Liberty Mutual Insurance reviews

Used to be great company to work for. Now more interested in becoming one of the largest insurance providers in the world (and keeping top officers well-remunerated) than in providing the exceptional customer service (to external customers and employees) that the company was once known for. It used to be fairly easily to move to other business units/career paths. Although "promote from within" is touted, it can be an uphill battle. Low pay, particularly for lower level jobs. Pay ranges not adjusted for actual cost of living in given locations, or for volume of work expected to be produced. (Of course, top corporate officers' pay and benefits is exceptionally good.) Retirement plan has been modified, and medical insurance coverage switched to a different (not as good) provider this year. Cutting costs by reducing staff (by attrition or lay-offs). Only place I've ever worked where replacing leaving employees has to be approved by top managers (which may or may not happen). Since work volume doesn't reduce when staff reduces, workload on remaining staff is catastrophic. They're paying lip service to "work / life balance", but if you're so tired and stressed out from work that you can't enjoy the rest of your life there is no "balance." The message transmitted to employees, directly or subliminally, is to "do more, do it faster, but do it perfectly with no mistakes!" Focus is now on "metrics"...great in a manufacturing environment, doesn't work that well in a service industry. There is no real concept by management of the time involved in providing good customer service in a service-focused industry. They ask for input from employees, but ignore anything that doesn't agree with their pre-conceived ideas. And even if a suggestion is good and worthy of implementation it must be approved by each level of management before it's implemented...that can take many, many months. Supervisors micromanage, treat employees like children rather than experienced professionals. "Pay for performance" is a joke. The new corporate expectation introduced last year is that you are performing perfectly all day, every day, and that justifies your current salary. To get an increase you have to perform exceptionally. Problem is, evaluations are based on the entire year, not how you are performing by the end of the year. And, evaluations are subjective...if you are one of your supervisor's favorites you are more likely to get a good evaluation, hence a pay increase (usually marginal, certainly not in the 5-10% range) and decent bonus. The annual "Employee Opinion Survey" is by and outside contractor, professionally prepared format and results, and is, technically, anonymous. But EOS doesn't really allow for employees to give true opinions of company and management since opportunities for narrative comments come with the caution that writing style and word choices may allow direct managers to discern who the author is. Managers are now subject to "360" review, but only their direct reports can review. A more honest review would take it down a couple of levels to the workers in the unit the manager actually directs. I'm still here because my managers/supervisors did such a good job of undermining my confidence in my self as a knowledgeable, productive professional that it's taken me until now to realize I should have left within the first year. Now I'm stuck because I'm an "older worker". I do, however, continue to look.

Sr. Management has great talking points about work-life balance; however, the staffing levels don't support them. They cannot keep claims employees for very long due to amount of work required and standard work requirements. Employees are leaving the claims department in droves. Sr. Management constantly adds more work to be done by front line claims employees and managers. No one takes into consideration how long those additional tasks take and so the claims handling goals are never decreased. As a matter of fact, the number of claims to be handled are increased. That is not a concern to Sr. Management because all employees are Salaried Employees so there is no requirement to pay the individual employees for the actual number of hours worked. The company cars for the property department are Ford Transit Connect, Dodge ProMaster City or Jeep Liberty. The company cars for the auto department are Ford Fusion. All of the cars are bare bones 4 cylinder vehicles. These vehicles are comparable to sub-standard carriers. Even management seems to be ashamed of them because just recently they have been de-badged. Most front line managers understand that the claims job in its current form is not doable. The ones that care about their employees and have spoken up to Sr. Management are frowned upon and marginalized. Sr. Management wants everybody to ask how high to jump like in the army when they ask you to jump. Standard work tries to make everything black and white. Insurance is shades of gray. There is hardly anything that is ever black and white. Audit is not black and white. Standard work is not going to save the company money. It is costing the company money in turn of employees retention. Standard work doesn't allow you to take a college employee and turn him into a 5 star employee because they read a manual. The Continuous Improvement is a lot of work and most of the items that cost money aren't implemented through the CI model. The employees are already looking at it as another system that takes time away from the handling of your claims which is merely a tool to hopefully make the employees feel more engaged. Any CI's that showed that more employees are needed to handle claims died. CI's that added a field to a procedure or created another procedure regardless of how mundane it was are approved. Sr. Management doesn't listen to constructive criticism. If you are not totally on board with the company and are one of the employees that complain about workload or work-life balance, it will show in your performance review. This is not an open line of communication which the company claims to have. Everything is a procedure written down somewhere that if not followed is to your detriment. There are so many procedures that it is impossible to know them all. Those procedures change often and due to the overload of communication it is easy to be overlooked when received.