Zurich Financial Services – “Zurich is a decent place to work as long as you are not interested in doing decent work.”

Pros

The work -- life balance is by far the greatest strength of the company. The company offers a very competitive vacation plan and the members of the organization are very accomodating to personal isssues. Moreover, the organization is by no means a sweat shop -- workloads are rarely out of proportion to available time. The organization has done a very good job of avoiding the financial crisis and is well positioned from a balance sheet perspective to compete in the current marketplace. The organization does have a significant number of well intentioned and well meaning employess that are generally very pleasant to work with as colleagues.

Cons

Leadership is extremely removed from operational practices and is also quite insulated from employees in general. The organization does a fairly poor job of communicating organization direction as well as strategic direction.

Advice to Senior Management

The organization would benefit from moving to a customer focused organization both internally and externally. Management has very little insight into actual operations and seems quite removed from the actual working of the organizations. Moreover the company would benefit from relying less on external hires and focus more on growing and developing internal talent.