Pros
Never laid anyone off in over 100 years in business. Promote from within. Very stable - seemingly no danger of being bought out. Christmas bonus pretty much guaranteed (has to be approved but they always say yes). Profit sharing if we have a good year and beat the industry numbers.
Cons
Never laid anyone off, but this means they are extremely reluctant to open new positions and raise salaries, leading to burnout and high turnover. Claim reps are typically juggling more at any one time than at other companies in the industry. This leads to customers unintentionally being forgotten and coming at you understandably angry, only increasing stress. Salaried position but you feel obligated to work evenings and weekends due to work load so work/ life balance suffers. People don’t care about the possibility of being laid off in the future when they can’t afford to live so they end up leaving for other insurance companies that pay more. They promote from within, but this sometimes means people who don’t deserve promotions getting them due to seniority. This is especially a problem with management when people who have no business managing other people get put in positions of power. Once you reach a manager level, they won’t fire you and will only demote you but have to let you keep your pay so they’re extremely reluctant to do it and let people stay in management positions way too long while branches or even entire regions fall apart. They brag about the huge amount sitting in surplus , which is comforting on one level knowing your job is secure, but frustrating on another level knowing they could be offering higher pay or better health insurance. The health insurance is awful. Get ready to spend a chunk of your lower than average pay on healthcare if you need it. You can only go so far in this company unless you’re willing to uproot your entire life and move. Upper management forces structural changes through that nobody wants or that may not be right for a region. If you’re in a different time zone than Michigan and something breaks, you’re dead in the water until the next business day. Upper management tends to be slow to change so the company lags behind on social and technological advances.
