ASSESSMENT NUMBER: 1
ASSESSMENT NAME: RELIANT INSURANCE
Reliant Insurance
Address:
MEMORANDUM
To: Reliant Insurance
From: Management consultant
Date:
Subject: Managing workforce to enhance organisational performance after the lockdown period.
Introduction
People management is not just a concept; it is a practical scenario which demands special attention from the management and HR department. According to, “Knies, Leisink and Van De Schoot, 2020“, people are the vital element of an organisation and organisational change. That is why; strategies that only focus on structure and system cannot bring success to a business. To improve organisational performance, HR managers require working strongly to establish an active connection with the workforce to implement innovative and successful change. So, it is very much important for businesses to continuously improve and assess their leadership and people management skills so they could boost their staff’s careers, enhance productivity and develop the business. This report will focus on the post-lockdown situation at Reliant Insurance in terms of workforce management and policies.
Background context of the issue
The covid-19 pandemic and lockdown situation has changed the face of business. After a long lockdown period, businesses have just started to adopt new strategies to monitor not only their business but also the well-being of their staff. Reliant Insurance has a diverse workforce with almost 1000 individuals. The organisation wants most of its employees to join the office again after the lockdown. However, this is not a pleasant decision for all employees. Some employees want to rejoin the office because they think that working in an office environment can enhance their productivity and communication. On the other hand, many employees are happy to work from their home due to safety issues. So, it has become a challenge for the management of the company to motivate a huge workforce to join the office after a long time as well as during the pandemic. Apart from that, the HR department of the company also needs to ensure the safety and well-being of the staff so that they can enjoy a healthy working environment (reliantgeneral, 2020).
Discussion
Importance of innovative people management in enhancing Reliant’s performance
Since the beginning of 1990s, researchers and research literature in people management, HRM, and organisational performance has been manipulated by a question of whether “human resource management” or people management creates dissimilarity to an organisation’s productivity or not. Multiple surveys and examinations conducted worldwide to explore the connection between performance and people management indicate a link between organisational performance and high-quality HR practices. So, a considerable element of work is now proposing that a high-level people management can directly give a competitive advantage to an organisation that is impossible or very much tough to imitate for the competitors.
The case study of Reliant Insurance identifies a lot of HRM issues or a lack of capability of the HRM department of the company in terms of satisfying staff requirements. For instance, multiple employees have displayed dissatisfaction over the company’s skills in communication. According to the feedback of the employees, Reliant does not provide enough space or scope to develop a career. Apart from that, a lack of productive feedback from the company’s side also has been identified from the staff’s feedback. All the issues have already created a place in some of the employee’s minds where they can not totally rely on the company’s strategy to encounter the covid-situation. In other words, the employees do not fully trust the management of the company. The organisation also failed in terms of communicating the safety measures or strategies regarding future policies related to the pandemic and staff’s well-being to the workforce. The overall discussion points out towards a need for very effective people management policies and practices in Reliant Insurance.
Reliant Insurance needs to understand that it is mostly the people of the organisation, not the other physical capital and money that is considered as the most necessary determinant of organisation performance. Creative HRM holds a vital role in understanding how to motivate, attract, and develop employees with critical and scarce capabilities, and enhance effective and creative methods of work organisations. All these practices are designed by a company’s strategic initiative, also are shaped to generate innovative job performance, which directly promotes a better and creative strategic implementation, and finally, organisational performance. The study of “Dawood and Butt, 2018” shows that progressive practices of people management are developed to creative task performance and outcome in the shape of “citizen behaviour“, like employee’s commitment, satisfaction, and behaviour. It partially moderates a connection between creative HRM, profitability, and organisational productivity.
Factors affecting employee’s performance
As per the case study, multiple factors are affecting the performance of the employees at Reliant Insurance. Apart from that, all these factors are evolving from internal and external situations or issues. Some internal issues are:
- The most important and primary issue is the internal culture of the organisation. It is identified that some employees are not happy because of the internal culture. According to “Ali, Mahmood and Mehreen, 2019“, when an organisation fails to promote an employee’s well-being, and also fails to provide a work culture where workers can encounter scopes of personal and career development, then that organisation needs to be ready to face serious loss in its productivity and performance. From the feedback collected from the staff of Reliant Insurance, it is clear that most of the workers feel an absence of the initiative regarding their career development. Reliant has not given proper attention in this sector, which has affected the employee’s performance.
- Limited feedback on employee’s performance also has affected their performance. According to, “Chicu and Nedelcu, 2017“, feedback can improve employee-employer relationships. Apart from that, creative feedback has the ability to enhance staff’s productive level. On the other hand, the lack of innovative feedback creates a gap between organisational performance and outcome.
Some external factors affecting employee’s performance at Reliant Insurance are:
- The ongoing pandemic has affected an employee’s mindset and productivity from the core (Manzoor, et al., 2019). Employees of Reliant Insurance are holding fear related to the virus, which is preventing them from coming to their job and directly affecting their performance level.
- On the other hand, some employees are willing to do their jobs by again joining the office. For them, productivity can be enhanced by establishing communication with other employees. It helps them to solve work issues very creatively and with the support of others also. So, for such employees, the lockdown period and working from home are affecting their performance level.
Impact of staff performance on sales and consumer service
According to, “Khan and Quaddus, 2018“, the easiest and most effective manner for an organisation to enhance consumer service quality is by giving a perfect “climate for service”. It means organisations need to provide a climate where good performance is encouraged and valued, rewarded and facilitated. Workers are able to flourish in such an environment and so give better service to the consumers. From the above section and case study, it is understood that Reliant Insurance does not provide a culture where feedback or employee appraisal is important. This has not affected its employee’s performance but also has decreased the satisfaction level of the consumers (Waheed, et al., 2019). Employees do not see any type of career development options within the organisation, and so most of them do not feel a deep connection with the company’s profitability or productivity. Such a situation has held them back from displaying most of their abilities in front of the customers.
When work-from-home started then some employees experienced issues due to lack of training and preparation earlier to lockdown. Apart from that, some of them also encountered very limited communication from the organisation’s side, which affected the staff’s working process and behaviour. It also decreased the satisfaction level of the staff, and they projected a bad instance of working capability. This is another reason which decreased the sales of Reliant Insurance.
The organisation provided online training through the Zoom app. However, this training was mostly focused on the product updates, the primary IT system, and legal conformance. Individuals encountered a lack in their training process. So, the initiative was taken by the company during the lockdown also was not sufficient enough to motivate and train the employees, and resulted in a loss in the sales collection.
Online training application
Online training is a popular and effective training process in recent times. Its need was there before the pandemic; however, the covid-19 situation has enhanced its requirements in daily lives. It is very effective in terms of education, and also business purposes. It is considered as the knowledge sharing over the digital platform from one particular resource to multiple others. Most of the MNC’s give online training to some of their staff from remote to multiple locations. It helps employees to be updated according to the ongoing trends and technologies. The points below will discuss different applications or tools related to online training, and associate issues or problems, ensuring the delivery of innovative training:
- SkyPrep: It is intuitive and powerful software of online training that assists people or businesses to train their employees, partners, and consumers as well. SkyPrep is a customisable platform which allows organisations to deliver, track, and manage the training process with ease. Providing assistance to more than 500 organisations across multiple industries worldwide, it is identified for its outstanding consumer support and “ease of use”. It allows businesses to onboard workers, train consumers on their items, and to match with compliance demands effortlessly.
A major hardware issue related to the SkyPrep is that it should improve its reporting function. According to a user review, this tool needs to enhance its hardware functionality. Apart from that, reports can be easily manipulated further for more creative customisation (capterra, 2020).
- ProProfs: It is another popular and important portal of online training, which gives multiple tutorials and some other options for utilisers like project, training, discussion, live chat, help desk, quizzes, and many more. ProProfs is web-based and totally combines multiple learning systems and elements into a single portal. This tool believes in enhancing smart applications to boost the working process and to enhance the satisfaction level.
Some issues associated with this application are i) lack of quality in content creation, ii) chances of data breaching, iii) website failure on bigger assignments.
According to some users, this tool can be a scam. For instance, Maria, a utiliser of this application, reviewed that she brought a “mock exam”, but did not receive the email. After that, she thought to chat for some help, but it was more difficult for her as the response was not up to the mark (sitejabber, 2020).
There are many more applications or tools which are helping businesses to provide effective training, but the above two are the most popular and effective ones.
Suggested action
Upon close inspection, various analytical approaches, it can be stated that the problems confronted by “Reliant Insurance” cannot be attributed towards the Covid-19 pandemic alone. The recommendations are as follows-
- Employee consultation: The employees of “Reliant Insurance” have been very apprehensive towards the new modes of conversation which has been implemented since the Covid-19 pandemic. The organisation needs to invest its time and resources to address any issues stemming from the organisational integrity. Consultation towards the mental, physical and professional welfare will be a priority for companies like “Reliant Insurance” going forward.
- Initiating an employee T&D program: Communicating from a residential environment can be a hurdle for many people while bliss for some. In both these cases, the company needs to prioritise its operational process to the optimal. The only plausible way to address these issues can be linking employee T&D as the first thing when engaging work-from-home.
- Restructuring office infrastructure to meet the Covid-19 parameters: If the standard office practices are a direct branch of the basic manuals of Covid prevention, then the company must invest in addressing these issues. Gaining employee confidence while balancing the WHO guidelines will restore preference towards their side.
Conclusion
People management is quickly becoming one of the most practical processes by which a company can guarantee its preferences and cement its integrity under all given criticality. Here the analysis has gauged the importance of people management and its impact on the overall process of business management at “Reliant Insurance”. It has also been seen that staff performance and staff motivation are dependent factors upon the level of leniency and consideration an organisation allows for its stakeholder and employees. This memo strives to serve its purpose by adequately merging the initial predicaments with the prospect of forming a strong organisational culture which is accountable to these above-mentioned factors.
Reference list
Journals
Ali, Z., Mahmood, B. and Mehreen, A. (2019) Linking succession planning to employee performance: The mediating roles of career development and performance appraisal. Australian Journal of Career Development, 28(2), pp.112-121.
Chicu, N. and Nedelcu, A.C. (2017) The usefulness of 360 degree feedback in developing a personal work style. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, 11(1), pp. 448-453.
Dawood, H. and Butt, I. (2018) A Systematic Review of Methodologies in the Domain of Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance. JOURNAL OF ORGANISATIONAL STUDIES AND INNOVATION, 5(3), pp.1-13.
Khan, E.A. and Quaddus, M. (2018) Dimensions of human capital and firm performance: Micro-firm context. IIMB management review, 30(3), pp.229-241.
Knies, E., Leisink, P. and Van De Schoot, R. (2020) People management: developing and testing a measurement scale. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(6), pp.705-737.
Manzoor, F., Wei, L., Bányai, T., Nurunnabi, M. and Subhan, Q.A. (2019) An examination of sustainable HRM practices on job performance: An application of training as a moderator. Sustainability, 11(8), p.2263.
Waheed, A., Miao, X., Waheed, S., Ahmad, N. and Majeed, A. (2019) How new HRM practices, organisational innovation, and innovative climate affect the innovation performance in the IT industry: A moderated-mediation analysis. Sustainability, 11(3), p.621.
Websites
capterra. (2020) Skyprep Reviews 2020 – Capterra. [online] Available at: <https://www.capterra.com/p/127236/SkyPrep/reviews/>. [Accessed 2 November 2020].
reliantgeneral. (2020) Reliant General Insurance Services. [online] Reliantgeneral.com. Available at: <https://www.reliantgeneral.com/>. [Accessed 2 November 2020].
sitejabber. (2020) Proprofs Reviews – 4.1 Stars. [online] Available at: <https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/proprofs.com>. [Accessed 2 November 2020].