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STATE FARM ANALYSIS

State Farm Analysis

Bryan Beck
Justin Chew
Sean Latif
Haiqi Liu
Rasheel Patel
Alex Ugarte

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STATE FARM ANALYSIS

Table of Contents
Introduction......3
Job Satisfaction4
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity..6
Motivation7
Personality and Culture..10
Stress..12
Recommendations..14
Conclusion.19

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Introduction
Ryan Klibert has been a State Farm insurance agent since 2012 and in that amount of
time, the agency has grown to 6 staff members, himself included. In the time that this agency has
been in place, they have created a strong customer base in the Carrolton Area for the full range of
insurance and financial planning that State Farm provides. Ryan began working for State Farm at
the age of 18. He stayed employed at State Farm while graduating with a M.S in Finance. The
agency was founded soon after Ryan's completion of his coursework at the University of Texas at
Dallas. State Farm is currently one of the largest insurance companies in the nation. Each State
Farm agency is run by an agent in the manner directed by the agent with input and suggestions
from the Area Field Officer in their location. The agency has won the President Club and
Chairman Circle awards as a State Farm branch two years in a row for exemplary
performance. Being a well-established agent with the State Farm backing, Mr. Klibert has been
able to grow his agency with plans to continue.
Ryan Kliberts agency currently has 5 other employees, excluding the agent. These 5
employees have fairly distinctive roles in either sales, or service. There are two employees for
each department, with the fifth employee sharing time in both sales and service. The owner,
the agent of the agency, sits at the top of the chain of command. Due to the size of the agency the
agent does not have managers for the specific departments. All employees communicate directly
with him following the chain of command. The agents span of control is over all 5
other employees in the organization. This is a very balanced span of control for the number of
employees that are in the organization. The agency is a very organic organization, as the
agent believes in promoting a workplace that all employees can enjoy and feel relaxed in. All

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employees work with one another, the agents wide span of control allows for inputs from all
employees, lower formalization, and chain of command have allowed the agency to flourish in a
dynamic environment such as the insurance industry. The two departments have differences but
they are not heavily specialized.
As a corporation State Farm has a mission that extends to all of its agencies and offices
in the nation. Their mission is to provide safety, security and the freedom for customers to
achieve their dreams. State Farm places high value on respect, integrity, and trust. State Farm
believes that the correct way to do business is based on those principles. They aim to assist the
customer in a more personal manner than that of a corporation. The aim is to develop a mutually
beneficial relationship for all involved parties and retain business through a system of fairness
and honesty with the customer.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction should be evaluated using the five most important factors:
Pay, promotion, supervision, coworker, and work itself. In a survey, the employees in the State
Farm office were asked to order those five factors by importance. According to the result, the
factors from most important to least important order as follows: promotion, coworkers, work
itself, supervision, and pay.
Most employees view promotion to be the most important value for a job. They
consider the companys promotion policy including the frequency and execution to be significant
when comes to a job satisfaction. However, the business structure of this State Farm
agency determines that the employees have very little opportunity for a position promotion. This

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agency has one State Farm agent and five employees: two in the sales department, two in the
service department, and one works in both when necessary. With the exception of the
agent, all other employees are all in the same position level. In the short run, there is no
promotion opportunity for those employees to achieve a higher level of position.
The coworker is considered to be the second most important factor, and the employees
of the agency are very satisfied with their fellow employees now. They feel it is very interesting
and comfortable to work with their coworkers, and employees are very willing to help each other
like a big family.
Employees value work itself as the third most important factor. According to the
survey, they are very interested in their job and are satisfied with the actual work task in their
daily job. One of the employees in the service department explained that he truly loves what he is
doing right now because it is very challenging and interesting. He also enjoys the fact that his job
could affect someones daily life in a good way.
The employees consider supervision to be a less important element when valuing a job
but they all get along very well with the business owner. According to the employees, their boss
is very kind and always willing to help them. He cares a lot about each employee and always
encourages them.
The least important factor is pay. Most of them stated that they care less about how
much they earn when evaluating a job even though the employees said they are paid more than
they expect. One of them told me that their total salaries including bonuses are 30% to 40%
higher than the other employees in the same industry throughout the Dallas are.

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Based on the factors they value and how they perceive their current job supplies, they are
very satisfied with the factors of coworker, supervision, work itself, and pay. However, the
organization structure leads to very limited position promotion, so the business owner needs to
find a way to increase employees promotion satisfaction, thus improving the job performance
and organizational commitment.
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
When the question "What is the key to your success?" was given, an employee at the
State Farm agency stated "The collective drive and cohesiveness of our team is how we became
the second most successful State Farm agency in the Dallas area." This State Farm Agency made
it clear that the employees rely on team interdependence in order to achieve their goals. From the
observations made during the consultation, it was noted that the agency used a form of Work
Team for their operations. The Work Team was diverse and included members from service and
sales working with one another to maintain the overall quality of their service.
Achieving cohesion within groups has continually shown to be more productive for businesses
and this State Farm agency had very fluid operations with little to no obstructions present. The
team composition they made remains relatively static due to their recruiting requirements. State
Farm recruits individuals who could use the opportunity, are willing to work for a long period of
time, and display a dedication to that work. With all the cohesiveness in the workplace, the
employees also explained how the agency knows that everyone has their strengths and
weaknesses. To cover these weaknesses, State Farm implemented a Task Interdependence
method named comprehensive interdependence. In this system, employees interact with one
another and every employee has a specialty that others may lack. Therefor any employee who is

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weaker in a certain area can go to other individuals for assistance. The team members will meet
with one another in order to discuss about clients or ask for assistance when closing a sale. This
system was effective in covering weak areas and formed a tightly knit group able to accomplish
large tasks, while also being able to perform their daily duties and accomplish routine goals
individually. The only problem with this system is that if an employee became too reliant on
another's opinion, the agency could run the risk of having an employee become complacent. If
they do not show any effort to improve or try to learn the process or answers for themselves then
the State Farm team would need to take action. The State Farm team focuses on achieving an
overall goal to improve their agency center and hope to expand their center in the near future.
Such a collective goal shows a high degree of Goal Interdependence within the agency. Everyone
on the team is committed to making their goals a reality which is shown through their dedication
and passion for their positions. Once they reach their goals they focus on reaching higher and
enjoy a challenge. In order to operate in this business, the team must have the ability to calculate
numbers for sales, be able to communicate with customers, discuss issues, be flexible in the
workplace to anticipate new issues and find solutions in a timely manner. An energetic polite
personality was witnessed with all of the employees many displaying traits of individuals who
were truthful and humble with their success. They did not boast about their success, they simply
continue to perform well for their positions and their team. The team had a diverse group of
individuals from nationality to individual personality in order to get many different viewpoints
when they discuss. It was noted that each employee had a role to play within the agency.
Whenever the employees would gather for a discussion there were many Team Task Roles that
were filled. There was an initiator who proposed new ideas, an orienteer to keep the team on
track, an energizer to motivate, and everyone seemed to have a procedural role that kept the

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business moving. These diverse roles helped conversations by keeping discussions balanced and
contributed to group effectiveness by not having many conflicting roles.
Motivation
With the agent overseeing the other five employees, this location splits into two
departments, sales and service. Each department has two members while one employee alternates
between the two. When asked how intrinsic outcomes empowered the employees to engage more
in their jobs and how the structure influenced the way motivation is utilized. It was evident that
the employees attitudes correlated with the nature of their work.
The employees explained that they generally felt a sense of opportunity and
instrumentality. Keeping the expectancy, self-efficacy and competence of workers high through
daily discussion and positive emotional cues was more of an issue because expectancy has more
to do with the belief that exerting a high level of effort will result in successful performance.
Since everyone in their organization is already aware of the opportunities present, there is a high
level of instrumentality, but due to the nature of individual expectancy where a persons belief in
oneself can constantly change. The nature of the chaotic business shows that although supporting
expectancy is more constant, it is still a rare theme that appears in their workplace.
Although the organization expressed opposition against micromanagement, there are
specific and challenging, even uncomfortable goals that kept employees performing at a high
level. Perception is a very important phenomenon in motivation and the push to instill extremely
positive perceptions in employees when task complexity is too much stood out a key driver of
success. When setting goals for example, management would assign difficult goals. One of the
goals was to convince employees that they had high levels of expectancy. Another was to create

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an environment that inspired less comparison to others with a strong sense of family and to
ensure that employees were engaged enough to initiate their own goal commitment through set
self-set goals every day without having to be supervised in order to manifest their organizations
proven strategy. This explained why a hunger to succeed and drive to see positive valence in
outcomes regardless of the negative ones an important quality when seeking employees.
The employees in the sales department handle new customers. They felt the level of
impact that their department had on the company concerning the daily dependence of their direct
effort is most important.
One of the goals described by a manager was improving verbal persuasive skills. While
watching him speak to a potential client, he used confidence to gain trust and create interest.
Since every customer is different, they focused more on knowledge gain and less on routine
phrases. However, due to impact of sales, they also said that they felt more anxiety and
frustration when they did not meet their sales goals although it was not often. For this reason
when the sales department does not meet their sales goals, they experience the slight disciplinary
action to raise engagement and hence, motivate. This is balanced by the way their organization
helps each other improve their verbal skills. Many expressed that they did not have previous
college degrees but their self-determination allowed them to pursue tasks they felt were most
important to feel competent such as learning how to speak, write, and type properly from square
one.
The two service employees that attend to existing customers provide a different style of
work day being affected by motivational factors a bit differently. The service departments
answers described a lot more self-determination than their sales counterparts with less
micromanagement and disciplinary action. They had more sense of choice in their environment,

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more personal expression, and less panic or need to convince. Their role was to inform and direct
the customer to the desired outcome in a repetitive nature. This loss in persistence and intensity
is most common when the work day is slow but the agent explained how he is quick to rebound
unproductive energy into the best motivational mix suited to all the personality types in order to
achieve their common goal by using strategies to empower his workers into a self-setting
productive mentality.
Personality and Culture
The personality and cultural values of the organization and those within it play a large
role in the overall function of a business. The agency has its own distinctive culture. There is a
strong sense of collectivism. All employees we spoke with used the same word to describe their
environment and coworkers, family. They are very loyal and look after one another within the
office which endorses a very tight knit social framework. From our discussion with the
employees, the organization of power is spread very evenly. Employees will help one another out
in times of need. It does not need to have formal rules or mandates. To achieve their one
common goal they all help one another, eliminating the need for direct management and
task delegation at all times. This has proved to be an effective culture when considering the
individual personality types that are most prevalent within the organization
The Big Five dimensions of personalities are the five dimensions that most personality traits fall
into. In order to develop a structure and a culture, there must be individuals and personalities to
foster the creation of something larger. Similar personalities generally prefer the same type of
culture. In our dialogue with the employees they all seemed to have higher levels of
conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and extraversion. There were not high levels of

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neuroticism in the personalities of any of the employees. The conscientiousness of employees

was one of the stronger traits portrayed by the employees. Both in sales and service, employees
were well organized and very hardworking. Each individual was very open in saying that their
job function did require a lot of work, focus, and attention to detail. In order to thrive in that type
of work having conscientious personalities is vital for success.
When employees explained their client interactions, it was evident that there was also a
very high level of agreeableness within the personality of the sales employees. A priority each of
them listed was the happiness of the customer. They took personal pride in being able to help
another individual and said it factored into their job satisfaction as well. Being helpful, kind and
satisfying the customer also heavily factor into the success of the agency. Having employees who
are naturally more likely to display these behaviors to the customer is very beneficial to all
parties, from customer to employee.
None of the employees seemed to showcase traits one would see in a neurotic individual.
Even with the stressors they were confronted with from day to day. The employees preferred to
handle things in a calm manner. They explained that a cool mind was necessary in order to deal
with the influx of customers they deal with. When dealing with insurance, if a customer is
unhappy with the policy or status of the claim they may lose their patience and display more
neurotic behaviors. It is up to the employee service or sales to remain calm and focused on
resolving the issue to the best of their ability.
While most employees displayed traits related to openness of ideas in their own personal
ways, it was not vital to their overall job function compared to agreeableness or
conscientiousness. There are obvious traits that are suited towards the job such as sophistication

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and having refined speech and thoughts. As an insurance agency the final product is the product
of State Farm Corporation. Most of the creativity and complexity designed within the policies is
decided at that level and not that of the individual agency.
It was evident that all the employees within the organization had very extroverted traits
which were almost essential to the job function. Insurance is an industry that deals with direct
communication with the customer at a very high rate. As one of the saleswomen we spoke to said
you cannot be afraid of talking to people in this business. Much of the agencies day is spent
communicating with customers who would cause people with personality types not suited to
constant interaction with others to have a difficult time fitting into the culture and the type of
work that takes place here.
The culture and personality are directly affected by one another. The agency promotes high
conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and extraversion. Neuroticism in this culture, as
well as most successful cultures, is preferred at much lower levels as highly neurotic individuals
could change the culture that is beneficial to the interests of the agency. Being a six employee
office the culture is much stronger and more prone to change by the addition or subtraction of
one employee. In order for an employee to succeed at the agency it is in their best interest to be
individuals who are very team oriented and have a common goal with those they work with.
Stress
Stress plays a large factor within any organization, especially State Farm. As the leading
insurance company in the county, the high stress environment is created by having a large variety
of stressors compact in one occupation.

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Stressors are parts of work that create strains which leads to increased stress levels. They
are typically divided into two different categories bring work hindrance stressors and work
challenge stressors. For work hindrance stressors, role conflict is one of the most common
stressor found within the State Farm branch simply because it is part of the job. With sales and
service being the two major factions of the branch, customer interaction through constant emails
and phone calls make up a large portion of the work day. Often times, lack of knowledge about
insurance policies and large sums of money at stake cause customers to have expectations which
the agents are not able to meet. Role overload is also a major work hindrance stressor found
within the branch. Although the two primary sections of the branch are sales and service, some
employees are tasked with doing both sales and service. This creates a role overload due to the
variety of tasks given to the employees. Lastly the work hindrance stressor of daily hassles also
affects the employees through consistent daily customer interaction such as phone calls and emails. In terms of work challenge stressors, work responsibility appears to be the primary one
because as an insurance company, protecting the clients assets the main goal which carries a
heavy burden of responsibility for the employees.
The ability to cope with stressors is a must as an employee at State Farm. An employee
wouldnt be able to last very long in the high stress environment without a strong ability to cope
with stressors. When dealing with people day in and day out, emotional-focused coping is an
extremely useful tool. This cognitive method of coping helps counter the stressor or role conflict,
by not letting the customers words affect you emotionally. It is also important for the
employees to be able to control their emotions because if they get out of hand, they can lose
business through negative customer interactions.

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Strain is portrayed as the consequences of stress. Although the employees of State Farm
operate in a high stress environment, none of them stated to have any strains. All of the
interviewed employees greatly enjoyed their jobs and claim that they are unaffected by the
stressors. In one amazing case, one of the employees sated that he did not even believe in stress.
Every single employee stated that to work in the field that they do, you have to be a certain kind
of person. This type of person which was described closely relates to a type of person typically
knows as a Type B person. Type B people are usually unaffected by stressors or are able to
cope with high stress environments easily. They also usually have an optimistic and positive
outlook on life and display high levels of patience by being slow to anger. This can be seen in the
State Farm employees because a majority of them saw their job with a positive outlook in which
they were helping others. Also employees were unaffected by negative customer interaction
through strong emotional strength and control.
Overall, working at State Farm is an extremely high stress occupation. The employees at
State Farm experience a lot of stressors in both hindrance and challenge categories. They are able
to stay in their occupation due to a combination of coping and being the right personality type.
Overall, the employees at State Farm are very capable of remaining in a high stress work
environment
Recommendations
1.
A typical day for an employee at Ryan Klibert's State Farm agency consists of answering
a high volume of customer phone calls and e-mails. In the current system, calls are first answered
by a single receptionist who then directs the calls to the designated employee. In order to

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improve this system, an automated phone system should be implemented. The automated system
would help increase overall efficiency of the phone calls.
State Farm employees operate in a high stress work environment due to having a variety
of stressors simultaneously. Phone calls and e-mails fall under the category of daily hassle
stressors. The majority of the workday for the State Farm employees consists of dealing with
these daily hassle stressors and an automated phone system would significantly assist in reducing
it. With the ability to answer basic questions, the automated system would be able to filter out
calls that may not need to be connected directly to an employee. By reducing the number of
incoming phone calls the employees must take, they experience less daily hassles.
Removing the task of answering basic questions will also increase overall job
performance. It is common for many basic questions to be asked repetitively by different
clientele. Answering the same question over and over becomes a routine task performance to the
employees where they may begin give lackluster responses. With the removal of basic
questioning, the calls which are received by the employees will become more varied shifting it
towards an adaptive task performance. This will create a more refreshing and stimulating work
environment for the employees.
The increased efficiency of phone calls through the automated phone system will also
boost job satisfaction within the organization. Of the five main facets of the Value-percept theory
which ranks certain values in terms of what is most important to the employees, the highest
ranking facet for the agency way promotion. Due to the promotion opportunity being low at the
agency, employees must often spend time looking elsewhere or studying material in order to
advance themselves. For example, to achieve promotion within State Farm, a rigorous

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examination must be completed. In order to do well on this examination, employees would need
to spend their own time studying the material. With the automated phone system increasing
efficiency, employees would be able to get work done faster thus giving the m more time to
focus on self-advancement. Not only would job satisfaction of the employees benefit from the
increased efficiency but also the customer satisfaction. The faster service provided as well as
having the automated system running during non-work hours gives the customers more overall
convenience.
Although an automated phone system would be an overall benefit to the agency, it is not
without its faults. Loss of personal connection between customers and employees would occur as
fewer customers interact directly with employees. Cost also plays an important role as the system
can be quite costly with a subscription service fee. Even with the slight downsides it is apparent
that the accumulated positives outweigh the slight negatives.
2.
Since job satisfaction has a strong positive effect on organizational commitment and a
moderate positive effect on job performance, it is very important for a company to increase the
employees job satisfaction. According to the analysis, the Promotion Satisfaction of its
employees should be improved. Since there can be very limited position promotion capacity as
the business structure wont change in a short term, the boss should seek another way to help
improve employees promotion satisfaction. The business owner can provide opportunities to
improve employees self-growth thus enabling the self-promotion for them.
The business owner should implement cross-training in this State Farm agency to
improve self-promotion of its employees. Cross-training is used by many of companies

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nowadays and it involves teaching an employee who was hired to perform one job function the
skills required to perform other job functions. Cross-training is a very effective way to help with
employees self-promotion, which including improving both their current job performance and
their future career.
On the one hand, cross-training helps with employees self-promotion by improving their
current job performance. Cross-training enables employees working in two departments
understanding each others job details. They get a chance to try the work tasks of their coworkers
and have a true feeling of their coworkers difficulties. In this way, employees are more likely to
get along well with each other and have fewer conflicts during the work, thus creating a more
harmonious working environment and improving their working efficiency. More importantly,
cross-training gives employees a better understanding of the whole business. They would get to
know more about the details of business process and be able to think in different angles when
facing problems. With a better business overview and a broader thinking, employees job
performances would be improved as well as their prestige in the industry, thus enabling them a
self-promotion.
On the other hand, cross-training enables employees achieving their self-promotion to
benefit their future career as well. According to the survey, nearly half of the employees in this
State Farm agency have thought about becoming an agent in the future. To become an agent and
run their own State Farm agencies, employees need to be very familiar with every part of the
business process and to know very well about the whole business of this agency. Cross-training
gives them a perfect opportunity to have hands-on experiences of each part of this business, and
employees from both departments can share experiences with each other and help them better

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understand the business details. In this way, the company is actually helping with employees
self-growth and making them more qualified to become a good agent in the future.
As mentioned above, the recommendation to implement cross-training can improve the
job satisfaction by making promotion satisfaction stronger. Moreover, it also creates a stronger
organization commitment for the employees and increases their job performance at the same
time. Actually, their hard working is not for the business nor for the owner, instead, they work
hard for their own future because they can get more personal growth opportunities during the
time they stay in this organization.
3.
A knowledge database is a centralized location where employees can look for the answer
to some of their questions they may have in the workplace. Due to the complexity of the
insurance industry, there are always new questions that arise from employees regardless of
experience. If one employee has dealt with a particular situation, they would update the
knowledge database and it would automatically be shared with all other in the organization.
This could serve to eliminate much time pressure as one employee can update the
database and be able to help the rest of the organization simultaneously. In turn this leads to
lower stress levels for the organization. Time is a valuable resource in any business, but with the
high call volume this agency deals with it is vital that someone is available to assist customers. If
employees can essentially assist themselves it opens up much more time for other employees to
focus on their customers.
It can also open up dialogue with employees management who will notice those who are
big contributors to the database. This makes supervision for management much easier by
allowing management to provide immediate feedback to the efforts of the employees. If the

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employees are praised and rewarded for contributing, it will lead more employees to contribute
to the database. The stronger the database becomes the easier it will become to train new
employees.
Adding to the database could be seen as a team building activity. The more collective
knowledge obtained about certain issues that can be placed in the database, the stronger the team
becomes. Due to the amount of daily work that is shared between service and sales this serves as
a way to open up the channel to cross training. Employees are able to see they type of work they
would deal with in a different department and can more easily gauge the difficulty and skills
necessary to succeed in the other department if that is an area where they may be assigned more
work in the future.
This can also help locate the stars within the organization as they will be the more regular
and efficient contributors. The implementation could also help find the lone wolves and apathetic
in the organization if they exist. If there is not a substantial amount of contribution it allows
management to see drops in work performance without having to physically observe them.

Conclusion
The information gained over the course of the consultation provided much insight into
the system that the agency functions in. Being a partner with State Farm brings complexity into
the structure of the business; however it does not affect the agent or State Farm in a negative
way. Working with one another fosters success for both parties.
Most employees appeared very content with their occupation and satisfied with the
workload they were delegated. The only area where they were not significant evidence of
satisfaction was promotion due to the size of the agency. There is not a large collection of job
functions and titles in order to formally promote many members of the organization to a higher

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place of power. In the aspect of pay, supervision, coworkers and work itself, members of the
organization were very content with what they were given.
Occupations within the agency had a high stress load. Employees were very adept at
overcoming these stressors and remaining productive at a high level. In order to complete their
job functions stress management is something that each employee must have a grasp on to
remain effective in the organization.
The way the organization works as a cohesive and well-functioning team. Each individual
is striving for a team goal. Working toward one team goal instead of focusing on individual
goals, employees are more likely to work with one another. They are able to delegate task to one
another based on strength and weakness which allows the agent to manage employees easier so
that he may focus on other job functions where more time or effort could be delegated.
In order to keep members of the organization motivated, management put the employees
in a position to create their own goals that will help the organization. The management has high
expectations of the employees which serve to challenge them. They are encouraged to help
others and ask for help from others. This fosters comradery and helps to motivate employees by
reiterating the common goals that need to be accomplished.
The personalities and culture of the organization are very organic and team oriented.
Employees in the organization are more conscientious, agreeable, and extroverted. These are
personalities that are necessary for a job function involving as many customers as State Farm
deals with. These personality traits are accepted in the culture of teamwork with an organic
structure such as the one that has developed at this specific agency.
Stress management is vital to the productivity within the organization. Employees face
pressure due to the nature of their work. Multiple customer interactions concerning financial

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security and planning the job is made more manageable by having the type B personality as most
members of the organization do.
All of our recommendations were based on what we were able to see observe within the
work environment. Cross training would allow for more broad skill sets to develop. It could
expose employees to an area they enjoy and are more productive in than their current field. An
automated phone system would allow for the agent and his employees to free up time spent
transferring and gaining simple data about the customer. There is also use for a frequently asked
questions document for employees so that the agency can start to create their own knowledge
database. This way when employees need additional assistance they can do so without having to
take time away from another employee if it is something that can be explained in the knowledge
database.
This State Farm agency functions at a very high level with a very distinctive culture and
collective mindset. They have been able to expand their business to the point where it stands
today through these principles. An accredited agency like this one is growing and striving to be
better each day. We believe that the analysis and recommendations we have offered you only
further the agencys ability to do so.