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Becoming a Proud Mzansi Insurance Employee

Mzansi Insurance is South Africas largest private insurance company. It is a 27-year-old business that is passionate about people and partnerships. It employs 1,300 employees who provide both short-term and life insurance services to more than 6 million policyholders. As a proud South African company, Mzansi Insurance is growing its business globally in countries like Australia, Pakistan, India, the UK, Botswana, Namibia, Ghana and Mozambique.

Externally, the most important changes sweeping the insurance industry in South Africa are:

- Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) and the growing Black insurance market

- Changing market demographics targeting the growing Black middle class

- A need to become more transparent and to exceed customer expectations

In addition, there are other forces for change in the industry, namely a need for profit performance, cost reduction, service quality and customer retention.

Mzansi Insurance deals with customers who, by the very nature of South Africa, are diverse. A key challenge for the company has been that its products follow a traditional Western insurance model, which doesnt match the needs of South African markets. Internally, customer-facing staff were also struggling to interact with the changing customer base becoming more diverse, both in terms of generating more business and growing the company and in terms of providing a service that meets the diverse needs of customers. The saying the brand promises but the experience delivers was very real for Mzansi Insurance. In addition, African employees also felt alienated and were demotivated.

Mzansi Insurance developed an intervention to address these diversity related challenges and barriers.

Firstly, in 2016 an Employee Satisfaction Survey was conducted to gather information to guide the design of the intervention and to establish a baseline for tracking and measuring success. The majority of respondents agreed that religion was not an issue and that diversity in their business unit will deliver superior business results. Most employees also agreed that the person they report to has the necessary skills to lead a diverse team and believed that gender is not an issue. The aspects that were identified for attention included race, understanding of each others cultures, the management of employment equity and opportunities for promotion. Following the survey, Mzansi Insurance then embarked on an organisational change initiative.

A number of change interventions were identified, including the crafting of client experience, referred to an Unakekelwe (which means being taken care of). After every interaction, Mzansi Insurance wanted its customers to walk away feeling understood, sorted and protected. Mzansi Insurance then started to actively engage, align and energise leaders and staff around the need to value differences in people and its client experience. There was a conscious decision not to position and communicate the initiative as a pure diversity intervention because it is so often viewed as a soft, fuzzy HR intervention. By packaging and positioning the intervention as part and parcel of Mzansi Insurances efforts to create a distinctive, memorable and compelling client experience, it was perceived as real work, integrated with day-to-day interaction.

This packaging, together with strong senior leadership team commitment, created the key conditions for success from a change management perspective that were required. Engagement took place through a series of facilitated two-day workshops, involving a cross-section of leaders and staff. During these workshops, both business reasons and benefits of the intervention were shared. A common understanding on what valuing differences in people means as well as how it systemically relates to other interventions (e.g., vision and strategy, employment equity, talent management) was developed. Self-awareness was created on how participants have been programmed to think, feel and behave and how their programming influences their individual performance, team performance and the customer experience they provided. This was done by exploring every participants unique view of themselves and others, barriers to valuing differences in people (such as ethnocentrism, prejudice and stereotyping) as well as through cultural exchange in the context of their day-to-day interactions (at individual, intrapersonal and team level).

An understanding was developed on how valuing differences in people can make a difference to the customer experience. Lastly, participants were asked to brainstorm and suggest practical actions that will promote a high performance, customer-centric culture that values differences in people and to agree on the next steps to ensure that diversity is sorted at Mzansi Insurance. The leadership team demonstrated their commitment to the process by fully participating in the various workshops. Since 2016, various leaders, staff and specialists in Mzansi Insurance invested energy in various other interventions aimed at creating a successful business and an appropriate culture which values diversity.

A survey in 2019 showed that all race groups in Mzansi Insurance were very positive about diversity, especially in comparison with national benchmarks and Mzansi Insurances competitors. African employees were now significantly more positive about diversity within the organisation than what they were in 2016.

Mzansi Insurance is on course with its journey to enable:

- diverse employees who develop and perform to their full potential

- high-performance teams that thrive on the advantages and capabilities of diverse team members

- positive internal and external customer experiences and

- a high-performance company culture driving sustainable business results

Question 1 (20 Marks)

Critically discuss the dimensions of diversity that are evident in the case study.