Four companies receive service excellence awards

FOUR organisations have been selected as Ambassadors of Service Excellence by the Jamaica Customer Service Association (JaCSA), for their exceptional customer service.

The organisations, Sagicor Life Jamaica Limited, Jamaica International Insurance Company, National Housing Trust (NHT) and the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James, are this year’s winners of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica

(PSOJ)/JaCSA Service Excellence Awards.

This was revealed by Deputy Chairman of JaCSA Richard Rowe, while giving an overview of the work of the organisation, at the National Customer Service Week (NCSW) church service held on Sunday.

Rowe explained that as Ambassadors, these entities will be showcased at JaCSA events and will work with the association and the Cabinet Office to promote and facilitate service excellence nationally.

Meanwhile, he urged service organisations and employers to commemorate NCSW week by raising awareness of the importance of customer service in their organisations.

“Boost morale through motivation and teamwork. Reward front-line and other representatives. Show appreciation to other departments and teams for their support and remind customers of your commitment to customer satisfaction. Spread love and care within your organisation, home, community and throughout Jamaica,” he encouraged.

The church service was the first in a series of activities organised by JaCSA to observe NCSW under the theme: ‘Exceptional Customer Experience: Gateway to National Transformation.’ JaCSA has partnered with the Office of the Cabinet and other institutions to host the week’s celebrations.

The highlight of the week will be a two-day Service Excellence Conference which ends today.

JaCSA was established in December 2001 and is a strategic partner of the International Customer Service Association.

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Four companies receive service excellence awards

Tension worsens between JGRA and petroleum marketing companies

Tension is mounting between gas station operators and petroleum marketing companies over the issuing of  new dealership licences.Late last month our news centre reported that all was not well with the more than 100 dealers and the multi-national entities which have been accused of  offering unfair contracts. The Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association, JGRA, says the situation has worsened prompting it to call its members to a series of  meetings starting today with Total dealers.The other companies in the stand-off  are Rubis and the GB Group. The JGRA says the contracts will among other things diminish the rights and status of  gas station dealers.  

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Tension worsens between JGRA and petroleum marketing companies

Tension worsens between JGRA and petroleum marketing companies

Tension is mounting between gas station operators and petroleum marketing companies over the issuing of  new dealership licences.Late last month our news centre reported that all was not well with the more than 100 dealers and the multi-national entities which have been accused of  offering unfair contracts. The Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association, JGRA, says the situation has worsened prompting it to call its members to a series of  meetings starting today with Total dealers.The other companies in the stand-off  are Rubis and the GB Group. The JGRA says the contracts will among other things diminish the rights and status of  gas station dealers.  

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Tension worsens between JGRA and petroleum marketing companies

Phillips to split into two companies

Dutch electronics giant Philips is planning to split the company in two, separating its lighting business from its healthcare division. 

Both companies will continue to be based in the Netherlands and use the Philips name. 

Philips has been streamlining its business by selling off under-performing parts of  the business in recent years. 

Chief Executive Frans van Houten said the move was meant to prepare the company for the next century.

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Phillips to split into two companies

Phillips to split into two companies

Dutch electronics giant Philips is planning to split the company in two, separating its lighting business from its healthcare division. 

Both companies will continue to be based in the Netherlands and use the Philips name. 

Philips has been streamlining its business by selling off under-performing parts of  the business in recent years. 

Chief Executive Frans van Houten said the move was meant to prepare the company for the next century.

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Phillips to split into two companies

AM Best removes ratings of Sagicor companies from under review

Business

Friday, August 16, 2013

INSURANCE ratings agency AM Best removed Sagicor’s affiliates from “under review with negative implications” and affirmed their financial strength and issuer credit ratings.Sagicor Life Insurance in the US as well as Sagicor General Insurance, Sagicor Life Inc and Sagicor Capital Life Insurance in Barbados were all affirmed as excellent, while Sagicor Life Jamaica was affirmed as having good ratings.All, except for the US operations, received a stable outlook for the ratings. The Texas-based operations’ ratings were assigned a negative outlook.“Concurrently, AM Best has removed from under review with negative implications and affirmed the ICR of “bbb-” and the debt rating of “bbb” on US$150 million, 7.5 per cent senior unsecured notes, due 2016 of the ultimate parent, Sagicor Financial Corporation,” said a press statement issued by the ratings agency on Wednesday. “The outlook assigned to these ratings is stable.”AM Best said that the rating affirmations reflect the organisation’s continued satisfactory capitalisation, consistent earnings in its life insurance segments and favourable operating results.The ratings were placed under review following the National Debt Exchange (NDX) in Jamaica, which was the second debt exchange in three years.“Although SFC continues to have significant business and financial exposure to the Jamaican economy through its controlling interest in SLJ, AM Best believes the exposure is somewhat mitigated by the sustained favourable performance of SFC’s Jamaican operations and the somewhat stabilised financial condition in Jamaica,” said the release. “Supported by profitable operations, SFC’s risk-adjusted capitalisation remains adequate, including its business risk exposures in its Jamaican operations.”The negative outlook for Sagicor Life USA is due to consistent statutory operating losses on both the life and annuity lines of business, although the losses have been consistently declining as the new business stabilises. AM Best was also concerned about the lack of diversification of the company’s business profile.“While the company maintains an adequate level of risk-adjusted capital, this is the result of parental support rather than organic growth,” said AM Best. “Moreover, AM Best notes that its capital structure contains a large portion of surplus notes to its parent.”The ratings agency said that a decline in SFC’s earnings and capital further deterioration in Jamaica (given the region’s continued elevated sovereign risk) or deterioration in the financial position of SFC could lead to a negative rating action on Sagicor.

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AM Best removes ratings of Sagicor companies from under review

Worst companies to work for in 2013

IT cannot be a happy day when the organisation that you work for makes the top ten of this infamous list: ‘Worst Companies to Work For In 2013″. Nevertheless, although the dubious winners on this line-up are all from North America, we in Jamaica should perhaps be brave and enterprising enough to come up with one of our own.

Can you imagine for a second, if we did a similar list here. Just suppose the findings of the research appeared to be spot on and your employee ID told you that were a long-serving employee (not the owner or a son or daughter) of said company, it might just cause you to do some serious introspection. I don’t know about you, but I would perhaps feel very badly for myself and my fellow employees. My main takeaway from this article was the feedback from employees who they felt that their unhappiness stemmed from the serious issues they had with middle management. There were some people who felt that “they were unfairly treated, or treated like children or pressured with extreme demands”.The listing was done by 24/7 Wall Street and the method they used was to examine employee reviews at jobs and career community site Glassdoor. The website hosts employee reviews and uses those opinions to score companies on a scale of one to five, with five representing the best place to work and one the worst. 24/7 Wall Street identified the nine publicly traded companies that received scores of 2.5 or lower.I will start with the ‘winner’: DISH, which has come in for this dubious distinction the second year in a row. I cannot imagine that the management or directors are at this point clinking champagne glasses as we speak. The workers of this company say they despise the organiSation for which they work. “DISH’s management is regarded as so inconsiderate to employees, customers and shareholders that Businessweek recently called it “The Meanest Company In America”. In reviews at Glassdoor, employees regularly complained about very poor pay despite their difficult work in unpleasant conditions.Tthe most common criticisms were the low salaries, relative to the type of work and very poor benefits. “One manager on Glassdoor said that he had never seen employees treated so poorly. The benefits are pitiful and the salaries are not current with industry — I should know as I work in a (department) that see the salaries.” Ouch! That stings. Although times are economically challenging for most companies, this is one that perhaps needs to embark on a tour of self-examination. Two times is certainly not a charm.Second place went to Express Scripts Holding Company, one of America’s largest managers of prescription drug services, while the third in the line up of ‘beauty contestants’ was Dillards Department Store which is controlled by the Dillard family. They have built about 300 stores in 29 states and operate in a very competitive environment. Some of the bellyaching of the employees include: sales-per-hour targets which workers say are unreasonable and which lead to intense employee rivalry. “Lower level employees are faceless numbers to many members of upper management and are treated like pawns in a chess game,” said one reviewer.A company with a familiar name that made the list was Sears Holdings, which owns both Sears and Kmart. Sears Holdings ranked next to last in customer service in ACSI’s retail category, ahead of only Walmart. Employees at the company felt that the company had lost its identity and that the workers suffer from morale issues. The CEO, Eddie Lampart, a hedge fund manager made the decision to invest in technology to track customers’ needs. However employees felt that the company would be better off investing more resources in the company’s locations.NCR, the company that manufactures self-checkout machines, ATMs and airport self-service kiosks, made it to number eight on the list. Well, some of their employees did not have many kind things to say about them. They said that much of the company’s technology was out-of-date and that the company still asked them “to carry around cumbersome manuals”. The other complaints were about poor benefits and that the company often demanded a full-time commitment. Number nine was Fiserv, a company which provides information management and e-commerce products to the financial services industry, banks credit unions and brokers. A common theme among the employees who provided reviews was that the company was “needlessly stingy”. “Low pay and paltry raises were frequent gripes and several employees also expressed frustration about less-than-stellar health benefits”. So, now that we know what happens on that side of the pond, how does your company measure up?Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with RO Communications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.

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JMMB among 50 best companies to work for in Dominican Republic

THE Dominican Republic subsidiary of local financial house, Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB), has been voted as one of the 50 Best companies to work for in that Caribbean country.

JMMB Puesto de Bolsa, headquartered in Santo Domingo, was ranked 47th on the list compiled by Dom Rep business magazine Mercado, which cited the firm’s unique ‘Vision of Love’ ethos that underscores both its approach to team member development and client relations.“We are so pleased to be recognised as an employer of choice in the DR. From inception, we were clear that love — so simple yet so profound — had to be the basis on which we would build the organisation,” said an elated Donna Duncan-Scott, JMMB’s Group Executive Director, Culture and Human Development.Indeed, JMMB has always offered a different way of approaching the stereotypically sterile world of financial services. This inimitable outlook was actually labelled as doubtful and doomed to failure when the late JMMB matriarch, Joan Duncan, launched the company with the Vision of Love as its core value system. After more than 20 years, it is this culture which has endeared so many of JMMB’s clients to the company and it continues to drive how team members relate to themselves, each client and shareholders.“It is a powerful transformative force and, at JMMB, motivates the team to serve our clients and find solutions that help our clients achieve their goals. The JMMB Group has created an environment that allows team members to achieve and expand their potential and, in the process, all individual and organisational goals are achieved,” Duncan-Scott said.“As our Vision of Love statement says, we seek to create an open and honest atmosphere where ideas and concerns are valued and shared openly. There is no fear, no limitations and no boundaries,” she continued. “Team members are expected and encouraged to be genuine, taking responsibility to express anything they feel, knowing that it is safe to do so. Where conflict arises team members are encouraged to ‘clean it up’ and find win-win solutions.”Country Manager, JMMB Puesto de Bolsa, Guillermo Arancibia, admits that he was a bit uncertain about the practicality of grounding the operations of a financial company on such a philosophy.“I come from the cold and impersonal world of money. I was trained at a traditional bank and so I believed in productivity and profitability. They fostered in me the need to compete fairly and achieve results at any cost. Coming from a position of commercial aggressiveness, risk-taking and excessive individuality, to instead learning to stop and share decisions with the team, is perhaps the greatest behavioural shift that I had to make when I joined the JMMB family,” Arancibia said.Once he adjusted, he was able to see and appreciate the impact that taking such a stance actually has on the company’s bottom line.“The impact of JMMB’s philosophy is not only reflected in the company’s financial performance. It is also reflected in the warm way in which we relate to our clients, and by truly having their best interest at heart,” he said, adding “I have not seen that in any other company. Internally, the spirit of teamwork and the search for constant improvement are all elements that generate greater loyalty, productivity and, ultimately, higher income and returns to investors.”The country manager noted further, “Where we are very different from other financial institutions is that JMMB truly believes and encourages teamwork, getting everyone involved in the process of sharing ideas, reaching consensus and achieving the best solutions. We defend and encourage diverse thinking.”Mercado Media Network was founded in 1993 in the Dominican Republic and is the leading entity of its kind in the Caribbean region. The company’s first product, Mercado Magazine, is a monthly publication that offers high quality content in both its printed and online version. With 20 consecutive years in the market, Mercado has offered up-to-date information and leading editorials focused on themes of business, finance, economy, technology, marketing, among others.

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JMMB among 50 best companies to work for in Dominican Republic