American Family Insurance Reviews

Pros

Coworkers are some of the best

Cons

Lack of communication of all

Advice to Senior Management

Value employees

Pros

Opportunity to learn the Insurance Industry.

Cons

Uncompetitive insurance rates, very poor technology, overbearing management, lack of transparency, no benefits, poor pay, 1099 status - too much to list - stay away!

Advice to Senior Management

Stop taking advantage of the agent pool. Eliminate the abusive 1099 status, make the Agents employees, provide benefits as you do for company employees.

Pros

- Startup help
- Training
- Salary

Cons

Management is out of touch with agents daily challenges. Failing business motto. No true support in wanting to see agencies grow.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop counting beans and start helping people

Pros

They vet the recruiting process vs throwing spaghetti on the wall
Their training is top notch
They really work hard to ensure your success

Cons

If you get stuck with a mentoring agent that is not motivated to help you grow, you could find yourself stranded if you are not savvy enough to establish your business.

Advice to Senior Management

Be extremely selective in your AIT mentoring agents.

Pros

Many good and dedicated people work for American Family Insurance. There are also many dedicated people in the field force who have worked with internal employees to make it the company it is.

Cons

Lack of support from the company to its employees. Lack of leadership at the top levels of the company in every department.

Advice to Senior Management

Work to regain trust of the employees.

Pros

Management does recognize good employees and I get compensated just fine for my line of work. The job is stable and turnover is not an issue.

Cons

The perks are steadily being taken away. We aren't competitive with 90% of our competition. When you see that Progressive advertisement where they flip the billboard to show competitors' rates, pay attention to where we are on there. There is not one shred of false advertising in that commercial where American Family is concerned. Because of our high rates, we are forced to insure anybody (nobody else will insure them and they have to go somewhere, irregardless of cost). This leads to more (a lot more) claims which is why our bottom line is getting weaker. This results in cost-cutting measures which can get ridiculous (yes, think of paper clip recycling and such). Health Benefits just changed hands and got more expensive. And, there is not much room for advancement unless somebody dies and you're willing to move to Madison, WI. That might sound good for longevity, but only if you're okay doing the same thing until you quit or retire. The equipment they make agency use is awful...cheap and awful. We have had times where there is some good equipment out there, but cutting costs upfront by purchasing cheap hardware will do the complete opposite of saving you any money over even a short period of time.

Advice to Senior Management

Tweak the business plan and get competitive. It might look bad for retention and make some agents mad, but cut loose the clients nobody else will insure so our claim counts can be reduced. Bring back some perks we miss and aren't that expensive to implement (let claims have their little desktop printers...it makes them happier and more productive). Also hire better project managers that have the power to communicate across all departments so that projects are better planned and implemented. And stop buying the cheapest thing on the market...you're spending so much more in support of it than you ever saved buying it in the first place.

Pros

good benefits, decent pay, good direct boss

Cons

upper management horrible, cut throat sales, all about the money, upper managment not supportive and even abusive at times.

Advice to Senior Management

trust your employees!!!

Pros

Madison is a great place
Flexible hours and vacation
Non-aggressive culture
Becoming more diverse

Cons

Office managers at management level
Old-timers taking credit for newcomers work
Not very knowledgeable people and standards
Not very welcoming of out-of-the box ideas
Don’t like outsiders
Value politics over talent

Advice to Senior Management

Remove the old-timers life long career dinosaurs that all they do is warm up the seats and start recognizing and keeping the new talent. Quit the small town mentality and become competitive, no employee likes to be told to be last and stay there. Need to be more effective and consumer focused. Focus less in the internal politics.

Pros

Flexible schedule. Good financing plan. Pretty good training.

Cons

Bad software systems. Hire you on long term finance plan claiming long term support. However, after you get hired they tell you that you must hit certain sales goals within a few months or you are fired. Auto rates are not good.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve software, rates, advertisements, and be more clear on goals and time line for production to stay employed.

Pros

A spacious campus with sizable cubicles, rivaling the size of many offices in the corporate world, in climate-controlled buildings. Free-flowing budgets meant new computers on a semi-regular basis. Numerous friendships and acquaintances were possible, if your job description had you working with multiple divisions and the agents.Merit increases every year, from a manager who was fair, knowledgeable, and sensitive to time-off needs (thought not allowed to grant comp time). Depending on the leadership, you may even be allowed to speak at both national and international conferences, and attend national conferences once a year.

Cons

More often than not, management was selected not based on their leadership capabilities, but based on their (female) gender. "Diversity" is nothing more than the center-square in buzzword bingo. Mini-empires reign in many areas of the company, preventing real change from happening, and those same managers mentioned above engaged in activities of questionable legality to retain their positions, at the expense of even the most talented and gifted staff member, even taking credit for successful projects they had no documented involvement in.

The only way to survive (no thrive. It's not in the handbook) is to keep moving around within the company. If you try to put roots down in any one area for too long, either a social-climbing management wannabe or one of their sycophants will find you and use you to elevate themselves, at the expense of your job.

Advice to Senior Management

"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible." --Colin Powell.

You still don't grasp the crucial difference between the two, which would explain the utter failure of the Talent Management initiative and abrupt departure of the Leadership Learning department's director. It is why you continue to fail at attracting younger customers, younger employees, and actual recognition. it is why other insurers are leaving you in the dust, as you jettison division after division and why one of them will eventually come in any buy up whatever is left.