About Quicken Loans
Quicken Loans was founded in 1985 and is the United States largest online lender. In its 30 years of operation, the company has helped over two million Americans get financing for their homes. Between 2013 and 2014, Quicken Loans was able to close over $140 billion in mortgages. The company has over 13,000 employees in its 29 locations spread all over the United States. According to Forbes Magazine 2016 rankings, the company is the 274th best employer in America (Dill, 2016).
Quicken Loan Values
Quicken Loans has 19 core values that are the foundation of the company’s culture and act as a base on which key decisions are made. The company takes the principles very seriously and is mandatory that every new employee attends what they refer to as ISM’s day. This entire day is spent by the company’s founder and CEO inducting the new members to Quicken Loans’ culture. Clearly stating what the company’s goals are is critical in inspiring performance from employees (United States Office of Personnel Management, 2013). This seems to work in the organization as most employees love the culture and the work environment of the organization
Looking at the Quicken Loan’s values it can be seen that the company’s primary goal is to be the best in its industry. The company’s first principle advocates for employees to stay alert so as to be aware of any opportunity for growth and innovation to continue the success of the company. The company also urges employees to stay ahead of their competition by doing not one but many little things that will be difficult for their competitors to imitate.
Quicken Loans is also highly focused on improving its standards. The company encourages its employees not to settle for good but find better ways of doing things. Innovation is also welcome and rewarded in the company. Failure is not viewed as a disappointment but as a learning opportunity.
One of the greatest values of the company is the family culture. The organization cares about its employees and has great perks and programs for them. The company has a program known as the live downtown program where its employees who are first-time renters are eligible for $3,500 or up to $20,000 forgivable loans for those buying homes. The company also covers up to 74% of healthcare costs of its employees (Great Place to Work, 2016).
Impact of Quicken Loan’s Values on Employees’ Job Satisfaction and Motivation
Quicken Loans goal of being the best in its industry demands a lot from its employees. To the organization, the customer always comes first no matter what the time with no exceptions or excuses. The company is also very strict to customer support and insists on same day response to all customer inquiries. To achieve this goal, the company takes work very seriously and even as a principle that says “Every second counts (Quicken Loans Inc, 2015).” Every employee has unique skills and is assigned different tasks with team leaders who closely supervise their job. This has caused most of the company employees to complain about long working hours and the high production emphasis.
The company is always trying to improve on its services and performance. As such, innovation is highly encouraged and rewarded in the company. Quicken Loans holds a pitch day that is an organization-wide competition to find the employee with the best idea to empower team members and transform the company. The organization also encourages its employees to try out different things by not condemning failure. The company also has a program known as bullet time where employees are given time, resources, and freedom to work on their personal projects. The significance of this task is that it gives employees time to be innovative and learn new things. These reasons have made most employees be highly motivated in doing their jobs with most of them saying the company has good work experience with enormous room for growth.
Quicken Loans also appreciates efforts and rewards it but does not encourage employees to chase rewards. As long as employees excel at their work, they will have a good time in the company. This can be seen from one of the company’s principle that says, “Innovation is rewarded. Execution is worshiped (Quicken Loans Inc, 2015).” This is also evident from the fact that the winners of the pitch day receive paid vacation with their spouse. The importance of this is that it motivates employees to work be more innovative and perform better at their job. The company’s salary is also fair with most employees being satisfied with it (Glassdoor, 2016).
Finally, Quicken Loans sees every employee as a family and encourage employees to develop relationships. Their genuine care is seen from the perks and programs that it offers its employees. These benefits are not mandatory but the company still offers them. This greatly motivates employees with most of them saying the organization genuinely cares for them and the interaction with other employees is also good. This also makes employs feel at home in the organization and may lead to low employee turnover.
Recommendation
The approach taken by Quicken Loans should be adopted by all organizations. The five characteristics that determine job satisfaction are; skill variety, autonomy, task significance, task identity, and job feedback (Hackman, Lawler, & Oldham, 2000). From the analysis of the organization’s values and practices, job specialization exists where every employee has a specific task to complete. Task identity is also present in the organization where an employee knows the beginning of a task is a customer inquiry that an employee should evaluate and respond to on the same day. The significance of tasks performed in the organization is known by all employees because they know that their objective is to do the best to keep the company ahead of the rest. The employees through the bullet time program are given the freedom to do their own personal projects. Finally, whenever an employee does a good or bad job the organization lets them know. This is seen when the organization gives rewards for innovation and insists on high productivity from all workers. When all five job characteristics are present, the employees will view the work as meaningful, will have personal responsibility, and will understand results of their work (Faturochman, 2003). This will lead to high job productivity as seen in the Quicken Loans organization.
References
Dill, K. (2016). Quicken loans on the Forbes America’s best employers list. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/companies/quicken-loans/
Faturochman, L. (2003). The Job Characteristics Theory: A Review. Buleting Psikologi, 2(18), 1–13.
Glassdoor. (2016, July 12). Quicken loans reviews. Retrieved July 15, 2016, from Glassdoor, https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Quicken-Loans-Reviews-E7856_P2.htm
Great Place to Work. (2016). Quicken loans. Retrieved July 15, 2016, from Great Place to Work, http://reviews.greatplacetowork.com/quicken-loans
Hackman, j, Lawler, E., & Oldham, G. R. (2000). Job characteristics theory. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe.
Quicken Loans Inc. (2015). About us. Retrieved July 15, 2016, from Quicken Loans, http://www.quickenloans.com/about
United States Office of Personnel Management. (2013). Organizational goals can be powerful Energizers. Retrieved July 15, 2016, from United States Office of Personal Management, https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/performance-management/performance-management-cycle/planning/organizational-goals-can-be-powerful-energizers/
