Sun Life Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Sun Life full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Sun Life is a great place to work, with great benefits and lots of opportunities for career growth. The people are wonderful and the atmosphere is like a family setting. Great collaboration among teams and management allowing individuals to excel and grow.

Cons – Laid off 30% of staff this year and lost a lot of talented employees in the process. The company politics can be frustrating and challenging in getting things done.

Advice to Senior Management – Realizing that its the bottom dollar vs retaining talented and experienced employees is your goals, you lost a lot of wonderful people in the layoffs that would off actually saved you money in the long run.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Sun Life full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great environment, great benefits and vacation

Cons – No room for advancement unless you have been in the company for a very long time, org changes every 6 months, poor pay

Advice to Senior Management – Please consider meritocratic advancement instead of advancement based on seniority. You are losing out on bright young talent.

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 Sun Life full-time

Pros – Good people that work there

Cons – Canadian Insurance owner has an influence

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

Former Employee – worked at Sun Life full-time for more than a year

Pros – Fairly stable, friendly people to work with, some very intelligent and interesting colleagues, decent pay.

Cons – Poorly skilled line managers, performance reviews are a fluke and difficult to make changes happen.

Advice to Senior Management – Reward management jobs to people who love managing people, invest more in people and reward performance.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Sun Life full-time

Pros – Good work-life balance. Great co-workers for the most part. Interesting work. Good benefits and time off policy. Great commitment to social causes.

Cons – Horrible employee development, at least in my area. Very political atmosphere. Very vertical and traditional approach to management. No real employee empowerment...new executive management promised a flattening of the organization and more empowerment. Never happened

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Sun Life full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Well maintained campus, strong leadership

Cons – Salaries below market, little room for advancement

Advice to Senior Management – Do not take employees for granted

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 Sun Life full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – - Friendly, welcoming atmosphere for all types of people.
- Flexible hours and ability to work from home one or two days a week (may differ by department). Good support for remote workers.
- Good benefits package
- During large layoffs, they offer good compensation packages and are generally fairly humane about it
- Convenient location with attractive facilities
- Comparatively stable company for the industry (parent company is one of the top two insurers in Canada and they keep their investments generally conservative)
- Ethically-run company (important in the insurance/financial-services industry)
- Technology has improved significantly over the years and is looking forward
- They've paid out the annual bonus every year since its inception, even during some years when, technically, we didn't meet the required profitability threshold, because senior management felt that it was due to the general economic environment and not a failure on the part of the employees.

Cons – - Too much of US operations is being taken over by Corporate in Canada, which decreases some flexibility and makes for a more bureaucratic atmosphere. Feels more like the US is just a "remote site" rather than the "US home office" we used to be
- IT has become too centralized, bureaucratic, and controlling
- Needs more opportunities for advancement for "individual contributors" -- if you don't manage people, you can be fairly limited on how high you can advance, in most areas.

Two things that are probably true of most companies in similar situations these days:
- Rate of change (of various kinds) has been high since it went public and the rate has been accelerating steeply since then.Generally feeling of insecurity about the future of operations in the US (what it will include and whose jobs might be affected)
- Pace of work can sometimes be a bit daunting and can require sacrificing some quality in favor of speed.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Sun Life full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good benefits, competitive pay, good people

Cons – Big company negatives, too many non-work related processes and procedures

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Sun Life full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – I worked at Sun Life for over 10 years and found it to be an organization of high-integrity. The management is working hard to modernize the company image and make it more known in the U.S. The benefits are excellent and the headquarters office is a very nice environment to work in.

Cons – Like most companies these days, they are trying to accomplish a lot with fewer people. Hours can be long and stressful sometimes.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Sun Life full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great company culture, and staff, fair pay and benefits. There was a team oriented culture, and while most worked hard, there's a lot of playing hard as well.

Cons – Could do more to reward and retain talent at the lower and middle levels, some paths were stagnant or dead-ended. Sometimes slow to change.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend