Pros
-Very good benefits (they match 50% of your 401k up to 6% and also have an employer funded pension). Health/Dental/Vision options are good as well. -Work/life balance is really good. Managers are flexible with doctor appointments, family emergencies, etc. -PTO is accrued, which is a great benefit for people who do not get sick or have a lot of unscheduled absences. 18.5 days off to start and after 5 + years that increases to 23.5 days. -Opportunity to work CAT duty during storms or heavy claim periods, which gives you a chance to make extra money. -They do a good job of focusing on employee engagement by planning special events and activities. -Very strong training across the board. Both internally and externally, this is an organizational strength. Felt like I was given the knowledge and tools to do my job well. -A lot of really good people work there. Formed a lot of great relationships. -Really good teamwork overall within the office. There were plenty of people who would pass the buck and take the easy way out, but for the most part the entire office worked together really well. Felt like you could ask others for help or if you had questions. -Job security is great. People will always be getting into accidents and having claims, so as long as you are doing your job to an adequate level, there isn't much threat of losing your job.
Cons
-Difficult to move up within claims organization and in general. Even getting promoted to the next title within your department is an uphill battle. Even with very good results, it takes entirely too long. A lot of people would move companies to simply get a raise. As a result, we would lose a lot of good employees and it would require everyone else to take on extra work to pick up the slack. -Very clear that upper management plays favorites. Saw people who did not deserve promotions, consistently moving up. -End of year performance evaluations are completely unfair and borderline unethical. Mentality within upper management almost seems like they are trying to keep people down and in their current roles. If you have over 80 employees, someone in the department has to be a 5 (on a scale of 1-5). When this scale was established I was not aware of any 5's and very few 4's over the course of several years. Everyone seemed to fall into the 2 to 3 category, outside of a few people who got a 4 and then the very bottom performers who would be a 1. -Pay is OK. If you want to be paid more, you have to actively seek it out (meaning getting another job offer and asking them to match or putting pressure on them to leave). -Not much opportunity to work from home outside of during snow storms or adverse weather. This job can easily be done from home and they could probably create a more loyal workforce by being flexible and giving people the autonomy to work from home occasionally. -They are very customer focused, which is obviously a good thing. However, they would only take 1 or 2 surveys a month from hundreds of customers that you might interact with. So it was pretty much luck of the draw when it came to your customer service scores. This was a large part of performance reviews and for a lot of people it was pretty unfair. On a scale from 1-10, you needed to be at a 9 or higher to really have any chance to get a better raise, promotion, good review, etc. And most of these surveys are on people that were injured by a Nationwide insured. As a result, it can be difficult to get good scores. Metrics are a bit skewed and used against you when they want to and then not really used in your favor when they are strong.