AAA NCNU Insurance Exchange Reviews

Pros

Great benefits, 401k
Co-workers are great, many positions remote

Cons

Senior management let go of some of the best employees, some with over 25+ years experience without batting an eyelid. Many had to struggle through economic collapse and do they care?? No, as long as they continue to get THEIR own bonuses, they could care less about what happens to employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Become more efficient and get rid of incompentence in senior leadship roles....

Pros

Centrally located. Most employees want to do a good job and do. People who are self-starters can carve out a niche.

Cons

Some employees take advantage of the system and have a sense of entitlement. Consecutive years of transition without any sincere recognition takes its toll. Ability to mentor and coach to professional growth needs to get better.

Advice to Senior Management

Accountability with recognition is key. Keeping and rewarding the right talent should be a a priority. Letting go the anchors that weight you down would make a valuable statement to everyone.

Pros

In the past - I have only rated 2 of 5. My rating went up to 3 primarily because it seems the company is begining to get in place competent leadership in the Senior positions. To do this they had to be brought from outside the company. Actual business disciplines are being implemented to make decisions, update computer systems, track expenses, and balance quantity and quality. There really seems to be a lot more credibility in the senior leadership team.

Cons

As mentioned before, inorder to put in place competent leadership CSAA had to hire outside their ranks. At the Supervisory and middle management level the old school tap on the shoulder is very much alive. Granted interviews are posted but ultimately advancement is based on friendship rather then what is best for the company by recruiting inside the ranks those that have the right combination of experience, skills, and education. Many special interest groups and circles of friends are manipulating this process providing inside coaching and manipulating reviews. Recently among several centers supervisors have been swapped back and forth in lateral transitions multiple times that have marginal experience when talent was more then present and would have been more cost effective and caused less disruption to the current operations.

Advice to Senior Management

Put in place checks and balances to monitor the advancement process to assusre you are hiring the right candidates that have experience, education and skill sets to grow the company. Place some accountability on managers and monitor special interest groups. CSAA has received recognition for diversity which is commendable. Just make sure that Diversity includes everyone and not just pandering to select groups creating an environemt of reverse discrimination. Because the tap on the should has filled the ranks in the supervisory and management levels, senior leadership needs to implement policies that places checks and balances on the hiring process using the business disciplines we know they have.

Pros

Hard working staff and middle management. Great opportunity to promote if you know your politics.

Cons

Providing feedback was inconsistent. I worked for an entire year without receiving any feedback from my superior and I doubt his Manager was providing any to him.

Advice to Senior Management

If you know someone like I did than you are definitely on your way up like I was. But don't bite the hand that feeds or rather provides no supportive nourishment what so ever.

Change is not good when you cannot manage it effectively and I believe Executive leadership is still trying to get a grasp of that. The ideas site is a great start but seriously take the time to get to know the front line; they are your Achilles heel and your greatest strength!!!

There seems to be an heir of "going through the motions" for many of the IT Leaders in Station Landing, this poor attitude filters down to through the ranks and infects all the sites negatively.

Pros

Member focused organization, highly recognized brand, salary and benefits.

Cons

Current reorganization and split between Club and Insurance Co is a little ugly to say the least.

Advice to Senior Management

Always keep our values in mind. Walk the talk!

Pros

Benefits: Excellent Salary, 401k (with 100% match up to 6%) AND pension, decent medical, etc., bonus opportunity, telecommute, good PTO (some of the best benefits in the Phoenix area from what I can tell)
Work/Life Balance
Brand
Members are #1
Diversity and environmental concern
Free coffee
Nice cafeteria
Very nice facilities, good location
Many volunteer opportunities (and 24 hours of time off to do them)
Casual work environment (jeans every day)

Cons

While it's all about member experience, somewhere along the line, we have forgotten about the employee experience. Highly paid contractors are doing the work of FTEs and are trusted more than those with the experience who should be doing the work. Layoffs have been rampant the last 4 years, with another probably coming by end of June with another re-org occurring. Our 4th CIO (includes one interim) in the past 5 years has just been announced.

While we win awards for Diversity, if you are over 50, beware - it's obvious to see that's who gets laid off, but the company seems to dot it's i's and cross it's t's - there's been a couple of age discrimmination lawsuits in the news, but so far there hasn't been success by the plaintiffs in their actions.

While we talk ethics and about our vision and values, we don't seem to walk the walk very well. Bad behaviour seems to be constantly rewarded, while people who do the right thing are left in the cold. For instance, I've been verbally abused by people who still work here and have been promoted while I follow our vision and values all the time. People who micromanage seem to move up in this organization as well. "Yes" people are also promoted over those with fresh ideas and the ability to say no.

While we tout individual development plans and mentoring, promotional opportunities seem to be non-existant, unless you are someone's favorite. Most job postings have pre-determined candidates for them. I've never worked so long at one place and not had an opportunity for promotion even though I am more than fully qualified as per our job family descriptions. Review feedback is many times subjective rather than objective and all reviews are "callibrated" against each other based on performance, current salary and other factors - in other words, someone is ranking all the employees, and usually that's done by upper management who hasn't worked with those individuals. Perception is the norm rather than gathering the facts about the individual or the situations in which the individual was involved.

While we do have work/life balance (telecommute, ability to take laptop home, email on phones), on the other hand, there are quite a few FTE's who work 60-70 hours a week- thru lunch and into the night. Either these folks need to be mentored to work smarter, or we need to realize that having them do 4-5 projects at once isn't a successful way to work.

While our brand is our greatest asset, it's hard to believe how much AAA is disjointed. Different clubs offer different products and different prices. It's hard to believe the terrible shape our systems are in even with huge projects to make improvements. We continue to create duplicate systems based on product. We are supposedly a non for profit organization, but our goals are profitability and we act as though we are a giant publicly owned for-profit company.

Advice to Senior Management

Southwest and Zappos.com among others have figured out if you treat your employees as #1, your customers (members) will be at their happiest also. Start treating us better! Figure out how to get to a flat headcount and stop the layoffs. Stop putting highly paid contractors in our places. Start promoting from within and stop the favortism. Stop rewarding bad behaviour and reward those with good and new ideas, experience in their jobs and with ideas they bring to the table. Continue to work on cascading goals down to employees in a better fashion and in a timely manner. Stop acting like we are some huge fortune 100 company - we are a small company. Try to figure out how to be one AAA...that's who our customers think we are. Consolidate systems, stop duplicating systems. Go back to our Vision and Values culture...don't just talk the talk but walk the walk! Can we please have a CIO that can create a plan for us that lasts longer than a year?

You have the good stuff in place - benefits, vision/values, etc - people do not want to leave....but right now that's all I hear them talking about...about how when the economy picks up they will be looking and they will also be telling people NOT to work at AAA NCNU mainly because of how the FTE's are treated and how it feels like the Vision and Values have been placed to the side.

Pros

I work with a great team and my managment team is awesome. They're very understanding and I view them as not only my co-workers, but my friends as well.

Cons

Most career advancement opportunities are in Glendale, AZ, so you're stuck in your position.

Advice to Senior Management

My management team is great. My belief is that the senior management should get more involved with the folks that are doing the "dirty work" so they can understand our struggles.

Pros

The people, the commitment to our members and the AAA brand

Cons

The foundation of Members First is something anyone you talk to who works here can get behind, What is of concern is the lack downstream planning and communication by our senior leaders. As an employee I support the need for change, whether it be in our strategies, goals or efforts to reduce costs that may negativily impact jobs. We seem to be really good at Macro planning, but miss the boat when it comes to Micro planning and the employees suffer.

Advice to Senior Management

Undersatnd how a major strategy change affects the business and impacts all dowstream work efforts and include plans for how to mitigate the impacts. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Pros

Benefits are solid, compared to some companies in todays work environment. The AAA employees in local officies are exceptional and dedicated.

Cons

Very poor management, without any thought on how what they do one month, will affect the company in the long run. Has moved many jobs out of state in the last few years. The company has been split up into little groups, or silos, with almost no interaction.

Advice to Senior Management

This was once one of the greatest companies in the state. Most people in the local community held AAA with only the highest regard. Now, people are not given personnel respect. People we have known through many years as loyal AAA members must now be treated as a number.

Pros

Really care about their employees, very ethical company ,good leadership

Cons

in process of major structural change