Communication with Customers and Employee Motivation - Essay Example

Introduction United Health Group is a managed care organization that includes over 680,000 doctors and health care professionals working across all 50 states of the U.S.A, and internationally. With a network of 4900 hospitals and care facilities and about 100,000 dental workers and 60,000 pharmacies it is clearly an organization that needs a high level of operational efficiency to ensure that all the partners and their customers downstream are satisfied. This paper focuses specifically on the Customer Service and Claims departments and considers the range of elements available to ensure that employees are continually motivated to provide their best effort. There is no question that, “Employees that will come into contact with customers are responsible for customers' satisfaction and therefore are a crucial part of the entire organization's effort to win and retain the later. For this reason, it is important for employees to take initiatives, to be autonomous, to experience satisfaction from their work and feel that they contribute to the operation of their company” (Gkorezis & Petridou 2008). How best to ensure that United Health Group’s workers are empowered to do the very best they can is the subject of this report. The Organization United Health Group makes it a point to target high achievers from all backgrounds in order to ensure that the diversity in the communities served by the company is reflected in the workforce. This, however, does not mean having token employees from different population groups. Rather, the company works extensively with various organizations across the United States such as the Asian MBA Conference group and the Latino Professionals in Finance and Acounting to ensure that high achievers from these groups and other minorities are well represented within the company. Teamwork Employees, all of whom have proven their ability to learn through formal academic training or past employment are given expanded opportunities to learn. This helps to remove monotony from their jobs and to ensure that they have a range of skills that they can put to the service of the customer service department. As important as it is to have new employees shadow their more experienced counterpart, a new system that could potentially increase productivity even more and allow much more understanding of others' work is proposed. This includes having customer service and claims people an opportunity to work for short periods of time in hospitals, pharmacies, dental offices, and other areas where the Managed Care Group's partners routinely deal directly with customers. Such an expanded system will provide greater connection among those in the claims department and other company wide employees who may never have an opportunity to meet one another in the normal course of the working day even though what the front line employees do, including doctors' services may eventually end up in some way at the claims department or require customer service to assist clients in one way or another. Ensuring that employees are happy also means making sure that there are enough of them to service customers. When customers have to wait for long periods on the telephone or while visiting the company's premises, this is certain to leave a bad impression. As such, ensuring that there is little possibility of an office's being shorthanded is important.It is with this in mind that in the latter part of 2008, the company added 50 new customers ervices employees to its grous in the Town of Tonawanda. "The jobs to be added by year-end represent an increase of 10 percent in staffing locally for the parent of United Healthcare of New York, which already employs more than 500 workers at its facility here. Both customer service and claims jobs will be available at the center, which services members from throughout New York, as well as from other markets around the country. "When we find an area that is high-performing, we try to grow it," said William Golden, chief executive officer of United Healthcare of New York, during an interview" (Epstein 2008). As important as teamwork is, it is to no avail if it is not clear to employees what exactly they are working towards. As such, clarity of goals, both for individuals and for the team is critical. Besides having a clear goal, other elements include the empowerment of individuals to do what is necessary, measuring results to realize how successfully team members were able to achieve goals, and continual adaptation and improvement. Goal setting In the context of United Health Group's service, clients come in at a time in their lives when they may be stressed out from personal illness or that of a loved one. Knowing that the company has the twin goal of ensuring that customers are happy at the same time as ensuring that the company's needs are not ignored is important. This means that employees have to be thorough in making assessments but in a way that will not alienate clients or give them the impression that the company does not care about them. Ensuring that all employees understand the company's mission is important. Employees who distinguish themselves in helping the company towards making customers satisfied receive a number of benefits including cash bonuses and complimentary letters and recommendations for advancement. Rather than asking employees to do things without any direction, experience and research suggests that “Even in jobs that involve fairly routine and repetitive tasks, performance will be higher if the employee is first given specific goals to learn and procedures and tools to master. Performance goals can be set later, as the employee gains confidence” (Lazenby 2008). Understanding Differences Though conventional wisdom, aided by such notables as Frederick Herzberg have noted in their research that employees “would perform better and do more if they were challenged intellectually, and they would get more psychological satisfaction from their work…many managers have found that not all employees want to have their jobs enriched; many would prefer to do fairly routine and repetitive tasks, and intellectual challenges cause them stress” (Lazenby 2008). This is not to suggest that employees are lazy. At United Health Group, which selects people with excellent academic and social skills, there is no question that employees have capabilities and that many are eager to extend not only the boundaries of their knowledge but also their skills. Such individuals are given every opportunity to do so, with the potential to advance according to their abilities and the responsibilities they are willing to take on. But managers also have to be aware of and be sensitive to employees’ needs at all times. Giving someone a lot of work to do when that person is under pressure at home or in their personal lives is unlikely to help the company achieve its goals. This is why it is necessary for managers to ensure that employees are given job enrichment opportunities, in one sense because they are capable but also, because they are ready to handle those responsibilities and are indeed willing to handle such expanded opportunities. Such collaboration between management and front line employees provide so much more opportunity for mutual satisfaction. It is a skill all its own for managers to recognize that “Challenges that motivate one person might actually discourage another. Some individuals seem to have a high need for praise and recognition, even when their work is mediocre; others don't seem to care about those things. Job enrichment does work for some people, in some situations” (Lazenby 2008). Feedback Employees also need to know how they are doing, which is why continual feedback is necessary. But feedback should not be made to seem like a chance to harangue and harass the employee otherwise the employee will not look forward to these sessions and such sessions might end up becoming fairly dispiriting for employees. Once again, understanding that there are different personalities and that these differences ought to be taken into account can go a long way towards ensuring that employees are happy and productive. For example, “Mastery-oriented individuals will be motivated by goals and direct feedback alone. When the supervisor sets the goals with the employee and makes sure the feedback mechanism is in place, the supervisor's job is done (of course, the supervisor needs to monitor the feedback, too…” (Lazenby 2008). It is important for the leadership of the United Health Group and indeed all organizations to recognize that understanding the conditions of their employees is important. Those on the frontlines in the health care management industry such as claims personnel often have to deal with angry customers and need to have the skills to soothe these angry customers. Those who have the skills to keep customers happy need to be recognized and be given the high profile that would make them role models to those with skills that do not reach such a high level. Among the incentives that are provided are those that border on the short-term, meaning that it is important to reduce the time distance between when something excellent is executed and when the person receives some benefit. Some employees are highly motivated by cash bonuses. For such individuals, providing money for meeting certain quotas can be wonderful. But money certainly is not the only motivator. There are cases when titles or meetings with the higher ups can all give front line employees the understanding that the fantastic work that they are doing is not going unnoticed. Also, having excellent employees serve as advisers to new employees or even to senior managers as to how they are able to achieve their success can be highly motivational. Training is also critical. "Anything that is going to improve reps' ability to do their job is going to motivate them," says Flyn Penoyer, author of Teleselling Techniques That Close the Sale (Amacom Books, 1997) (Kavido & Brewer 1998). In this connection, it might be a good idea to have training sessions every three months or so. Such sessions may include information from experts but might also include information from front line employees as to the specific challenges that they face. With such information, it is possible for the company to develop specific training materials and instruction that would help make the functions carried out by claims personnel much more smooth. . Helping front line employees to understand how their efforts affect the big picture is also important. This will help such individuals feel important and that they are not just forgotten individuals at the bottom rungs. Without their efforts, United Health Group would be in big trouble. But it is important to let these individuals know. People who work on the front lines can burn out after working intensely for months or years. To prevent individuals from burning out, it is important to move people around from time to time. Giving the people the opportunity to learn new skills would make it easier for them to cope and give them the feeling that they are not “stuck” on the front lines forever. Also, as part of the recognition efforts, “When a rep gets a letter from a grateful customer, read it to the group or post it on a bulletin board. "That can go a long way toward making someone feel good about what they're doing" (Kavido, Chad & Brewer, Geoffrey 1998). Conclusion At United Health Group, there is a continual effort to ensure that goals have been set with employee input and that these goals are specific. Managers always try to explain the importance of goals and ensure that the goals are not beyond the reach or achievement of the employee. In addition, knowing the differences in personality of employees can help managers tailor their feedback and responsibility to different needs. Bibliography Childs, David. Improving Employee Productivity and Efficiency. Government Finance Review, vol. 25 no 2 (Apr 2009):52. Epstein, Jonathan D. United to add 50 jobs at center: Town of Tonawada site employs 500. McClatchy-Tribune Business News, Oct 21, 2008. Gkorezis, Panagiotis & Petridou, Eugenia. Employees’ Psychological Empowerment via Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards. Academy of Health Care Management Journal, vol. 4 no 1 (2008):17. Hospital's job shadow program improves teamwork. Health Facilities Management, vol. 22 no 5 (May 2009):7. Kavido, Chad & Brewer, Geoffrey. Motivating call center reps. Sales & Marketing Management, vol. 150 no 1 (Jan98):82. Lazenby, Scott. How to Motivate Employes: What Research is Telling Us. Public Management, vol. 90 no 8 (Sep 2008):22. Read More