Operations Management Assignment: Managing Organizational Functions of Insurance Company

Question

Task: Operations Management Assignment Scenario
Learners may use their own employment context to write an assignment based on assessment tasks. Assessment tasks are learning outcomes of the unit associated with Assessment Criteria. You are required to generate sufficient evidence on assessment criteria to meet learning outcomes of the unit within the rules, regulations and standards to achieve credits of the unit. If you are not in employment, please use the following scenario.

Consider you are working as a Senior Manager of a small-medium sized insurance private limited organisation, which deals with its customers all over the world to sell its motor, home, life, savings and retirement insurance products and services. Your role includes organisational development, strategy development and change management to ensure the overall direction of the company is aligned with the strategic plan. Your interpersonal role includes working with staff and contractors, directing and representing them, monitor their work and communicate with external parties on the behalf of the company as well as efficient and effective decision making to improve the operations of organisations for existing and new products and services, negotiation with suppliers, handle crises, constructing budgets and allocating resources. Due to the change in the market and the increase in the global competition, you are required to write an assignment to bring change to your organisation, products and services by aligning business operations to the overall operational and strategic plan. Therefore, you are asked to write a report to meet learning objectives of following three assessment tasks, where you should identify resources, plan and allocate your organisation working activities, the setting and monitoring of performance measures and quality standards, and then taking appropriate action or making suitable recommendations to solve problems at work and managing the resulting change.

Task 1
Examine the importance of business processes in delivering business goals and objectives. 1.1: Identify and evaluate functions and the relationships between them, of the selected organisation.

1.2: Identify the main processes of these organisational functions. Review methods and approaches for mapping organisational processes and evaluate the processes.

Task 2
Investigate how business goals and objectives affect business operations.

2.1: Explain the effect of organisation mission, aims and objectives on the structure of the organisation.
2.2: Explain the effect of organisation mission, aims and objectives on the culture of the organisation.
2.3: Analyse different approaches to goal setting for organisations and set SMART objectives.

Task 3
Develop and implement plans for an operational area.

3.1: Develop and introduce plans that support the achievement of the organisational goals and objectives. Use SMART objectives.
3.2: Monitor and control plans to make sure objectives are achieved.

Answer

Task 1
The organisational functions of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company are discussed below within this operations management assignment.

1.1: The major organisational functions of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company are claims, finance, legal, marketing, human resource, administration, and customer service. All of these departments are interrelated to each other.

The evaluation of the organisational functions and relationship among all of these organisational departments of the company are discussed here with an example. For an example, the small-medium scale organisation has introduced new motor vehicle insurance. Now, the company wants every department to work collaboratively to acquire huge number of clients. First of all, the legal department will take care of every legal perspective of the new insurance and it will be passed to other departments. Secondly, the finance department will allocate fund to promote the insurance after the legal approval of the new insurance product. Thirdly, after getting funds, the marketing department will advertise the insurance. Fourthly, the human resource department will act collaboratively to sell the insurance to new clients after getting funds from finance department and after getting promotional support of the marketing department (Ibrahim and Daniel, 2019). Fifthly, the claim department will look after legal angles of all the claims. In this action, legal, human resource, and claim department will act collaboratively to offer appropriate claim account to the public. Sixthly, the administration department will be responsible for communication with all the departments to maintain a smooth flow of work. Lastly, the customer service department offers appropriate information to every single complaint lodged by the customers. In this process, claims, finance, legal, marketing, human resource, and administration departments depend on the customer service department for the initial satisfaction of the customers and the clients.

1.2: The finance department in the organisation is responsible for the acquisition, management, and allocation of funds in an appropriate way. The claims department is responsible for checking coverage, damage insured, and damage amount to be insured. The legal department are responsible for proper handling and management of every insured claim under regulatory provisions. The marketing department in the organisation is responsible for promotion of the new insurance products through different promotional mediums, marketing communication strategies, and advertisement activities. The human resource department of the organisation is responsible for skill development, motivation, and retention of the employees. The administration department of the company is responsible for proper functioning of every department, adequate time management, and effective resource efficiency of the company Matuszak-Flejszman et al., 2019). Lastly, the customer service department is responsible for communication with the clients as well as new customers to enhance their knowledge level regarding insurance services and products.

Six steps are considered here to review the mapping organisational processes. The major problem of the organisation is poor employee motivation. Hence, six steps are applied here. Firstly, the interviews with the staffs are conducted and it is clear that poor skill level is major motivational issue. Secondly, organising training programs are important. Thirdly, analysing the training documentation is important to view the progress of the session. Fourthly, work observation of employees is important to view their improved skill level. Fifthly, analysing workplace design is also important to review of the workplace environment. Lastly, the development of flow chart regarding improvement of the problem is important here.

Task 2
The impact of business goals and business objectives on the business operation process is investigated here.

2.1: First of all, organisational mission, organisational aims, and organisational objectives of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company are discussed here. The mission of the company is “The Company secures the future of the clients”. The mission of the company is to make every decision on every day. Caring customers’ money and giving value to their money is another important mission of the company.

The major business aim of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company is to position itself as one of the trusted financial service providers within the country. The major business objective of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company is to create sustainable economic value for the clients and customers through long-term commitment, environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and strong corporate governance.

Organisational structure is nothing but an organisational system that outlines who some operational activities are directed to achieve commonly developed organisational goals. Considering the organisational mission, organisational aim, and organisational objective, it is identified that the management of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company is committed to take care of the needs and satisfaction of the business clients. Therefore, the management is adopting economic sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability, and strong corporate governance in the business operation activities (v, 2018). These sustainability approaches and customer-oriented activities have forced the management of the company to adopt a flatter or horizontal organisational structure. This particular organisational structure ensures time-effective and conflict-free communication between the top-level management and lower-level staffs. This structure actually helps the employees to address the problems of the company very swiftly and efficiently.

2.2: The evaluated organisational mission, organisational aims, and organisational activities are also helping the management to create a positive impact on the organisational culture. These missions, aims, and objectives have helped the company to develop a decentralised, inclusive, and employee friendly organisational culture. The marketing, HRM, finance, customer service, and administration departments of the company work collaboratively. Most importantly, these organisational departments are committed to address the issues of customers and ensure clients’ satisfaction.

Therefore, it had become important for the management to create an employee-friendly, inclusive, and friendly work culture for the employees so that the employees can deliver effectively. The organisational objectives, aims, and missions state that the company focuses on social sustainability. It means that the organisation significantly focuses on employee-motivation, stakeholder engagement, and employee involvement in the organisational strategy formation activities. These activities ensure social sustainability within the organisation (Sadq et al., 2020). This social sustainability in the organisational operational activities has somehow assisted the company to create a decentralised organisational culture. This decentralisation organisational culture allows the employees to share their views with the management and management of the company is responsible for application of those strategic options in service delivery process. Hence, decentralised culture of the workplace is one of the impacts of the organisational aims, missions, and objectives.

2.3: In terms of goal setting approach, the company has adopted a combination of the top-down and bottom-up approach. The top-down approach allows the management to communicate with the employees regarding newly developed strategies. On the other hand, bottom-up approach allows the organisational management to ask for views and feedbacks of important stakeholders regarding the strategy development activities (Hillman and Guenther, 2021). Most importantly, the combined top-down and bottom-up approach is considered by the management of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company to enhance goal setting. According to the goal setting policy, the company has developed a SMART objective.

SMART is a strategic objective development process, which is considered by the organisations to develop sustainable and positive business goals and objectives. Poor skill development and poor motivation are two contemporary problems for the company. SMART is acronym of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely objectives. All of these objectives are developed below to address the contemporary existing problem.

Specifically, the company is going to organise a training and skill development session for the employees.

Measurably, the training group will be divided into 10 trainee members and 2 trainers will be appointed to boost the skill level of trainees.

Attainably, interactive training sessions with the help of advanced technological applications will help the trainers to boost the skill level of the trainees.

Realistically, the skill development sessions will also improve self-confidence, performance, and motivation level of the staffs.

Timely, it will take three months for training sessions to boost the skill and motivation level of the employees.

Task 3
This task will develop and implement plans for the operational area of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company.

3.1: The SMART goals and objectives are already mentioned in the above section. Now, it is important for the management to develop and introduce strategic plans that can hekp in achieve those SMART goals and objectives.

First of all, the management of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company needs to identify the important stakeholders. After the identification, the management of the company is also responsible for communication with all the important stakeholders regarding the development of the goals and objectives. The company can achieve the goals only by supports of the important stakeholders.

Secondly, it is also important for the management of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company to determine whether sufficient funds are available of not for this skill development and training sessions. Most importantly, the skill development and the training sessions will be important for the management as the company is feeling that the skill level and motivation level of the employees should be improved (Dawabsheh et al., 2019). Hence, the consideration of appropriate funds for the training and development activities are important to complete this skill development and training session appropriately.

Thirdly, the management of small-medium scale insurance private limited company needs to appoint two skilled and competent experts for the skill development activities and training sessions for the employees. The skill development and competency development process of the employees will significantly depend on the expertise level of the trainees (Bai and Sarkis, 2020). Fourthly, monitoring and supervising of the training and development sessions is also important. It is decided that two trainers in every training team will be responsible for interaction, monitoring, and supervision activities. Continuous interaction with the trainees and continuous documentation of the sessions are important approaches to monitor the sessions.

Lastly, feedback of the trainees is also important here to determine whether the training session is useful for the employees or not. Most importantly, the feedback of the employees regarding their knowledge level and skill level development will ensure that the company has become successful in achieving the developed SMART goals and objectives appropriately.

3.2: Effective monitoring and controlling activities are important here for the management of the small-medium scale insurance private limited company to achieve the SMART goals and objectives. First of all, it will be important here to develop a transparent and two-way communication network in which the management as well as employees can communicate clearly. The operational strategies, activity plans, and objective meeting strategies should be communicated transparently and clearly to monitor and control the required activities to meet the objectives.

Secondly, the company should monitor the strategy execution process. In order to do so, it will be important for the management to translate the strategic goals into operational goals. These transformed goals and objectives will not only improve the skill and competency level of the employees, but also overall performance level of the organisations. Most importantly, the company will be highly responsible here to monitor the strategy execution process by creating an advanced operational system (Duchek, 2020). These systems will be important to execute the activities smoothly.

Thirdly, controlling the execution process is important and it can be enhanced through some important steps. Most importantly, it is important to identify the risk factors. There can be several risk factors, which can affect the execution process and it may hamper the quality of output. Ultimately, the quality of training programme can be hampered and it may result in poor motivation of the employees (Podgorodnichenko et al., 2020). Therefore, identification of the possible risk factors is important. After the identification, it is also important to identify the appropriate solutions to overcome the possibilities of the risk factors.

Last but not the least; monitoring and controlling the application strategy is also important. In order to do so, the efficacy of the training and development approach should be evaluated by the feedbacks of the trainees. Most importantly, evaluation of the performance level of all the employees during the post-training session will significantly indicate whether the skill development programme is successful or not. Apart from this, feedback of employees also needs to be evaluated in future development activities (Wataya and Shaw, 2019). These approaches will help in more appropriate way in near future if the company fails this time anyway.

References
Bai, C. and Sarkis, J., 2020. A supply chain transparency and sustainability technology appraisal model for blockchain technology. International Journal of Production Research, 58(7), pp.2142-2162.

Dawabsheh, M., Hussein, A. and Jermsittiparsert, K., 2019. Retracted: The triangular relationship between TQM, organizational excellence and organizational performance: A case of Arab American University Palestine. Management Science Letters, 9(6), pp.921-932. Duchek, S., 2020. Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization. Business Research, 13(1), pp.215-246.

Hillmann, J. and Guenther, E., 2021. Organizational resilience: a valuable construct for management research?. International Journal of Management Reviews, 23(1), pp.7-44.

Ibrahim, A.U. and Daniel, C.O., 2019. Impact of leadership on organisational performance. International Journal of Business Management and Social Research, 6(2), pp.367-374.

Matuszak-Flejszman, A., Szyszka, B. and Jóhannsdóttir, L., 2019.

Effectiveness of EMAS: A case study of Polish organisations registered under EMAS. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 74, pp.86-94.

Ogbeiwi, O., 2018. General concepts of goals and goal-setting in healthcare: A narrative review. Journal of Management & Organization, pp.1-18. Podgorodnichenko, N., Edgar, F. and McAndrew, I., 2020. The role of HRM in developing sustainable organizations: Contemporary challenges and contradictions. Human Resource Management Review, 30(3), p.100685.

Sadq, Z., Othman, B. and Mohammed, H., 2020. Attitudes of managers in the Iraqi Kurdistan region private banks towards the impact of knowledge management on organizational effectiveness. Management Science Letters, 10(8), pp.1835-1842.

Wataya, E. and Shaw, R., 2019. Measuring the value and the role of soft assets in smart city development. Cities, 94, pp.106-115.