TIAA CREF Reviews

Pros

Great benefits, they give you a pension at no cost to you.
Variable comp is decent
Opportunities abound if you are a go getter.

Cons

Disconnect between senior management and individual contributors.
lots of status quo, nobody likes to think outside the box.
Company is having issues with to much process, hard to deliver projects.

Advice to Senior Management

take care of your top performers, they are the reasons why you are successful.

Pros

Challenges, retirement contributions, Charlotte office.

Cons

Refusal of management to listen, reduction of retirement benefits and contributions, management arrogance, ineffective management team.

Advice to Senior Management

Implement a common sense approach and listen to employees.

Pros

good friendly people to work with and robust retirement benefits and decent bonus structure
constantly changing environment to adapt and grow in

Cons

technology platform is dated and slow to be upgraded
work to improve communication and cooperation within and between business units

Pros

Benefits, feel good about company's mission

Cons

Work/Life Balance, terrible management, limited growth opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should earn promotions, they shouldn't be given out for being at the company for a long time

Pros

Good work / life balance
Benefits (aside from compensation) are good
Non for profit
Helping others is rewarding
Convenient office location

Cons

A lot of management layers
Poor human talent management
Compensation is low versus the rest of wall street
Clunky organization

Advice to Senior Management

Better talent retention would make a huge diffierence. I also think that compensation should be fair and compare to other financial services firms.

Pros

if you find the right position and office, you will not be too micro-managed. okay pay. decent benefits (was better at the beginning). client base is fun and appreciative.

Cons

pay, benefits, praise, work to home life, bonus, management style, upper management style, basically everything is going down hill (the drain) FAST. they are throwing away good people and they don't care - plus you have to be in the top 10% to get a decent bonus, which is a large amount of total pay. IT systems are a nightmare.

Advice to Senior Management

get back to managing, praising, helping, teaching, leading people instead of trying to be a "junior executive."

Pros

retirement plan, salary, and opportunities

Cons

recession, large percentage of lay offs

Advice to Senior Management

choose who to lay off wisely

Pros

Incredible benefits package! The not-for-profit culture also lends to working with pleasant coworkers. TIAA-CREF has a large moat around with - perfect credit ratings from the four major companies, 40% market share in 403bs (5.5 times the size of Fidelity, the next closest competitor), penetration into 85% of the colleges/universities in the United States. In addition, the way TIAA-CREF's variable annuities and mutual funds are managed is impressive, as we just about side-stepped the worst of the economic mess.

Cons

The computer systems are years old and sometimes obsolete - Internet Explorer 6 anybody? Sometimes their main system will crash while you are speaking with a participant which takes a full reboot, very unprofessional when people are trusting their retirement to you. Also, the Registration & Licensing department tries their best but is swamped with the new recruits coming in (TIAA-CREF is hiring 400+ consultants this year alone). If you do not already have your securities AND insurance licenses, expect to not be released to be on your own for 6-8 months from hire.

Advice to Senior Management

I know TIAA-CREF is not-for-profit. Yet, even in the recent terrible economy years TIAA-CREF made billions in net revenue. We, your employees, urge you to start putting some of that back into the infrastructure - newer, faster, more reliable systems (Internet Explorer 6 was obsolete when it launched, yet we still use it?), TIAA-CREF is the first financial firm I've ever worked at that does not provide it's front-line employees with at least dual monitors. Work efficiency skyrockets for the cost of another $150 monitor per person.

Pros

TIAA-CREF has great history, and a noble mission statement which makes it easy to get behind it and believe in the brand. Its a large and stable company that takes many steps to ensure employee's are safe and taken care of. The people are genuine, and despite leadership, keep pushing ahead sacrificing what they can to keep the TIAA-CREF creed alive. Change does occur albeit slowly and if you are part of the push it is satisfying. They need good people at all levels to move this firm in the right direction, and as long as TIAA-CREF stays true to its values its worth the effort. Employees are excessively charitable both with money and time in the community and this promotes a positive corporate culture.
Non-contributory savings - ER pays 100%
Good health, decent dental, basic vision

Cons

The primary problem facing leadership is figuring out if its a non-profit or a for-profit. Trying to save its declining 403b monopoly by going to 'ludicrous speed' to retain assets, and introducing aggressive selling in a non-profit environment has created a huge agent-principle problem. TIAA's solution to the agent-principle problem is still aggressive micro-management, which doesn't work well with sales people. They cannot offer anything in return by way of a carrot that is consistent. The reason is they are bound as a non-profit to have an ambiguous bonus system which for you is based on variables likely to change from year to year. The bottom line if you are a good sales person, this will not be satisfying as you have no idea what your working toward. Hitting a moving target from year to year makes it hard to find the right productivity combo.
In addition, they do not hire aggressively within for the good positions, so expect lateral moves at best. More than likely you will be pigeon holed in the same 'desert combing' job forever unless you push 'Mega Maid' command which may get you ahead or shown the door, its 50/50.
There is a huge disconnect with New York and its large client base, except institutional money, so your job most of the time will be explaining why smaller clients should care about TIAA when TIAA doesn't seem to care about them. Which unfortunately was the reason TIAA was created. The operations department is slow and cumbersome with all the bureaucratic and system issues as if created by 'Dark Helmet' providing many Spaceballs moments for clients, which they will tell you about.
At the end of the day the people on the front lines who are client facing, are the glue that is keeping this company together. There are good and honest people working here, and make it worth while. If it were not for this loyal and dedicated front line to pick up the pieces and take the heat for the companies lack of direction, well it wouldn't be pretty. If TIAA doesn't change this culture, which I hope it does, once the economy turns around those good employees still left will have their own Spaceballs moment when they look around...

Advice to Senior Management

Make a more concerted effort to offer better incentives. Your managers are 'Dot Matrix' like, and certainly not given the right tools to build a stable and hungry sales force. Start caring about the little guy again, because they are lost in the system. Brand clearly isn't everything in this environment if its not backed up internally. Lastly take your finger off the 'self-destruct button' and find a way to utilize your employee bases hidden intelligence and creativity. Start with fair compensation, and find ways to incorporate these people's skills into the broader community instead of cutting them loose at the first sign of low metric numbers, God knows they have certainly stuck with you.

Pros

TIAA-CREF has good pay and great benefits.

Cons

TIAA-CREF senior management is too pre-occupied with internal empire building instead of turing the company into the Financial Services giant it aspires to be. The company also focuses too much on "diversity" at the expense of qualifications.

Advice to Senior Management

TIAA-CREF's Executive Management and Seneor Leadership team needs to quit competing against each other and learn to work together to compete in the marketplace.