Pros

Salaries are competitive in IT, good benefits. Flexible work hours, convenient downtown location close to all Chicago downtown attractions, restaurants, parks, etc. For someone willing to excel, opportunities are there.

Cons

Can be slow at times, getting approval from multiple levels may be needed even for standard tasks. Lack of enough communication between various teams/groups.

Advice to Senior Management

Transparency and open communication followed by the new leadership team is a good thing however middle managament does not seem to follow it.

Pros

Overall, had challenging, but positive experiences working at CNA. Worked on interesting projects and learned different technologies during my time there.

Cons

Was sad to see the layoffs happen, a lot of good people were let go. Was surprised so many people were let go for a major business critical project.

Advice to Senior Management

Really, no strong advice to offer, understand wanting to lead CNA to a strong market position in the insurance industry.

Pros

Good people who try to do their best despite the lack of leadership
Convenient downtown location
Decent benefits

Cons

Incompetent senior management
Frequent changes in company strategy and direction
Lots of talk but no follow-through

Advice to Senior Management

Hold yourselves accountable to the same standards you have for non-executives. Pick a vision and stick to it. Success means more than making a lot of money--you can measure success by how you treat people and how proud they feel about their employer.

Pros

Good Pay
Great housing for interns
Fun people to work with
Lots of trust in my abilities right off the bat

Cons

Work can be tedious
If the Inurance actuary job is what you are looking for and you are comfortable hideing in the croud and not needing to excel then this is for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage senior management to pass on Coporate Goals in order to ensure Goal Congruence.

Pros

It is located in a fantastic location -- downtown Chicago.
There are many opportunities to move around the various different areas within the company.
If you want to "cruise", you can lay low and never be noticed.
If you want to "move up", you can easily find ways to be recognized and move ahead.

Cons

There was very poor morale when I was there.
Management was poor in communication.

Advice to Senior Management

I hope the new senior management team does better than the last one.

Pros

Home office is centrally located.

Cons

Too many levels of approval. Management feedback sucks. Their recognition program is stupid. In my experience, showing someone how to do a vlookup in excel is worth more to your performance then building a template to eliminate the jobs of 10 people. I feel like you have to limit your productivity instead of trying to put your all in everything you do.

Advice to Senior Management

If you spent less time in meetings and more time doing your job, then maybe you can do your own job and stop stealing credit for my work.

Pros

There were some really dedicated professional people working at CNA.

Cons

CNA was a large bureaucratic company and there was so much redundancy in terms of process and need for approval in decisionmaking at least while I was there. Rather than going ahead and being able to make a decision, you'd have to go to two people and their supervisor. The people who spent 75% of their time working and 25% talking about what they did seemed to get more recognition than those who spent 100% of their time doing their job. Because there were so many locations, you seemed insignificant.

Advice to Senior Management

Tune in to how all levels of staff are interacting with each other.

Pros

CNA Financial is a large corporation with several division that you can post into. These would help yu acquire more skills sets and a better chance for promotions. CNA will provide tution reimbursement and insurance related ceritification classes are offered. The location if the main office is a blick from the Metra. Some of the departments within CNA will offer flex-time to employees. The company offer an on site caferia, gym and credit union.

Cons

CNA is have gone through alo of departmental changes and it can be nervous reckon not know if you job is safe.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management should have the middle level management learn how to communication to employee and they should offer feedback whether it is good or bad.

Pros

If you are in need of a job until you can get a good one. The pay is below average to average for the industry and their benefits are also average.

Cons

Huge disconnect between management and employee, too many layers of management. All underwriters and support staff are in 6' x 6' cubicles and one has to reach a Director level job to get a larger cube. Of course with upper management each rank has better accommodations. They systems are thje worst I have seen, and also too much duplication of effort to input information. UA's are too busy with menial tasks to actually be able to help the underwriter
so it is much like doing the whole job without help.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out of the Home Office and meet with all of the staff to see what is really going on. Don't just talk to us but establish a ongoing dialog with all the employees, not just your direct reports. Actually be willing to listen to ideas from those of us who have seen better ways to accomplish the work.

Pros

The upsides are obvious. The salaries appear competitive, the benefits are competitive, and the work-life balance is very competitive compared to some other companies. The location is nice, the cafeteria is nice.

Cons

I did not get involved so I don't know much about it, but there seemed to be a lot of office politics going on. It seemed to be a big thing, something I was not interested in at all. Maybe all organizations are like this, but I didn't get the sense that the higher ups were that interested in helping you. They talk about their people as assets but really it's just about performance.

Advice to Senior Management

Know your employees, really know what they are doing for yourself.