Arthur J Gallagher Reviews

Pros

Outstanding people in my division; interesting work; best boss I've ever had the pleasure working for; great benefits package (except leave policy)

Cons

Limited opportunity for career advancement; not a very flexible leave policy for working parents

Advice to Senior Management

Consider revising your leave policy; The Gallagher Family emphasized the importance of family, but doesn't demonstrate this in their time away from work policy. A working parent is likely to have more than 2 occurances of absence per year to care for sick children. This doesn't make us a bad employee!

Pros

great people, thriving environment, good work and life balance

Cons

insurance is not the most exciting field

Advice to Senior Management

keep doing what you're doing

Pros

They provided a good surrounding for young inexperienced consultants

Cons

Had to attend a lot of unecessary conference calls

Advice to Senior Management

n/a

Pros

decent benefits, lots of training when wanted

Cons

Infested with nepotism at all levels. Don't plan on moving up in this company

Advice to Senior Management

Don't bother, it strictly a top down management style

Pros

There is a large room for advancement

Cons

Inter office competition can become hostile

Pros

Good opportunity for young producers, very good selection of support company wide to enhance an atmosphere of cross selling and success.

Cons

The president of our office was considerably difficult to work with, often times demeaning. Sometimes the message from the corporate office did not meld with the objectives of individual offices.

Pros

Was a great place to work at the local level, management was great to work with and would back you up when needed. Certain offices went out of their way to make sure you were doing well. Benefits like vision and dental did improve over time.

Cons

If your not one of the cronies or a family member of management then don't expect to get promoted. Corporate level management is bad at communication, nothing like a unexpected phone call to let you know your working 40 hours instead of 35 at no pay increase for the increased hours. They expect certain things of you even if you have no idea or have not had adequate training on the matter. Had several opportunities for other jobs but wanted to stay for loyalty to the company. In the end if your direct management does not like you, no matter how much you do to improve or show more effort they will force you out.

Advice to Senior Management

Your subordinates know more than you think and are a valuable asset, treat them right and you might not have a high turn over rate and more loyal employees not being burned out. Be consistent, if an employee is presented with new responsibilities with no training and comes to you with many questions on procedures, but then in their review state how often you were bugged by them with questions only to have the next year state how they didn't come to you for questions is irresponsible.

Pros

Great flexibility in terms of what you want exposure to. You can work on a number of different types of insurance lines without any problem from the company structure (unlike the Aons and Marshs that only allow you to have exposure to just 1 line of business). You can really learn a lot and expand your knowledge here.

Cons

If you're looking to build a technical career during the launch phase (1-4 years), this place is not a good start. Very limiting on your growth potential. The company structure is too defragmented by offices and as a result is a counter-incentive to working with each other across offices or regions, in effect limiting your growth opportunities, exposure, and recognitions to just your office. For a global brokerage, you're still getting the same experience you could get at a localized single office brokerage, but with nationwide corporate protocols that further restrain your role.

No payscale with constraining by-office budgeting will limit you from getting any sort of raise to once every 5 years. Consistently excellent performance has merited a raise for some as "early" as once every 3 years. Only decent growth potential are for the producers. Company culture is not keen on promoting from within and believes that technical roles and expertise can always be found from hiring externally, and it does help keep employee costs down.

Also very easy to get complacent and lost within the beat of your office, and I've witnessed this keep some stuck in their role for 10-20 years without really growing much at all.

Advice to Senior Management

Restructure the business model, office structure, budgeting structures. Find a new way to operate that will be enabling for office-to-office, region-to-region interaction. Think "virtual" teams. Offer pay-scales or a career track to entry level employees to make them feel like they are growing somewhere. Especially with Gen Y, very likely to move after 2 years. It's hard to grow talent from bottom up and expect them to stay in the company for 20-30 years, traditional methods are not efficient anymore.

Pros

Most employees believe in a good work/life balance
Competitive salaries

Cons

Benefits package lags peers
Rampant nepotism
Corporate cowardice is commonplace

Advice to Senior Management

Lead by example, stop hiring friends and family.

Pros

the people are friendly, success driven culture, ability to work in many different industries, work life balance

Cons

hard to be promoted, strong family bonds for promotions, not a lot of direction, no employee reviews, lack of communication