Mission, Vision, and Values Statements
Mission, Vision, and Values statements serve a critical role in organization management by guiding organizational standards and practices. The statements direct leaders in decision making while conducting their management operations—the statements direct stakeholders and employees towards fulfilling their company’s purpose. A mission statement is a statement designed to describe the reasons for the existence of a company and its intended purpose. The vision statement of an organization describes the intended future appearance of the organization. The values statement is a statement that indicates specific things that an organization believes in and how it should conduct itself. Management refers to the effective and efficient pursuit of a company’s goals. The mission statement usually supports the vision statement to effectively describe the purpose and direction of the organization to its stakeholders, employees, and customers. By having a clear understanding of mission, Vision, and values statements, the management team can smoothly lead the company. This paper intends to conduct a leadership analysis to explore the aspects of motivation conflict and change management and diversity in contemporary organizations. The paper will describe the mission, Vision, and values statement of Aetna health and Life Insurance Company (Kinicki, & Williams, 2016).
Company Overview and History
Aetna Inc. is a company situated in America. The company was founded in 1853; the main aim for its creation was to provide health professionals, employers, and individuals with forward-looking health insurance products, services, and benefits. The company deals with consumer-directed and traditional healthcare insurance covers. The company also sells services such as disability plans, long-term care, and behavioral health. This company’s network includes 5,700 hospitals, 690,000 specialists, and primary care doctors, 1.2 million care specialists, and over 12.7 million dental members (Aetna, 2017). Aetna Fire Insurance Company established the company. The company has gained a lot of popularity from its indiscriminate coverage, and this value is included among its vision and mission statements (Aetna, 2017).
The company has been striving towards improving the healthcare system through the creation of programs meant to encourage its stakeholders to be more engaged in their health. The company is among the largest American health insurance companies. It has more than 45 million clients and 26,000 employees in their various insurance departments. The company has been involved in charity donations, and for instance, the company donated over 14.6 million to nonprofit institutions. The company has 54 working Aetna council of volunteers in 46 cities across the country (Aetna, 2017).
Corporate statements provide an organization a direction and perfect measures to ensure the company’s growth. For example, having a corporate vision statement, the organization has successfully projected an intended future that strives to achieve. On the other hand, their mission statement provides them with the steps necessary to advance towards the company’s set goals. The mission statement of Aetna Inc. is based on consumer-directed healthcare products readily accessible by everyone. The availability of the products brings the company closer to its Vision in which it intends to create an improved healthcare system in America (Kinicki, & Williams, 2016).
Mission Statement
Aetna Inc.’s mission statement is “dedicated to assisting individuals in getting health and financial security through providing easy access to high quality, cheap and safe health care and saving their finances against risks related to health” (Aetna, 2017). For a mission statement to be efficient, it has to describe a special and crucial purpose that distinguishes a company from others of its kind. A perfect mission statement has to include a specified target like intended consumers, identify the company’s service or a product, the location of operation, the technology used belief, strengths, specified profits values, and responsibility towards the public.
Aetna Inc.’s mission statement indicates their main purpose is “dedication to helping people,” this purpose clearly describe their target customers. The mission statement, “provision of health and financial security through ensuring easy access” (Aetna, 2017), shows the service they intend to offer to its targeted customers; it also shows the geographical area and the company’s public responsibility. In the mission statement, the company describes its values, beliefs, economic and main strengths by stating that they shall provide affordable quality health and also offer financial protection against risks related to health. The clarity and strength of Aetna’s mission statement are evident in how it identifies the reasons for the company’s existence and its target. It is recommendable for a company to have in place a proper mission statement to be utilized in guiding the management on how to serve and lead its employees and customers.
The mission statement creates a guide for organizational standards and practices within an organization in several ways. First, the mission is the foundation of a good strategy. The strategy in which the company aims to achieve its goals must be based on the mission. In this case, the mission sets a strong ground for setting up a strategy since it clearly states the business purpose. This statement is the viewpoint for looking down the road towards success. By stating the purpose, managers have to measure their achievement by comparing what they have achieved so far and remaining for them to serve the purpose. According to the mission of Aetna Inc., the managers have to evaluate themselves by assessing their dedication towards helping people to get financial and health security. Also, the company has to assess its impacts on the provision of easy access to cheap, good quality, safe care, as stated in their mission (Kinicki, & Williams, 2016).
Aetna Inc.’s mission statement clearly defines the company’s purpose to the stakeholder and contains the company’s objectives and goals. However, the mission statement can be rewritten to become more inspiring futuristic, and more memorable. The best way to rewrite the mission statement is “Inspire hope and be a unique leader in ensuring quality and minimizing the cost of health care in the United States of America” (Aetna, 2017).
Vision Statement
The vision statement for Aetna Inc. is, “Aetna Inc. aims at becoming a giant in health cooperating with hospitals and doctors, investors, patients, government and others bodies to build a stronger, efficient health care system” (Aetna, 2017). The vision statement of a company is mostly about the future goals of a company. This vision statement clearly describes the purpose and direction of the company. The statement is accurate and has standards of inspiration and excellence. It demonstrates the uniqueness of the company and can be understood easily by everyone. Proper mission and vision statements have to be correspondent, having the mission statement describing the company’s purpose while the vision statement defining the company’s future determined by the purpose. The company’s management utilizes the vision statement to make accurate steps and measures towards achieving the company’s desired future. Aetna Inc.’s vision statement shows the company’s goals, which require the company to cooperate with the right stakeholders to achieve effective development within the healthcare system.
Leaders and employees support the company’s Vision throughout the company through various measures taken by the various departments within the organization. The leaders ensure that the Vision is straight to the point and easy to understand. They ensure that everyone within and outside the company knows the Vision. The leaders ensure that every decision they make within the company is aligned with the Vision. Also, leaders guide employees’ actions to follow the path towards achieving the Vision, and nothing done in the company goes contrary to the set vision. Leaders have to maintain clear and concise communication to avoid misinterpretation by employees and other stakeholders. Leaders have to clarify to the employees how working towards their goals is linked to the company’s Vision. Also, the leader has to set an example through working hard and remaining committed towards the mission to encourage and motivate the employees to work hard. The employees need to own the company’s goals and strive towards achieving them. They should also ask for clarification to avoid mistakes (Kinicki, & Williams, 2016).
Value Statement
Aetna Inc.’s value statement is made from core values raised together as opinions from more than 30,000 individuals and the views of their customers. Mark Bertolini, the chief executive officer, chairman, and the president of Aetna Inc., stated that everything they do in the company is based on the company’s values, which is clear and strong key beliefs that describe who they are and what people should expect from them. He added that their values drive their thoughts and actions on their daily activities, encourage innovations in the company’s services and products, and push the company’s commitment to perfection in their activities. The four values that drive Aetna Inc. include the following; Inspiration, caring, excellence, Integrity. Integrity is about doing the right things and thinking about the right reasons. Excellence value is about working hard to offer high quality and value using relevant, simple, and easy solutions. Caring value involves respecting and listening to the customers and employees to ensure operations are done with compassion, understanding, and insight. Inspiration value involves inspiring each other within the company to explore ideas that might change the world to a better place (Aetna, 2017).
The value statement effectively serves its purpose of describing the company’s core values to both internal and external stakeholders. The value statement contains the company’s unique beliefs that distinguish it from others. The statement helps the organization’s management team to drive their departments towards achieving the set objectives. The vision and mission statements are not directly related to the value statement, but they encourage everyone in the organization to behave ethically (Kinicki, & Williams, 2016).
The company’s values contribute to providing quality consumer goods/services in several ways. First, Integrity emphasizes on doing the right thing for the right reason. The company employees are expected to ensure that every decision they make is right, and it should be meant to benefit the consumers rather than harming them. Excellence emphasizes delivering high-quality services and products to the customers, and this value prevents the employees from serving substandard goods and poor services to the customers. Caring ensures that customers are listened to, and their needs are perfectly served. Inspiration encourages service providers to explore much better methods of serving consumer needs.
Executive Summary
The vision and mission statement describes the company’s purpose to its stakeholders. The value statement states the special beliefs that the company invests in to ensure perfect service delivery. Aetna Company has a very strong mission statement that guides all its operations and decision making. The mission is inspiring, appropriate, and clear to understand. The mission helps the management to guide the employees towards achieving set goals properly. A clear and accurate mission, Vision, and value statement has enabled Aetna Company to be very successful in its operations.