TIAA CREF Reviews

Pros

Good pay, good benefits, friendly workplace

Cons

not many work outings, team building

Advice to Senior Management

very professional managers

Pros

In a world of greedy Wall Street Robber Barons; one of our candidates recently said "TIAA-CREF" has a soul. Agreed!

Cons

Too much reporting; more work. Employees should rate their managers. Find out who is a politician and who is leading.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut bureauracy, flaten management, revamp old ineffective processes, read Blue Ocean Strategy, absolutely don't copy our competitors. Innovate, hire Americans.

Pros

Its a good place to get your start in financial services

Cons

Management Confusion. Management should listen to staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to listen to employees.

Pros

T/C has been a place that I have job security.

Cons

Schedule change due to family needs, hard to come by in certain positions.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you listen to your EE and push for them to upper management. We need to know that you are working for us.

Pros

TC has a pretty good benefits package, although that had been adjusted due to economic conditions. It is rewarding dealing with non-profits, hospitals, and universities. Also, the company has outstanding stability, which is nice to have in a financial services company these days.

Cons

TC is a dinosaur. They were such a conservatively run company for so many years that they are just now getting into the new millenium and they have seen losses in their market share dealing with non-profs, schools, and hospitals. With all the changes being made, the culture is being radically shaken up, I was hired more as a service and advice oriented consultant, but over time my job changed to primarily sales driven. Where TC was initially very generous with benefits, they have slowly reduced benefits (such as the Employer match, PTO, overtime) to be more in line with "the market." Also, they are generally understaffed in this position due to high turnover (the job kinda sucks now) and their reluctance to overstaff, this makes time off the phone severely limited. There was a lot of mandatory overtime, very little ability to take people off the phone for training, and a constant queue of somewhat annoyed customers..

Advice to Senior Management

I always thought instead of reducing benefits, they could do well to fire an entire level of middle management. They seem somewhat unneccessary and a huge cost for the company. Instead, reduce team sizes, pay ground level managers and call center consultants a bit more (and hire more!), and focus more on the customer service experience as opposed to chasing leads and alienating the customers.

Pros

The company offers great benefits and an old pension which is unheard of at most companies. If you are new to the financial field you can also learn a great deal about how the retirement business works. You will be lucky if you have a chance to work in their retail space dealing with insurance and mutual fund offerings to broaden your knowledge base. Due to their ever changing theme there is always an opportunity to develop relationships with departments handling these other lines of business and technology upgrades as well. So volunteering to demonstrate your skill set beyond just answering the phone is instrumental. From what I hear if you have a higher grade position it isn't so bad.

Cons

They ride you like a dog about those phones. I mean seriously there is more to balance in the workplace than just answering the phone. How about quality of the call? Or development of the staff? TIAA also has made errors by requiring ridiculous amounts of overtime and not paying employees properly (but that was corrected ultimately). When I worked there many of the managers where and had been since they graduated from high school. I am all about promoting from within but I believe that it's beneficial to have a diverse group of managers with various experience. It's was a challenge for me to benefit from a talent pool that never worked at another company and couldn't relate/apply broader industry experience. Technology is far behind the times.

Advice to Senior Management

Manage to people and not numbers. Just because you worked in the mailroom together and someone in your family is dating the person doesn't mean they should get the promotion. Managers should understand that development of their employees makes them look good too. Not everyone wants to be a manager so they should not be intimidated by the shining stars who report to them. There are many talents (and slakers for that point) so everyone deserves an opportunity for getting to where they want to be.

Pros

Women have equal advancement opportuniites

Cons

Can be slow to embrace change

Advice to Senior Management

Keep focus on customers and changing needs

Pros

Great people and opportunities. Easy to build relationships, offices located around the us. Generous retirement packages and bonuses. Great time off and paternity benefits.

Cons

Call center hours are from 8 am to 10 pm est. Lots of overtime.

Pros

The Consulting Services side of the company pays really well for the amount of work expected. The company pays the majority of costs for above average health benefits and 100% funds individual retirement accounts. TIAA takes pride in its locations (no shopping malls) and has large prestigious real estate holdings housing semi-luxury offices. Lots and lots of food is brought in to celebrate just about everything.

Cons

There is little opportunity for promotion. Back stabbing between competitors for open jobs is encouraged. No one is ever fired; if someone screws up big time, the worst they can expect is to be promoted into a job where they can do less damage (if it's really bad, the promo is into the Admin side of the company where the dinosaurs are put out to pasture).

Advice to Senior Management

My advice is to ignore all advice suggesting anything be changed anywhere in TIAA-CREF. Obviously, based on the company's worth of over $400 Billion, it would be crazy to mess with success. Just remember that TIAA-CREF is not fun or exciting and pay accordingly to keep the people you have.

Pros

there is a base salary.

Cons

tied to a phone, limited breaks/lunches, and under paid for the amount of sales they expect.

Advice to Senior Management

get rid of the processing department and let the individual consultants handle it. put the responsibility on the consultant, drop the phone stats, and let them do their jobs(service based selling).