Farmers Group Reviews

Pros

Monday through friday work schedule
Holidays off
Benefits okay
Participated in March of Dimes
Had jean weeks to raise money for charity

Cons

Management didn't seem to really listen
Low promotion potential
Hard to balance work/life and maintain goals
obvious favortism
OK pay for work completed

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees more and improve the moral in your offices.

Pros

Company car, laptop, & cell phone. Cheap health insurance. Allows OT when needed, and pays for it. Lengthy training. Not penny pinchers.

Cons

The culture is odd. When asked about why they made promotions so difficult, the guy who was in charge of all of California asked us, "when you get a raise from X to X, how much more valuable are you to the company?" ....as if that was a perfectly reasonable reason to justify an almost impossible promotions process where in the first year, promotions dropped from about 100 to 2 in the state.

Training was for three months, but after about one month, the training room was no longer a safe place to ask questions. Questions seemed to indicate to them that you weren't absorbing the material, even though they said that we wouldn't get it the first time, and it would take a year to feel comfortable.

The trainer created a pretty loose, fun atmosphere, which made it great to come to work, but after about a month, he became very moody and made me feel awful every time I answered a question wrong. Ironically, the last time I had to "present" to him, he gave me great feedback and wasn't a jerk, but the office manager and my supervisor were there to rip me to shreds.

Whenever I made a mistake or was given bad feedback, they would ask me about it. Almost every time I was able to clear it up, or knew immediately what my mistake was and verbally gave the correct answer, but I never got the impression that it mattered to them that I was able to correct myself afterwards. It was as if, even though I was training, my first try was all I got, and there wasn't an opportunity to learn form mistakes and build on knowledge.

I trained with two and sometimes three other people, which when in the classroom, created an environment where there was a lot of sitting around. The whole job is about multitasking, but when in the classroom, the worst thing you could do was multitask. Pretty much anything except full attention even when the information wasn't beneficial was the worst thing you could do. I felt that if there was a smaller group, we could have accomplished a lot more and I wouldn't have felt compelled to try and multitask at "inappropriate" times.

They initiated field rides where I would shadow another adjuster. This is where I got the short end of the stick. The other two people training with me were able to ride with guys who didn't have their own agenda, or impose their stress onto them, or throw them under the bus to the supervisor if they didn't understand something. I ended up with all of the above. Never while on a field ride was I given the impression that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, but they would give feedback that was damning. I did have field rides that were good, but they seemed to steer me towards riding with adjusters who weren't a good fit, personality-wise.

They had 60% turnover the year before, so they were obsessed with finding indicators during training that failure was inevitable, instead of actually trying to teach and train.

tl;dr - Promotions are impossible

- The training room is not a safe place to ask questions

- No opportunity to learn form mistakes

- bipolar priorities during training

- They don't have any standards for their field rides, either for the mentor or the mentee, so feedback varied widely because of a lack of stated expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

-Be more clear with expectations for each setting you put us into.
-You've got to make the training room a safe place to learn. I know you are trying to evaluate and find indicators for failure, but one can not feel like they are going to lose their job over a trivial mistake that can be a teaching moment.
-Do a better job of setting up field rides. It probably wasn't a good idea to stick me with the high-strung guy who has his boss up his ass because he's not efficient enough and he's behind in his work.
-For Upper Management - Your promotion system is preposterous and the stress you put on the people below you trickles down, and it's very clear that there is no sympathy for feeling overwhelmed when understaffed.

Pros

Very flexible, nice lady. She has very good customer service

Cons

9-5 every day. Very task oriented.

Advice to Senior Management

No advice

Pros

Good Benefits, paid time off and good vacation time.

Cons

Poor Management and communication skills

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees and hire based on skill and not family ties.

Pros

Challenging, good compensation, room for growth for the right individual

Cons

Consistantly poor communication from management

Pros

Compensation. Based on performance which allows significant compensation for high performers

Cons

Stressful- heavy workload. Sink or swim mentality- poor training program. Come in with experience or likely fail.

Advice to Senior Management

Move away from a "fear and punishment" driven leadership to that of embracing work environment and the people. Then the results will come naturally.

Pros

Great family and community feel with colleagues willing to collaborate and share information. Great work-life balance and support from company to achieve it.

Cons

Insurance is a conservative industry so there is not a lot of dynamism in terms of innovation and the company culture is slow to adapt.

Pros

Fast paced, leading edge technology with an emphasis on rapid learning and implementation to meet business objectives.

Cons

Ineffective communications between development and infrastructure groups. Minimal planning and communications of said plans from development to infrastructure.

Advice to Senior Management

Make development teams' effort more transparent to infrastructure groups. Combine development teams and infrastructure groups under one management structure.

Pros

Flexible environment with easy access to underwriters and plenty of educational and training material that you study at your own pace.

Cons

Business model at district offices is not tied to the overall sales success of agents in training in any way.

Sales managers who have no experience in insurance are hired contingent on getting a license and cannot effectively interact with trainees to solve complex issues or come up with meaningful marketing strategies because they lack a relevant background. District managers are paid a salary whether or not a trainee sells anything so have no incentive for encouraging sales success.

Your district can have few Life Insurance experts or managers who specialize in Life, which is where the money potential is and you'll get little one on one training unless you seek someone out in another district. When you start out you are required to sell mostly auto and home (40 policies in 3-4 months) if you want to start your own agency.

Underwriters can change their decisions after you've offered a rate.
If you leave before selling 44 policies those commissions go back to the district manager. P&C commissions are low.

Advice to Senior Management

Assign one consistent underwriter to a group of cases to avoid confusion on follow-up.
Tie District Managers salary or provide incentives to them for fostering sales success of new trainees.
Require that sales managers have experience in Insurance products and sales.

Pros

Due their excellent initial training, it's a good place to start out in insurance. If you're willing to relocate througout the region, there is unlimited upward potential within.

Cons

Upon completion of the aforementioned excellent training...forget most of it, your supervisor wants you to do it their way.

In my first year (of two) at Farmers I had 4 different supervisors and 3 liability manages. Each supervisor had their own preferred method of handling claims that they expected you to adhere to. No big deal except that every periodic review (grading) of my claims handling ability was done by a succeeding supervisor of claims managed while I was under a previous supervisor. Unfortunately, succeeding supervisors didn't fully appreciate the way that I handled claims per the expectations of my previous supervisors. Repeat, repeat, repeat...

Sound confusing? Good. Welcome to Farmers.

Advice to Senior Management

Get realistic. Get consistent. Get competent. If the majority of your claims representatives aren't meeting your metric expectations, maybe the problem is you.