Question

The Special Investigative Unit (SIU) at ABC Insurance Company is a part of the company’s claims department. Its function is to investigate insurance claims that appear to be fraudulent. This unit was formed a few years ago due to the increasing number of these types of claims.

Jack Davis, division manager of the SIU, supervised 6 claims employees and 2 assistants. The senior claims employee, Alan Smith, had about 4 years’ experience in this unit. Since Alan has the most experience in this type of work, Jack Davis assigned him the most complex claims to investigate. The other 5 claims employees were assigned less complex claims, but they also worked with Jack on the complicated ones in order to learn from him.

The SIU division worked very well together and met all their objectives. However, 3 months ago, Jack Davis was offered a job with another company and decided to leave ABC Insurance Company. He gave 2 months’ notice to his top management. Weeks went by, and the top management did not even advertise for a new division manager of the SIU. Most of the SIU employees hoped and expected that Jack’s replacement would be Alan Smith, since he had the most experience in the division and was the most knowledgeable about how things worked.

On the Monday of Jack’s last week, top management met with him and the other employees of the SIU to announce they had decided to appoint a temporary division manager until a new one could be hired. The new temporary manager would be Sarah Jones, a manager from another department. This news came as a surprise to all the employees in the SIU since Sarah had no experience in working with fraudulent claims. While she had some experience in claims, her work was more analytical in nature rather than investigative.

Questions:

1.       Do you think Sarah was a good choice for temporary division manager? Why or why not?

2.       What reason(s) would top management have for hiring Sarah?

3.       Explain all the ways this whole process could have been improved upon.

Answer 1

answer-

1- No, i think it was the wrong choice to assign Sarah for temporary division manager because one She is from another department of the company and second she is not acquainted with the work of claims. This job requires a person who has experience and know how to identify fraudulent claims in the organization.According to me, Sarah should be good choice for lower level position but not for the position of Supervisor directly without any experience.

2- The reasons that top management would have hire Sarah is to Cut down business cost in which Sarah would work for both department with same salary so cost of company would be low until there is new permanent supervisor comes up.

another reason company's management think that Putting Sarah to this position would improve her learning and they can train her without implementing any formal training program for her like a Job rotation in which employees put to different jobs in the same company.

3-This process would have been improved by following ways-

first company should make a job advertisement for the vacant position when Jack already told the company that he would leave the company so advertisement would help to find the new supervisor so soon.

Communication to Sarah before going of Jack that she would be hired for the position on temporary basis so in this time she can learn from Jack about his JOb.

Another way is to appoint the most experienced person in the company for Claims job who was Alan . Alan should have been given opportunity for promotion because he in the division for 4 years and had second best skills and knowledge after Jack.