Effective Communication and Employee Morale: Transact Insurance Case Study
Effective Communication and Employee Morale: TransAct Insurance Case Study
Communication is a vital component to every organization ranging from small town business all the way to high echelon divisions within the Military. If not properly executed during planning, implementation, or after action reviews, poor results and employee disconnect from task and purpose are sure to follow. Perhaps what’s even worse, employee morale and confidence in management will decrease resulting in degraded levels of trust.
In looking at the TransAct Insurance case, multiple problems were ongoing resulting in a lack of competitiveness and customer service. Due to this, senior leadership was replaced and given the task to improve upon barriers existing in the workforce. The main character in the case, Jim Leon, was a newly hired Vice President of Claims who identified and took on the daunting task of improving morale and leadership amongst the workplace populace. In order to achieve this, he decided to develop and implement a credo of values agreed upon and fostered by his site managers. This credo, after completed, was delivered to each member of the workforce along with the promise that an engagement survey would take place within one year to seek feedback regarding how well management was doing in delivering on the credo values. Unfortunately, and due to skip level issues in communication and associate engagement, the results of the survey were less than desirable and divided the populace even more from management; what’s worse, it further lowered all levels of employee morale while isolating individual comments as easily identifiable. Due to this, seasoned managers quit, others asked for reassignment, while those who remained were faced with dealing with and rebuilding trust and confidence among the workforce. If Jim Leon has hopes of being successful as the Company moves forward, he and his leadership team must maintain focus on employee engagement, effective
Communication is a vital component to every organization ranging from small town business all the way to high echelon divisions within the Military. If not properly executed during planning, implementation, or after action reviews, poor results and employee disconnect from task and purpose are sure to follow. Perhaps what’s even worse, employee morale and confidence in management will decrease resulting in degraded levels of trust.
In looking at the TransAct Insurance case, multiple problems were ongoing resulting in a lack of competitiveness and customer service. Due to this, senior leadership was replaced and given the task to improve upon barriers existing in the workforce. The main character in the case, Jim Leon, was a newly hired Vice President of Claims who identified and took on the daunting task of improving morale and leadership amongst the workplace populace. In order to achieve this, he decided to develop and implement a credo of values agreed upon and fostered by his site managers. This credo, after completed, was delivered to each member of the workforce along with the promise that an engagement survey would take place within one year to seek feedback regarding how well management was doing in delivering on the credo values. Unfortunately, and due to skip level issues in communication and associate engagement, the results of the survey were less than desirable and divided the populace even more from management; what’s worse, it further lowered all levels of employee morale while isolating individual comments as easily identifiable. Due to this, seasoned managers quit, others asked for reassignment, while those who remained were faced with dealing with and rebuilding trust and confidence among the workforce. If Jim Leon has hopes of being successful as the Company moves forward, he and his leadership team must maintain focus on employee engagement, effective
References: Axley, S. R. (2000).Communicating change: Questions to consider. Industrial Management, July-August, 18-22. Nelson, D. A., & Campbell, B. (2010),Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World, and You. Retrieved from http://www.aplia.com Radhaswamy, P. (2011),The Importance of Communication. IUP Journal of Soft Skills, December, 52-56.