Problem
Insurance Service Centre (ISC)
Insurance Service Centre (ISC) is looking to hire specialist insurance advisors for their Belfast City Centre Office. Possibly due to the current economic climate and cost of living crisis, they have found attracting suitable applicants with experience of these specialist areas difficult with many staff deciding to remain within the security of their current employer. Consequently, ISC have decided to hire staff with limited experience but who could learn to do the role effectively. The role they plan to create is as a Trainee Insurance Advisor and they are hoping to add four people into this new role into the organisation initially with more should the Trainee route be a success. It is initially intended that Trainee Insurance Advisors will develop over a 3-year process into the role of Specialist Trainee Advisor.
With 23 staff already in position as Specialist Insurance Advisors, the Manager and her three Deputy Managers have to design a selection process for this role. Service Centre have a Human Resource (HR) Department and the manager is expected to work with the HR Business Partner in the design of the selection process for the Trainee Insurance Advisor role. The HR Business Partner has advised that he expects significant interest in the role, perhaps as many as 100 applicants for the 4 roles.
Each of the three Deputy Managers are directly managed by the Manager. Each Deputy Manager manages and delivers business activities linked to selling insurance.
Specialist Insurance Advisors are largely responsible for business growth via sales to new customers and retention of existing customers. Management of the Deputy Managers performance is mainly through quantitative data from sales and customer retention. This data is produced on a weekly basis with metrics available for individual advisors, teams or by ISC collectively.
Performance discussions and reviews with the 3 Deputy Managers are straightforward with little disagreement given the quantitative data involved. The Deputy Managers are required to use a forced distribution model of performance ratings across their team members using the ratings of underperforming, performing and over performing.
While business growth and customer retention is undeniably important to Service Centre's operations, it is crucial that any insurance dealings are done in a compliant manner. There is a prescribed list of activities that each Specialist Insurance Advisor needs to complete to maintain compliance with internal and external regulations. The teams managed by each Deputy Manager are arguably not resourced to match the workload associated with these checks given the growth and retention targets that have also been set (hence the new roles being recruited as mentioned above). Some of the Specialist Insurance Advisors neglect certain activities required to maintain compliance. Their attitude is that these are not that important as Deputy Managers rarely bring them up and that they are aware that others are not fulfilling these activities within ISC. When asked about why they don't undertake the required compliance activities, the Advisors also highlight that there is no difference in outcome for those who fulfil these activities and those who do not and ultimately, by not fulfilling all the compliance activities, this gives them more time to focus on performing well on the sales and retention metrics which are closely evaluated by the relevant Deputy Manager. As a consequence, they can increase their chances of being evaluated as performing or hopefully, overperforming. This whole situation is understandably a source of frustration for Specialist Insurance Advisors who spend the time required (either in work or in their own time outside of work) on fulfilling each of the prescribed list of activities to maintain compliance.
With each of the Deputy Managers 'pushing' for more staff, the Manager is keen to get the 4 new Trainee posts in place as soon as possible. The HR Business Partner is happy to support this but has been repeatedly reminding the Manager that given these are new trainee posts, a plan must be in place for them to be developed and skilled into the role of Specialist Insurance Advisor.
The Manager and the Deputy Managers also are facing a growing issue with some of the Specialist Insurance Advisors. The issue is that when they were originally hired, the person specification for the post required at least 5 years relevant work experience in an Insurance Advisory role. However, if the Trainee role goes ahead and is a success, these Trainees will become eligible to be Specialist Insurance Advisors with only 3 years' experience. This is a considerable source of tension for some (not all) of the Specialist Insurance Advisors who see this as unfair. Some are even saying that they should be redesignated Senior Specialists and receive a higher salary.
Given everything that is happening, the Manager has found recently that work is constantly on her mind. She often wakes up in the morning before her alarm thinking about work and feeling sick through anxiety. Her husband thinks she should start looking for work elsewhere given the clear impacts of the job on her however, she has never quit at anything before, has always held herself to high standards and is determined not to let current pressures 'beat her'. The Manager has raised some of the issues with the Director she reports to, however, he simply reflected that times are difficult to everyone and started to share some of the issues he was dealing with.
Write an essay about this case in terms of those factors ; motivation, personnel selection and performance management. With your own words.
For each section, you should select one topic from the module and use that topic to analyze the case and propose applied and practical recommendations for how it could be addressed. Analysis and recommendations should be based on relevant literature on that topic.