ISO Reviews

Pros

You learn a lot and when I was there they had a great training program. You are out in the field and it never gets boring. The job is a good fit for family life, which is why I took it in the first place.

Cons

The pay is incredibly low, as is the means for advancement unless you are willing to move to New Jersey.

Advice to Senior Management

Get management training, trust your people, promote from within, be creative and less scared.

Pros

Nice people to work with
No hassle of going to NYC
Good view of the city, Nice location
Some good benefit package (health benefits)

Cons

Parking
Commuting
Lack of management support
Salary is low, not much of raise and promotion
Recognition is very low
Lack of technical knowledge by the upper management
Many people leave for better paying/motivating jobs.
Starting to hire more outsource
Promotion seems to be given to friends of management
Have to play politics to get to anywhere, who speak louder are getting ahead and who works hard and keeping quiet are getting abused.

Advice to Senior Management

Restructure (hire managers that who is more technically knowledgeable to run the technical groups)
Give more necessary training to people who really do the work
Review the salary, compare it to rest of the market
Buy the right tool to do the job, stop cutting back so much that we are constantly band-aiding the problems.

Pros

Stability and security in the workplace.

Cons

Cheap raises, favoritism, low salaries as compared to industry. Use of too much paper should be more electronic. Management styles are lacking.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more technologically advanced, let go of the paper. Be more Employee friendly and reward for excellence.

Pros

1. Your ideas are welcome and will be implemented if you're proactive.
2. A lot of smart people.
3. Great benefit package.

Cons

1. Promotion process is based on politics, not actual results.

Pros

Professional environment. Hey, it's a job!

Cons

Not allowing telecommuting is a huge CON! Almost everything I do is via computer so coming in 5 days a week is absolutely not necessary. I don't mind coming in, but between gas, tolls, parking, and wear-and-tear on my vehicle, just getting to work takes up almost half of my take home pay. In addition, they give 17 paid time off (PTO) days per year (THIS INCLUDES SICK DAYS). If you get sick once you can forget about going on vacation. That is just not a realistic amount of time to be sick, see doctors for regular check-up visit and also have personal and vacation time. What about if your children are sick? It's extremely NON-competitive in that sense. I have less days off per year than anyone I know. It makes balancing work and life very difficult and is bad for mental well-being. In addition, the salary is NOT very competitive, the trend is to come to ISO, gain experience, and then go to another company and make twice as much. It that sense, they should offer more incentives to stay.

Advice to Senior Management

With gas prices, tolls, parking being sky high and the economy hurting, wouldn't it only make sense to offer at least part time telecommuting?? The sick time is a total joke!

Pros

The people at ISO are all genuinely decent people. This includes management on a personal level. Compensation is fair to me. Sorry to everyone complaining about salary, but my philosophy on compensation is : if you cannot do a job for your current compensation level you will probably find a reason for not being able to do the same job for ten times that amount.

Cons

The IT management team at ISO is regrettably the worst i have seen in my many years in IT. i have worked in many shops in my career. the indifference of IT management towards its employees, the politics and favoritism and labeling of employees by management goes beyond explanation and stains an otherwise decent place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Care enough to want to change our environment.

Pros

good benefits (flex-time, tuition reimbursement, etc.), good understanding of work life balance. offer various learning seminars for knowledge sharing effrots.

Cons

low salary compared to the industry in general, favoritism in promotions and raises (teacher pet type mentality), senior management archaic and stagnates evolving the business.

Advice to Senior Management

fairness in promotions and not only based on favoritism. stepping more into the information age to utilize web 2.0 applications.

Pros

ISO is a very stable company, layoffs are unheard of here. Multitude of different support and business areas that one could work in and the company does provide pretty good base benefits (401K match, healthcare, time off, tuitition reimbursement, professional training, etc). The culture is fairly laid back with most people just putting in their 8 hours and then going home. People are generally nice.

Cons

Maybe the company is to stable.....lots of dead wood in the hallways, people that have been here for 20-30 years are able to hide out and do nothing because management A) does not care, B) is personally friendly with them and thus protect them, C) does not want to deal with firing the person. The people in Senior Management positions are either incompetent fools who were put in their positions by other incompetent fools that retired or by very smart people who just do not have a clue on how to motivate/manage people correctly. . Many have no real leadership skills or vision for advancing their respective areas and are just coasting along getting paid high salaries to just "manage" their group. Promotions within the company often leave the majority of people scratching their heads because many promotions are based on personal relationships (or just outright wacky decision making) rather than qualifications & track record.

The business areas within ISO are very silod, and business units are often run like little kingdoms which creates all sorts of problems because they all want to have their own marketing & sales staff and want to do things their "own way", which causes the company to come off as disjointed and makes it hard for common functions such as marketing to do anything substantial in the way of creating a common look/feel to all the customer facing marketing activities (like websites, newsletters, etc). The place can also be very political.

Finally, don't come here expecting much in the way of compensation each year. Although you may be hired at decent rate (in fact, if you come from the outside, you may be hired for "more" than the person sitting next to you or even training you! the employees knows this and lament the fact that the company is so "cheap" when it comes to rewarding top employees). A top rated performance (A player) will give you anywhere from 3 - 3.5% raise, so there is not much motivation to bust your butt since average employees probably get around 2 to 3 %. If you get a "promotion", you may get up to a 10% raise...but promotions get harder and harder to come by as you climb the "grade" level ladder as at a certain point, the CEO himself has to "approve" a promotion to mid-level management (which is a little crazy for a billion dollar company).

Advice to Senior Management

Take a step back. You have very smart, talanted people within the organization that are getting discouraged/demotivated because their talents either not being recognized or utilized properly. The organization could be a powerhouse if all the pieces came together - take a long hard look at the people you have leading each business/support unit. You are paying them top dollars...but are they really producing and displaying true leadership qualities or are they simply "managing" and making sure everything runs okay? Do they have a clear 5 year - 10 year plan to grow the business? Are people's jobs directly related to the success of the business unit and ultimately the company? The company's biggest threat right now is that it is not nimble or particularly innovative/customer friendly.

Pros

Standard benefits and vacation, good stock plan if you have been in it long term, recent hires limited to matching funds, flex time start with 40 hour week (some staff/managers are flexible), majority of staff are lifers, decent technology

Cons

Expected to be available 24/7, telecommuting not allowed, long term 20-30 year employees are norm, easy to mark time and drift. Bait and switch job descriptions common in some departments. Flat raises, widely uneven salaries among people doing the same job, flat organization allows no complaint to higher ups and no criticism, limited opportunities to move among management positions. Senior, senior management has no visibility among department staffs -- not sure if they know we are in the building. Dictatorial leadership rewarded. Morale is low in certain departments and no one cares.

Advice to Senior Management

When your high level staff and long term managers are leaving the company, you need to look closely at your management practices. Don't be afraid of self evaluation, ask the staff what they think.

Pros

Quality of life is through the roof amazing. Your work schedule is made by you and completely flexible as long as you are meeting your goals set forth by management. If you perform above your coworkers you will be rewarded with bonuses. You work from your home office and complete work for other insurance companies including ratings and underwriting surveys. The training is excellent and ongoing with continual training monthly. Managers are very friendly as long as you meet their goals they expect. Is this job easy? No. Is it satisfying? Yes. I like the fact I can work 12 hours on Thursday and take a half day on Friday if my workload allows it. Working at ISO is a 5 star experience for the most part.

Cons

Raises are a little below par as after you have been there for about three years you are qualified for Loss control jobs with many insurance companies starting at 70-80K but you will only be making about 50K+ at ISO. This affects their turnover somewhat I'd assume. I've heard some have to threaten to leave ISO and quit for a day and be rehired for a 20K raise for your own job so they can remain competitive. Due to policies on raises these types of games are played. ISO reps are trained to high standards therefore are highly sought after. FR's don't sit in a classroom to learn about sprinkler systems, they go to the Delaware Tech burn labs for a hands on training experience. No one can compare.

Advice to Senior Management

Bump up FR salaries as you do with Actuaries at ISO.