Culture, Gender and Communication at Allstate Insurance Company Allstate Insurance Company is a large nationwide property and casualty insurance that uses traditional methods and current technology to communicate its information to the employees and policyholders. The technical assistance area of the company and a customer service area are staffed offshore; culture, in the form of language is one factor in their communication process. Gender has little or no affect on the communication, officially.
Most of upper management is male, so their communications may hold more importance because of the position sending the message. The fact the senders of the information are male may have more to do with why there is only one woman on senior management team. Allstate is sometimes described as a “boys club”; generally because it seems senior management help others who are at their level; within and outside the company and in the country which tends to be male dominated.
In the Encyclopedia of Sociology it states in 1990, 28% of employed women had jobs in just five of 503 categories: secretary, bookkeeper, manager, clerk, and registered nurse. Men had the jobs in the top five categories: manager/administrator, production supervisor, truck driver, sales supervisor, and wholesale sales representative (Reskin, 2001). Allstate’s office hierarchy is still traditional in regard to gender concerning the support staff. All the assistants to the officers are female, so many of the communications are composed by men, but edited by women.
Currently, Allstate has large in person meetings, but they are in the process of remodeling the office space to accommodate smaller groups to collaborate within open common areas. Company-wide communication will use the company intranet. Diversity in culture and gender are important part to Allstate. Allstate makes efforts to allow diverse suppliers the opportunity to do business with a large corporation. They have a call center in India that dispatches road service and a one of the areas in their technical support is in Northern Ireland.
Some office processes are being considered for transfer to an offshore location. Technical assistance is provided both on and offshore. A division of Allstate’s technical support area resides in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The employees attend accent neutralization classes to “sound more American. ” Some people calling the help line never had trouble understanding the Irish accents, some did not. Personally, I found the accents fun to listen to, especially at Christmas when they say Happy Christmas instead of Merry Christmas.
One of the customer service areas is staffed and run by an Indian company in New Dehli.. The call center hires people who do not have strong Indian accents. Effort is made but most people can discern that the person they are speaking to is not in the United States. The workers are managed by the Indian company. In Indian by Day, American by Night, it explains how the boon in call centers has made them preferred employment. In addition to having to fake their accents and way of speaking they are faced with the stress of working nights, heavy workload and unpleasant customers (Pal, 2004).
The call center is successful; however knowledge of parts of the United States proves to be a challenge as they are part of the road service dispatch and some instances of dispatching assistance has been sent from distances too far from the driver’s location. Our newest onshore call center for sales is in San Antonio, TX. Because the area has a large Hispanic community, many of the people working at the office are bi-lingual. The office culture tends to be hierarchal. Because we are a publicly owned company, any public communication has to be approved by the corporate relations department.
Employees participate in quarterly training sessions on keeping company information safe guarded. When natural disasters such as hurricanes make the news, employees are reminded through the intranet site that any questions from outside the company regarding the response to the storm are to go through corporate relations and the legal department. This includes news releases and internal communications posted to the company intranet site. The reasoning behind the strict regulations is to produce clear understandable information to the company and the public.
Recommendations I would make include surveys to the employees and policyholders and offering language classes. Reports can be generated to discover which area the policyholders speak to and our technical assistance areas tracks who contacts then for help. Surveys can ask for satisfaction and ease in obtaining service, as well as if they felt their needs have been met. Any problems can then be addressed to the area and be corrected through some kind of on the job training.
Language classes can increase the number of multi-language employees, making Allstate more approachable by minorities. Because the insurance industry deals with people at vulnerable times in their lives; understanding the people that are helping them would relieve a great amount of stress in their lives. Allstate addresses culture and gender issues, both foreign and domestic, with every effort of being fair to both the employees and policyholders. Any cultural language issues that arise can be addressed and corrected with time and training.
The company’s success or failure is based on keeping policyholders; customer service is important for retaining customers and reliable understandable technical support for the company all rely on accurate communication.
References Pal, A. (2004, August). Indian by day, American by night. Progressive, 68(8), 29-33. Retrieved from http://search. ebscohost. com/login. aspx? direct=true&db=f5h&AN=14033961&site=ehost-live Reskin, B. (2001, Jan). Encyclopedia of Sociology, 5, 3261-3269. Retrieved from http://search. ebscohost. com/login. aspx? direct=true&db=ffec8e49&AN=&site=ehost-live.