Pros
I have met and made some great friends through working here. Majority of the people are great and will pitch in to help a coworker out either personally or professionally. If you have little to no experience, it would be a good place to gain industry knowledge. They are very willing to hire recent college grads with no experience and to train them. Most of the training programs for entry-level positions are pretty lengthy.
Cons
The culture of the company has completely changed in the 4 plus years that I have worked there. It used to be a very nice to work and a place people wanted to stay at. It was not unusual to see multiple family members and/or generations working at Farmers. This will not be the case starting now. The company in Olathe, KS rapidly hired and expanded under the new Service Point model starting in 2006. Lots of layers of new middle management were created out of nowhere. Quality internal people applied for some of the these positions over and over again and did not receive them. Who did? The Vice President of Service Point's cronies from AOL (he was an external hire from AOL). Now in jump forward to 2008 and down sizing has begun within Service Point. The majority of the Testing department was outsourced to India. The Independent Agency group (KCIA) will transition completely to Bristol West in the next two years. The Accounting department is on notice and has been told some or all of their department will be outsourced. Most likely to Poland where Zurich is already outsourcing some of their accounting functions to. The Coaching department that conducted reviews of phone calls from customer service and underwriting found out in the past couple of weeks their department is being eliminated and they will have to return to the call center in either customer service or relationship specialist roles. The process improvement team was also eliminated recently as well. Those people thankfully were given the option to become Business Analyst's for the time being. Through all of this, none of the middle management has been thinned out. There are honestly people there in middle management roles that I have no clue what they do to actually draw a paycheck. These middle managers all seem to be in some kind of turf war of some sorts with each other and think they have a finger in every pie at Service Point. It should also be noted in the past 2 years or so the executive ranks have swelled with either newly created positions or various promotions within it. The place (Service Point) has really turned into one big call center. It is my understanding from a company outsider that worked for a vendor/consulting company and who appears to know who is who at the Home Office on an intimate level, that Farmers will continue to downsize departments and positions as much as possible and the Service Points will be one big call center. People will be very expendable, will be doing the jobs of several people, and the positions will be very low level. Benefits are also changing in 2009 and not for the better. Profit Sharing is being eliminated in favor of "STIP". Under the profit sharing model, everyone received the same amount no matter what their salary grade was. Under STIP, the higher you are, the more you will receive. People in salary grades 33 and under will receive less, because higher salary grades do more work (this is pretty much what was said during the Total Rewards meeting I was in). I find that funny because the people that I know in these lower salary grades ie. Customer Service and Relationship Specialists are on the front lines dealing with unhappy people, taking back to back phone calls and having every movement monitored. I know people that have been counseled regarding too many bathroom breaks, not returning from their breakl at exactly 15:00:00, and having managers follow them into the bathroom with walkie talkies because they were taking too long. The amount of STIP you can receive will be tied into your evaluation and how much you are contributing to the 401k plan. Medical is going to 3 plans that will require a significant out of pocket investment by the employee. It will cost around $500.00 per month to carry the PPO plan if you have a spouse and children. Then you would need to factor in the deductible and 80/20 coverage as well. Sick and vacation are being combined into PTO. That might be the only good part of the Total Rewards plan- you were given sick leave but couldn't really use it. Instead of the standard insurance/financial service work week of 37.5 hours, it wil be going to 40. No cost of living or onetime salary bumps are being given for 2009 to help employees adjust to all the new out of pocket costs. Some salary grades will get a onetime increase in 2010 though! The morale is horrible in my location and at many others from what I can gather! It is not a place that I would recommend to family or friends. They can probably do better at Quik Trip.