NJM Insurance Reviews

Current Employee – been working at NJM Insurance

Pros – Benefits and continuing education are great

Cons – behind the times with regards to technology

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NJM Insurance

Pros – free Soup and cookies during lunch time

Cons – If you can give up your self respect and play politics and willing to follow the communistic attitude of the management then this is the place. Job will be long term but you will have to give up a lot for that.
Micro management will be broad term for them for what they do to manage IT folks. Backed up in terms for technology for IT. Lot of project managers or co-ordinators than needed. More mangers than IT folks. Kindergarden treatment. Some one walks around every now and then to make sure you at your desk. No cell phone signal for any of the IT folks. You will be tracked at every 15 min once you come to work. Lot of messengers in team who do nothing and have no technical stuff but to play politics with managers. communistic attitude - they will make you stand up in long meetings and if you dont follow that then you will be out. they take retrospective reviews but do nothing about it..

Advice to Senior Management – Grow up.... recognize the technical talent rather than focussing on communistic management rules.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NJM Insurance full-time for less than a year

Pros – You are working for a brand that is long lasting and will be around for years to come. You are working for a brand that customers know and like.

Cons – NJM treats employees completely the opposite of it's customers. It is frowned upon to take time off around holidays. It is frowned upon to socialize with peers, probably for fear of employees discussing how bad upper management is. If you are five minutes late, it is on your record. If you take more than a five minute break, you are spoken to. There are countless other examples. This company wrote the book on micro management. If you don't mind major micro management, then work for NJM. If you like respect and not being treated like a grammar school child, then there are many, many other jobs out there...

Advice to Senior Management – Management needs to open their eyes to the 21st century. It's no longer 1960. Policies have changed. The world has changed.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at NJM Insurance as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – Great company if you're a client

Cons – Working in the IT field for 15 years i was surprised at the level of disorganization and compartmentalization of the department. Getting things done was a 5 or 6 people task, so service delivery to the end users suffered. But most disconcerting is the "Good Old Boy" environment. NJM does not terminate employees but does not promote them, so you will have somebody in the same position for 15 years. Once new talented and hungry personal comes in they are not given the opportunity to grow, more than once i saw the way people got back stabbed by people in the same team because they were more efficient, more professional, etc those same people been terminated by comments or the influence from the more senior employees. Another topic is due to a management change about a year ago they are not hiring anybody just contracting so if you come in with the idea of been hired eventually don't waste your time.

Advice to Senior Management – Intimidation and fear are not the way to produce results. This company needs to get some outside consulting to bring its IT procedures and processes from 1950. Talented personnel needs to be identified, encouraged and protected. Most importantly there needs to be some communication between management and their employees, there a lot of all timers in IT just waiting to retire that really stopped caring 15 years ago.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NJM Insurance full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Good benefits, stability, etc. Newer president seems to be a benefit to the times.

Cons – I've been at the company for 10+ years, and that's been my mistake. Time and time again have been promised by upper mgmt that I will be promoted, and no follow through- except for once when I was moved up a level and promised a retro-active raise for 6 months after taking over the position...then found out that was untrue- not retro-active and no raise at all. Things eventually changed on the positive side, temporarily, but I stayed true to being a "steward" of the company and worked tirelessly, only to have to deal with a joke of Management. Contacting HR is a waste of time, because they're too afraid of getting sued as opposed to protecting their staff. Too many personal feelings and opinions involved all around, instead of true capability and real work being done. If this continues, NJM will not continue it's success. Yes, it's a successful company on the outside, but as for the inside, if the company cannot find that the success lies in it's employees, then it will falter.

Advice to Senior Management – Get with the times, stop micro-managing and treating people as if they're incapable morons, because that's exactly the environment you are creating! Treat your employees like a 2012 company, not a 1950's corporation.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at NJM Insurance full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – + good benefits
+ opportunities to advance
+ free soup

Cons – From my experience in Claims I've learned that NJM expects their employees to be perfect yet they dump an extraordinary amount of tasks upon them that makes it nearly impossible to be "perfect". When another department is falling behind they will dump their work onto you, even if you have little or no training. Then they will scold you for doing a less-than-perfect job.

NO recognition for a job well done, ONLY negative criticism. The micro-managing will drive you nuts. Managers talk down to you like a child with little or no respect. Most employees are on some sort of medication in order to handle the stress. It's not unusual employees to go on stress leave and not come back. No one shows any appreciation for the work that you do correctly. Employees talk very openly about how poorly the department is run and how unhappy they are. The managers realize all of this and laugh it off. Most people stay because they feel they are trapped and cannot find anything else that will match their bloated salaries.

Make sure you leave with your final check in your hand because they will take their sweet time mailing it to you. Good luck working in misery

Advice to Senior Management – Show some appreciation to your employees. Hire more staff to handle the workload. You're losing a lot of great employees with this outdated system of management.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at NJM Insurance full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The benefits package and regular salary increases are the only things I can list as pros.

Cons – Old school management techniques combined with inflated supervisor egos has lead to a fearful, negative and extra stressful working environment.

Advice to Senior Management – My suggestion would be to clean house within upper management. Sadly, since that will likely never happen, an outside training group needs to come in and reverse years of fear- and intimidation-based management tactics so this already stressful working environment can be a more tolerable place to work.

I can only speak from the perspective of working in the Claims Department and from what I've heard happens in the First Reports Department. The other departments within NJM might be better places to work, but they likely pay much less or have no openings; leaving the disgruntled employee with a feeling of being trapped in a dead end position. The job grew increasingly more stressful as additional, trivial, and mundane tasks were slung at us, with very limited chances of overtime offered (maybe a few times during catastrophes like Hurricane Irene). The workload and responsibilities were increased (by even giving us other departments' work to do, when most of us had no experience with how to complete the task or investigate the claim properly) while the understanding and compassion for not being able to keep up was non-existent.

A personal survey of my former co-workers' satisfaction levels were extremely low combined with their stress levels being extremely high. This result can only lead to a toxic and miserable workplace, which I can say it was during my 3 1/2 years there. This cannot be changed overnight and enough people need to speak up for it to even be noticed as a problem. If not, the same poor management will be happening for "generations" to come.

I will never recommend this company to anyone as a potential place to work. While the benefits are top-notch and the salary increases yearly, this very fact makes it nearly impossible for an employee to find comparable pay at a different job since no other company wants to match it. If your sanity and happiness are not important to you, then the salary might be why a person stays there for years. My happiness meant more to me and I left there, without looking back for one second.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NJM Insurance

Pros – Benefits are great. Close to home.

Cons – 1950's management style. Someone walks around to make sure everyone is at their desk when the bell rings. Yes, there is a bell.

Advice to Senior Management – The list is endless.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NJM Insurance

Pros – Benefits are not as miserly as one would think.

Cons – Being good at intimidating employees is a good managerial trait. Never had a layoff but many people are fired instead.

Advice to Senior Management – Quit

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NJM Insurance

Pros – -Pension plan, + 8% match on 100% for 401(k), + 90% subsidized health/dental, +$50k free life insurance, +ridiculous (lots of) days off after working there a while.
-If you are not a crackhead/convicted of a felony, or incompetent AND in mid/upper management, you will never be fired.
-talking to people around the state of NJ, they will say "oh you work for NJM? I love them". Immediately a positive to be working here in the minds of NJ citizens. This is because customer service and rates are the best in the state and have been for decades.

Cons – -As others have said, I.T. department is 20 years behind the times... but I think they were 30 years behind the times 5 years ago, so things are improving... for most employees, this wont impact you at all.
-Wages are below average in most job positions, (but the benefits more than make up for this).

Advice to Senior Management – management already realizes that NJM's tech needs to be updated, and will get there "soon". this is the main thing holding NJM back.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend