees will be evaluated with the help of motivating potential score model.

Issues with Johor insurance

Having analyzed the current situation of Johor Insurance, the main issue identified is negative growth of their core business and low morale of the employees (Patterson-Silver Wolf, 2013). High ratio of employees in proportion to job profiles is another major issue for them. According to the management consultants’ recommendations, the business of Johor Insurance should be divided in to two business segments (O’Mahoney & Markham, 2013).

One will look after the existing business of home and automobile insurances and the other part will be responsible for industrial insurance such as, theft, fire, indemnity and fraud. Recommended job design should be job enlargement (Singh & Jain, 2013). This report will analyze the motivational level of the employees of Johor insurance from the perspective of all the four departments with the help of motivating potential score model.

Motivating potential Score of sales department

This report analyzed the motivational level of the employees of Johor insurance by using the motivation potential score model. It is the model used as a tool to evaluate the capacity or ability of a particular job to motivate the employees (Arazy & Gellatly, 2012). Here in this analysis, the motivating potential score of sales department is below average. All the criteria of the MPS model are below nine. Therefore, there is a need for job redesign in sales department. Task variety, task identity and task significance is much lower than desired level. This denotes that employees are not motivated in their workplace. Autonomy and feedback scored eight; hence, internal communication is nearly normal. Issues are only related to the assigned jobs.

It is recommended that job enlargement will be the suitable job design for the sales department. Job enlargement promotes addition of more variety of jobs in the job role of a particular employee. It helps in decreasing monotony of the employees in doing the same task on regular basis. Task variety, task identity and task significance of the employees will also increase by allotting them more variety of tasks to accomplish (Zaniboni, Truxillo & Fraccaroli, 2013). It will help in motivating the employees, which lead to increase in the productivity and efficiency of the entire organization.

Motivating potential Score of Sales department

Motivating potential Score of claims department

MPS level of the claims department is also poor. It is being seen that majority of the employees are suffering from boredom. Due to this, their productivity is getting lower. The MPS score is showing that, task identity, task variety and task significance is very poor. It denotes that employees are not motivated with their jobs. Therefore, the recommended job design should be job rotation. It will let the employees to take up different job roles of the same nature. It will enable them to reduce their boredom from the particular jobs. Also, the jobs in the claim department is interrelated, thus job rotation will enable them to be aware about the entire job process in the department. Their skills and knowledge will get increased. They will get motivated in taking up new jobs. Therefore, the productivity will increase.

Motivating potential Score of adjusters department

The main issue facing by the adjusting department is the lack of experience of the adjuster regarding the business insurance. They are only specialized in the home and car insurance. The flexibility of the job is also low for them. Therefore, the MPS score of this department is showing low level of flexibility. The recommended job design for them should be the job enrichment. It will enable them to take up the extra responsibility of business insurance. They will be given more flexibility, responsibility and more growth opportunity. It will let them to get accustomed with the new challenge and be more motivated.

Motivating potential Score of professional service department

The MPS score of the department of professional service is also below average. However, the task significance is higher as because it needs specialized skills. Task variety is showing low score which denotes that employees not require variety of skills. Issue they are facing that most of the employees are on the contract basis and with different condition of employment. Recommended job design for this department should be job simplification. It is because, job simplification will enable the employees to allot the particular job in to various simplified and specialized job role. Therefore, they are required to show just their specialized skill for the particular job. Therefore the productivity will get increased.

Implications of job redesign

Job redesign of Johor insurance by implementing various job designs in the human resource management will have some favorable implications on the existing management of the organization. Due to job redesign, employees will be allotted with added responsibilities (Singh & Jain, 2013). Therefore, by this concept, single employee will do the job or task of several employees. This will help the organization in filtering out the extra workforce. Hence, some jobs in all the managerial levels will be eliminated and some will remain.

From the upper level of the organization, there should be a single CEO for both the Johor insurance and the Commercial Underwriters Asia-Pacific. This will help to carry forward the organizational cultures of Johor insurance in the newly incorporated organization (Alvesson, 2012). This should be applicable at least for the initial periods. Therefore, the new post for the CEO in the newly incorporated firm will be eliminated for now. All the other board members should remain as usual. It is due to the reason that they are the experienced ones and their management ideas will be beneficial for the future growth of the organization.

From the middle managerial levels, the job of the marketing head should be eliminated. It is seen by the management consultant that, the outcome of the marketing department is not satisfactory. Over thirty employees are there in the marketing department and still there is no incoming enquiries and positive public relations activities. Therefore, the marketing head is not eligible and should be eliminated. All the marketing related activities should be bundled under the head of sales (Zaniboni, Truxillo & Fraccaroli, 2013). Single director will be able to effectively coordinate among the sub-departments. Key executives should remain based on their experience and performance. In addition, the Monetary Authority of Singapore should approve the key executives. Thus, replacing them may pose a challenge.

From the lower level of the organizations, the job of the sales personnel should be enlarged with jobs of adjusters. Adding the responsibilities of the adjusters with that of the sales people will be more effective and productive. In addition, the performance of the marketing people is also not satisfactory. Thus, they need to be eliminated. Professional services should remain same (Zaniboni, Truxillo & Fraccaroli, 2013). It is because; they are the core part of the organization and cannot be replaced easily.

Conclusion

Therefore, having analyzed the motivational level of the employees of Johor insurance, this report concludes that they are in the urgent need of job redesigning and implementation of the recommendations by the management consultants group. Suitable job design is being discussed here in this report which will be most effective for them. Implementing these recommendations will help Johor insurance to regain their market share.

Reference

Alvesson, M. (2012). Understanding organizational culture. Sage.

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Hendry, C. (2012). Human resource management. Routledge.

O'Mahoney, J., & Markham, C. (2013). Management consultancy. Oxford University Press.

Patterson-Silver Wolf, D. A., Dulmus, C. N., Maguin, E., & Cristalli, M. (2013). Factors influencing worker morale: Evaluating provider demographics, workplace environment and using ESTs. Research on Social Work Practice, 23(3), 304-310.

Singh, J. K., & Jain, M. (2013). A Study of employee’s job satisfaction and its impact on their performance. Journal of Indian research, 1(4), 105-111.

Truxillo, D. M., Cadiz, D. M., Rineer, J. R., Zaniboni, S., & Fraccaroli, F. (2012). A lifespan perspective on job design: Fitting the job and the worker to promote job satisfaction, engagement, and performance. Organizational Psychology Review, 2(4), 340-360.

Zaniboni, S., Truxillo, D. M., & Fraccaroli, F. (2013). Differential effects of task variety and skill variety on burnout and turnover intentions for older and younger workers. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 22(3), 306-317.