Some employees cheat their employer by posting all day long on IJ instead of getting their work done, then they complain that they didn’t get a raise or their benefits aren’t good enough.
I always read your posts. Most I like, some I don’t. But that is normal. This post relates to employees stealing time. The biggest theft happens thru cell phones. My clients have a STRICT no phone use personnel policy. I’ve actually seen employees in a fast food workplace, talking on their phone while waiting on customers. Phone scrammers should be legal.
It seems that the study didn’t specifically cite poor management practices as the root of the problem. Management at some companies (not all) will set “impossible to accomplish” goals for employees for the dual purposes of boosting production and controlling employee labor expenses.
An employee who doesn’t meet or exceed stipulated “goals” can’t expect a raise, can he/she? Culling the herd of “under-performing” employees is another technique used to boost stock prices.
I’ve seen this time and again. We as underwriters are told to underwrite and document our files very carefully or risk disciplinary action. The next thing we are told is that in a down market our goals are going up and we need to get out and market and find “good business” to write of which, the definition of good business is boxed into a Utopian fantasy in comparison to the actual available business in the marketplace.
The underwriters who are successful at least in the short term are the underwriters who throw their authority letters out the window and slam business on the books. Once their losses start to catch up with their production they interview and jump ship to a new employer with a giant pay raise and leave their company with an imploding book of business that their former co-workers get the pleasure of cleaning up.
Meanwhile those who try to underwrite responsibly and work to bottom line growth with less emphasis on top-line get absolutely slammed by management with “performance improvement plans” aka ultimatums that we are told are to “motivate” us to write more business. What do you think that now desperate employee will do to save their own neck? I can promise you it won’t be in the company’s benefit.
Maybe it’s time to rethink how insurance companies are structured and managed. Rigorous underwriting and lofty sales goals are not really compatible in a soft market. If management is so brilliant why aren’t they the ones developing the when, where, what how & who’s on how to accomplish the goals they set. If they can’t solve the puzzle how can they expect the people in the field will do better with less resources at their disposal?
Some employees cheat their employer by posting all day long on IJ instead of getting their work done, then they complain that they didn’t get a raise or their benefits aren’t good enough.
I always read your posts. Most I like, some I don’t. But that is normal. This post relates to employees stealing time. The biggest theft happens thru cell phones. My clients have a STRICT no phone use personnel policy. I’ve actually seen employees in a fast food workplace, talking on their phone while waiting on customers. Phone scrammers should be legal.
It seems that the study didn’t specifically cite poor management practices as the root of the problem. Management at some companies (not all) will set “impossible to accomplish” goals for employees for the dual purposes of boosting production and controlling employee labor expenses.
An employee who doesn’t meet or exceed stipulated “goals” can’t expect a raise, can he/she? Culling the herd of “under-performing” employees is another technique used to boost stock prices.
I’ve seen this time and again. We as underwriters are told to underwrite and document our files very carefully or risk disciplinary action. The next thing we are told is that in a down market our goals are going up and we need to get out and market and find “good business” to write of which, the definition of good business is boxed into a Utopian fantasy in comparison to the actual available business in the marketplace.
The underwriters who are successful at least in the short term are the underwriters who throw their authority letters out the window and slam business on the books. Once their losses start to catch up with their production they interview and jump ship to a new employer with a giant pay raise and leave their company with an imploding book of business that their former co-workers get the pleasure of cleaning up.
Meanwhile those who try to underwrite responsibly and work to bottom line growth with less emphasis on top-line get absolutely slammed by management with “performance improvement plans” aka ultimatums that we are told are to “motivate” us to write more business. What do you think that now desperate employee will do to save their own neck? I can promise you it won’t be in the company’s benefit.
Maybe it’s time to rethink how insurance companies are structured and managed. Rigorous underwriting and lofty sales goals are not really compatible in a soft market. If management is so brilliant why aren’t they the ones developing the when, where, what how & who’s on how to accomplish the goals they set. If they can’t solve the puzzle how can they expect the people in the field will do better with less resources at their disposal?