No one is equipped (or authorized in many cases) to make a decision of any significance, and training programs usually roll out just in time for them to change the mandatory workflow within a month. Most departments are constantly understaffed, and you will have to stay late or work from home to keep up. It's also a guarantee that you'll find yourself in an ethically compromising position, but if you're strategic, you can probably shoehorn a solution into the moral code you used to tell yourself you'd never break. The amount of bureaucracy is staggering, even to get the answer to a simple yes or no question, and once you get an answer, it will be second guessed by every person you come in contact with. Confidence is valued far more than competence, and it's possible to advance if you can force yourself to stay engaged and never show frustration, but conversely, if you show real, actual initiative to change anything, you will be defeated. Training programs are totally centralized, so any information specific to your region (which is about 80% of what you need to know) is not included. All this is pretty frustrating, but one of the worst parts is that meetings are called several times a week during the busiest hours, where the topics often include reminders of how to do basic parts of your job and photos from someone's vacation (I'm not making that up). The phrase "we appreciate you" is uttered over and over, as if saying it will make it true, but when it comes time for an evaluation not one of them will hesitate to throw you under the bus and focus only on your mistakes. I actually don't know if they're trying to save money on bonuses or if they just don't know what the performance criteria mean - you can decide for yourself which is worse. Gift cards and other prizes are given out regularly, which seems great at first, until you have to follow up for a month and a half to make sure it's actually delivered. When someone speaks up about low morale, there's a huge shockwave that ripples through management, and they brainstorm solutions in conference rooms for a few weeks until they lose interest (usually the results of these meetings are a pizza party). Overall, the company's biggest problem isn't mismanagement or disorganization - it's a lack of awareness that permeates down from the highest levels. Everyone agrees that it's a thankless, stressful, difficult job, and yet somehow the exact policies remain in place that keep it so. A poignant analogy to my time at Safeco would be the phone calls I made to customers on an almost daily basis: "Yes, sir, I understand what you're saying. But the claim is still denied."
In case it seems like I'm just airing dirty laundry - I brought up each of these points as an employee and the answer was always the same. "Thanks, we'll look into it."
