PEMCO Insurance Employee Review

Former Employee – worked at PEMCO Insurance

Pros – The benefits package was excellent; great medical, dental, and vision insurance at a reasonable cost to the employee. 401(k) is an almost unheard of 2-for-1 match up to 6%. Colleagues are generally very friendly and most have an enthusiasm for their job. Leadership team is open to feedback and implements good suggestions.

Cons – Over the past five years, as the economy began to tank, the company began altering its performance measuring approach from the old school "you've been here a long time, here's a raise" to the more modern "pay for performance" approach. The company is trying to ensure it stays profitable during a bad economy and this is totally understandable, but unfortunately this couldn't come at a worse time for employees. Employees are looking for stability in order to hang onto their jobs right now, and as this change in culture was a big work in progress there was a lot of uncertainty about what employees are being graded on in order to succeed.

At the end of the day many employees weren't sure if they were doing well or not. Some very good employees were nitpicked over little things that didn't directly affect the goals that were supposedly the important ones of the day, while other employees who universally are known to be subpar would receive praise for how long they've been at the company. The company seemed to have trouble separating their "performance" rating culture (the new way) from tenure with the company (the old way). Differences in leadership styles also gives certain employees an advantage: some supervisors just shut down incoming suggestions and make the employee feel bad for even saying anything, while others are very open and receptive to all feedback and actually do something with it when they hear it.

There is serious mismanagement of FMLA at the company. FMLA is supposed to protect an employee's job when they have ongoing medical or family issues that require time away from work, but employees HEAVILY abuse it at PEMCO while supervisors, managers, and HR seem to look the other way. An employee will ask for a day off to go to a ballgame and be denied due to work capacity, then call out sick with an "FMLA issue" only to be seen at the train station that evening wearing sports jerseys. Another will be overheard on a personal call saying "He wants to go to the park? Sure, I'll come get him and take him," after which they immediately approach their supervisor and say their child is sick. Unfortunately this abuse is rampant and individuals who practice such unethical behavior continue to work at the company while others lost their jobs during tough times.

Advice to Senior Management – Pick some metrics to measure and stick with them; not knowing which things employees are being graded on for performance reviews until 7 months into the year is not helpful for employee goal-setting.

Ensure the supervisors are on the same page with coaching: some are positive and encouraging while others would rather tell you everything you did wrong without a single bit of praise for the things done right.

PLEASE look at the serious abuse of FMLA. Many good employees have lost their job with the company while some that do very little work and game the FMLA system are still there. Unfairness in the workplace is very demoralizing to employees, and I would rate fixing FMLA abuses by employees as the highest thing you should prioritize to give a boost to employee morale.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend