Culture Shifting Away from What Made It Great - Commercial Underwriter Acuity Insurance Employee Review

- Excellent benefits including great healthcare, dental, vision, 10.5% of your salary into your 401k annually (without having to put anything in yourself), HSA contributions (Acuity pays $3.4K annually into a family account), unlimited sick days, etc. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better benefits package. - Compensation has improved over the years. When we were losing employees to other carriers over pay, we made adjustments. During high inflation after Covid, Acuity gave every employee a mid-year 5% increase to help. - We attract top talent throughout our 31 state footprint. I learn new things every day from working with some of the best people in the industry. - Acuity takes care of their employees. We have numerous stories of serious illness, tragedies, and other life events where Acuity shows up for their employees in meaningful ways to support us. - Great flexibility and work/life balance. Employees can work remotely, there is flex time, working hours are flexible. Many of our employees are able to coach high school sports, volunteer, be on school boards, etc. I have never not been able to make my kid's events or miss an appointment because of work. - Access to officers. Quarterly exec exchanges where a small group of employees meets with 1-2 officers at a time to ask any questions we want, including Melissa. Officers are accessible via email, Teams, phone and they actually answer you. - Our home office building is incredible. It includes a fitness center open to employees 24/7, a fieldhouse with basketball courts, pickleball courts, volleyball, futsal, tennis, a golf simulator, and games like air hockey, pool, shuffleboard, etc. which also is available 24/7 to employees on our families. Every Wednesday employees receive free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a happy hour with soda, beer, wine, and cocktails. Families are invited to Wednesday dinners, every Wednesday. We have random little touches in our home office like a beautiful outdoor walking path that goes throughout out meticulously maintained grounds, ponds with seating, a garden for employees to plant whatever they want, parking garages to keep our cars out of Wisconsin snow storms, ping pong tables, pianos, world class art, I could go on and on. - Acuity offers significant opportunities for growth and career advancement. The company has ambitious goals and plenty of untapped potential, creating opportunities for people who are willing to step outside their comfort zone, learn across departments, take on new challenges, and speak up, even when every idea is not ultimately adopted. - This is by far the best place I have ever worked. Is it perfect? No, but we have really good people through out the organization from the officers to the frontline. We also do a good job of appointing great independent agencies to work with.

- We are a legacy insurance carrier with legacy systems that we make work but it can be frustrating to make changes to. - We are hesitant to create incentive structures for our best performing employees out of a perception of fairness. Our best employees get tapped on over and over again for additional work without additional pay. - Our officers can feel out of touch with front line employees sending what they perceive as "whimsical" happy birthday videos, vague examples of employees going above and beyond, or short thank you videos to a whole department with a bunch of b-roll footage for achieving outstanding results with no sort of reward tied to it. - We are guilty of chasing the next big project or strategic initiative before we finish others. Prioritization among projects is not always clear. - We really struggle identifying poor performers, having honest conversations with them, and helping them improve or moving on.

- ability to work remote nearly full time - Flexible hours - Unlimited sick days - Casual dress code - Great training program and mentorship - Good company values (caring about other people, having integrity) - annual charity donations made based on employee choice - People are kind - Job stability

- mandatory "fun", including required in-office days a few times a year. Although travel and hotels are paid for, employees are crowded together and expected to socialize all day, sometimes even forbidden from working instead. Many love this, particularly those who work with people and love doing so, but others do not, particularly those in IT and similar departments who signed on for a very different type of work - higher ups seem to dismiss certain employee concerns or deny employees opportunity to share negative feedback in some situations - positive feedback from the majority is sometimes used to drown out serious concerns that only apply to some - The DEIB program was renamed to "Belonging" and a focus was placed on celebrating how many employees feel like they belong at the company instead of listening to minorities who may not feel that way - higher ups seem to be making major reorganization and project methodology changes to "do the work better" without understanding how the work is even done, then telling people they need to "embrace change" if they complain