I regret very much to say that this is a company that has forgot the importance of it's people. Ten years ago, as an employee I was told that the employees are more important than the policy holders. The company believed that if they took good care of their people, the people would take care of the policy holders. The former CEO, John Blackburn, told a small group meeting that I was in that he was most proud of the fact that he never layed off anyone. That changed dramatically when the new CEO came in. He layed off 1/3 of the staff at the Arden Hills facility not long after took over. The lay offs have continued, especially with the hiring of the new CIO from Target, Therace Risch. The implementation of the new IT systems is not going well, in spite of the glowing status reports from the management that is either not in touch with reality at best or dishonest at worst. Country has now layed off all the expertise for their core mainframe systems that they need to continue their business until the new systems can be in place. They have replaced these people with off shore contracted help at much lower pay rates. This is just poor management! There will be a price to pay in lost business because of the inability to maintain the core IT systems until they can be replaced with the new systems.
