R.F. Insurance

R.F. Insurance is a commercial insurance company based on the east coast. In 1984, a group of graduate students were given a project to asses job design, career development, and job motivation in a particular district office of R.F. Insurance. The findings of this group despite the limited number of respondents permitted to take the student's survey are more or else what can be expected given the circumstances surrounding employment at R.F. Insurance.

The district office operates under the control of the district office manager who is essentially in charge of a sales team, claim adjusters, several office clerks, and one loss prevention engineer. The sales team is in charge setting up the appropriate account for the customers need and finishing the sale. Information about the customer is provided by the loss prevention engineer who meets with clients and helps to evaluate the risk of insuring a potential client. Once the sale is completed the district manager assigns the policy to one of the claims adjusters based on the complexity or importance of the policy and policy holder. From this point on till the policy is cancelled, the claims adjuster will handle ever aspect of customer service associated with the insurance policy. The rest of the paperwork, filing, and processing is handled by the clerks of the office. Each clerk has specific tasks and is responsible for filling out a daily work sheet which the lead clerk collects and creates a weekly report on their work.

When the team of graduate students began their analysis they did so under the agreement that the district office manager had control and veto power over the survey's and interviews being used. However, upon discussing matters in more detail the district office manager further limited the students to questionnaires only. The questionnaires were to include a modification of the Job Characteristics Inventory and a 24 question survey. The district office manager instantly revoked the clerical staff from participating in the questionnaire and also vetoed six questions he did not like. He distributed the questionnaires to only 5 sales people, 4 claims adjusters, and only 3 of 8 clerks.

The results of the questionnaire were as expected. The 9 higher ranking employees generally reported a more positive experience with job development, utilization, influence, and advancement then did the 3 clerks. From the data collected you can only infer that the other 5 clerks would more then likely share similar feelings.

When analyzing the data obviously you have to take into account the motivators the various employees have. Sales teams and claims adjusters are