I gave Arbella 1 star because my review wouldn't be accepted with no stars
Pros
Benefits, location (if you live south of Boston), and most employees below the management level. There are a lot of good people working here who are just inundated with work by an employer who only cares about the bottom line (something I was once told in a meeting) - making money. As a result there are a lot of good people, hard working people, employed here who are very unhappy. I ask that you keep that in mind when you are talking to them on the phone about a claim. Things can get heated, I know but these people are under a lot of stress. Don't believe the "feel good" stuff you read in recent reviews on this same page. I'll address those later.
Cons
Work volume is unmanageable. The company has downsized to the point where they don't have enough adjusters to handle a high volume of claims such as the winter of 2014. Management ends up pulling people out of other departments, provides half assed training and expects expert claim handling....along with expecting these same people to do their own jobs at the same time. Many times when I was here I heard the words "stay late, come in early, work weekends....whatever it takes to get the job done" from a supervisor who had never done my job. And OT pay? Forget it. You were, and still are, expected to volunteer your own time for the Arbella cause. Arbella also doesn't promote from within anymore. Now, when a management position opens up, they go outside the company for candidates. In my early years here, they would promote from within. Back then, it was a decent place to work. There was upward mobility. Employees were motivated to do more with the hope of a promotion as a reward. Now, that is no longer the case. What's an employee's motivation to do more? He/she will just get bypassed on a promotion in favor of an outsider who has never done the job he/she will be supervising. Most of these ""professional managers", as I call them, are hacks with connections to whoever may be the VP of claims at the time. The VP's used to work their way up in the company. Now they are brought in from another company, create chaos for 5 - 7 years and then are given a nice severance package to move on to another company to run that place into the ground. The Claims Workstation, the computer system at Arbella, is a mess. It's slow. There are far too many windows and "clicks" needed to perform a simple task. It creates more work for the employee.
