Term Paper on "Insurance Services Organization (ISO) Is a Medium"

Term Paper 6 pages (1793 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Insurance Services Organization (ISO) is a medium size firm headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey (ISO, 2012). It provides a wide range of services for insurance professionals including industry and market research, tools to maximize the value of insurance policies to customers and profitability for insurance underwriters on a national basis, as well as the creation and production of promotional marketing materials used by insurance professionals. A substantial portion of business operations at ISO rely on departments (such as Communications and Marketing) that involve work executed by individuals -- typically, working in small business units or teams -- at their computer terminals. They meet regularly with the rest of their teams and with managers and supervisors, but their actual work does not necessarily require face-to-face, in-person interactions. Generally, most of their substantive communications are confirmed by email anyway, largely to establish a written record of procedures and understandings about the production schedule and progress of individual projects.

If the organization began to allow teleworking for those employees whose primary operational responsibilities are conducted on computers and through online and telephonic communications, it would be able to reduce its overhead tremendously. The opportunity to work from home much of the time would also provide a powerful tool for appealing to prospective employees that would make the organization even more competitive in connection with attracting and retaining the best available talent, since employees value the privilege of working from their homes so much and already rely extensively on the online medium for job searches and for evaluating prospective employers and working environments (Leader-Chivee, Booz-Allen, & Cowan, 2008). The idea has been suggested informally but it encountered resistance, mainly from department heads who expressed concern that allowing employees to work from home might reduce the quality of their work and that it presents difficulties in the area of team collaboration and supervision.

Recommendations for Organizational Change

The recommendation consists of a proposal to allow those employees whose work does not actually require their in-person presence on the premises to do as much of their work at home. The benefits of this proposal include the reduction in the amount of office space necessary for the organization to occupy in its current office building, improved morale among employees permitted to work from home, increased ability of the firm to attract new talent, and greater consistency with some of the social values featured in and promoted by organizational publicity materials. More specifically, the organization prides itself for supporting the quality of family life of ISO employees and for promoting and participating in local environmental responsibility. This initiative could support all of those ideas and the persuasion plan will address all of them directly.

Persuasion Strategy

The persuasion strategy contains several different component elements. First, it will provide a financial calculation of the amount of money the organization could save by reducing the amount of work space it leases within the Jersey City office building that it shares with Barkley Bank (ISO, 2012). Currently, ISO occupies twelve floors of the building (Floor 2 through 10 and Floors 18 through 20) of which two full floors (18 and 19) are occupied by the Communications and Marketing departments. This initiative would enable the firm to eliminate one of the two floors currently required for those two departments and allow consolidating them into a single floor.

Second, this persuasion initiative will demonstrate through the available literature that teleworking opportunities increase employee morale and provide a powerful benefit from the perspective of prospective employees. That element of the persuasion strategy will incorporate the results of interviews with ISO employees and business unit supervisors and managers to demonstrate the degree of appreciation of employees and the confidence of managers in their ability to continue leading their teams through virtual interactions. Part of that particular element of the persuasion strategy will emphasize the degree of control that managers (and the organization, more generally) can maintain over the eligibility criteria (i.e. tenure, performance requirements, etc.) for determining which employees may work from home and how much time they must still spend on premises for team meetings and supervisory oversight purposes.

Third, this persuasion initiative will emphasize the degree to which the recommended change supports the values promoted by the organization both internally and externally. Specifically, ISO prides itself as an organization that fully supports family values and that makes every reasonable effort to help its employees balance their working lives with their home and family lives (ISO, 2012). The proposed change allows the organization to increase its support of family and home life by reducing the amount of time its employees must spend at the office to do that portion of their work that they can do off-site. Similarly, ISO actively participates in numerous programs intended to increase public awareness of the importance of ecological responsibility and prides itself as an organization that takes its corporate responsibility to minimize ecological harm to the environment both globally and also locally. This proposed change fully supports those policies and objectives by substantially reducing fossil fuel emissions from employee vehicles during the daily commute, in addition to reducing congestion on highways and wear and tear on bridges and other infrastructure.

Persuasive Arguments

Economic Benefits to the Organization

The predominant argument of this persuasion initiative will focus on the cost savings generated by the reduction in work space the organization must lease from the office building where it is located. By giving trusted employees within the Marketing and Communications departments the opportunity to work primarily from home, the organization could eliminate the office space currently required for those employees. Their remaining on-site responsibilities would be capable of being accommodated by using conference rooms and the other facilities typically used at present for team meetings and presentations.

If the proposal is as successful as anticipated, it is perfectly conceivable that ISO will actually be able to eliminate both floors currently occupied by these two departments, since there is sufficient unused space in several other floors to accommodate those employees (such as new hires and probationary or junior employees) who still require too much supervision, guidance, and oversight to permit teleworking as their primary mode of working. According to the available literature, high-performing employees function equally well at home to the extent that their actual vocational responsibilities do not require on-site work (George & Jones, 2008; Russell-Whalling, 2008; Yoong, 2009).

Employee Morale, Recruitment, Retention and Consistency with Organizational Values

Our preliminary primary research in the form of surveys and interviews of current ISO employees within the Marketing and Communications departments strongly supports the proposed change. Specifically, experienced employees expressed tremendous appreciation for such an opportunity. Typical responses indicated that employees believed that they could be equally productive or even more productive working primarily from home, largely because it would eliminate their two-way commute and enable them to sleep more and accomplish their vocational responsibilities with more energy, especially toward the end of the work week by which time many employees believe they are either "somewhat" or "substantially" sleep deprived.

We also surveyed and interviewed team supervisors and business unit managers and on the basis of that research, we concluded that managers expressed sufficient familiarity with and confidence in teleconferencing tools and expressed the belief that they could manage their departments via email and through face-to-face cyber applications. Most of them have previously used those tools for conducting or participating in conferences and believe that they would be conducive to efficient management, particularly in conjunction with periodic scheduled on-site meetings with their teams.

Team supervisors expressed concern that some of their subordinates have demonstrated more or less commitment, responsibility, and good time management and judgment than others and that teleworking might be more suitable to maintaining optimal output for some of their subordinates more than others. However, when advised that the opportunity to work from home would be provided on a case-by-case basis and always subject to supervisory oversight and decision-making, business unit supervisors were unanimously in favor of this proposal as well. Input from corporate legal counsel suggests that they do not anticipate any complications provided only that eligibility for and supervisory control over the telework opportunity is sufficiently detailed and described in terms of organizational policy and based on objective criteria, such as those relating to individual performance appraisal and scoring in specific areas such as the ability and inclination to produce superior work without supervision (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009). We also surveyed and interviewed probationary and other junior employees and determined that they expressed a consensus that earning the opportunity to work primarily from home would be "extremely" likely to motivate them to maximize their current efforts and the quality of their work. We conclude that it will provide a significant motivational force in that regard.

In that light, and in light of the available research and literature (Russell-Whalling, 2008; Yoong, 2009), we would suggest that the telework opportunity will increase employee morale, maximize retention, and provide a significant advantage in the recruitment of prospective talent… READ MORE

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