TIAA CREF Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

The people and lower/mid-level management were great.
The benefits, pay and time off were great.

Cons

Even though you have tons of time off, whether you can schedule it is a constant worry. Time off is basically a round-robin system that favors no one and ultimately benefits no one.
Constant required overtime and half hour lunches.
Internal job prospects are few and far between.
Lack of recognition for top performers.
The fact that they won't sponser a series 7 for every client facing employee is a disservice and major flaw.
Management says that the call centers are the best place to hire internally from, yet they seldom do.

Advice to Senior Management

Get everyone a series 7 license. Work people in the call centers LESS, not more. (Am I the only person who thinks MORE call center employees with a lighter workload is a bad idea?) Provide call center employees with distinct career tracks. Don't just leave it up in the air. Management says that the call centers are the best place to hire from, yet they seldom do.

Pros

Avg to better than avg benefits. Vacation allowance is good but management does not like when you use all of it.

Cons

Unrealistic goals that are unachieveble unless you put client needs second. Middle management just takes their matching orders from upper management and are not empowered nor encouraged to provide solutions to helping the company forward. Very big disconnect between management and employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees more. Every year it seems the goals change. No clear direction as to where tiaa will be in the future.

Pros

- decent medical, dental, and vision
- fairly good retirement plan
- generous paid time off
- large company with many locations

Cons

- horrible IT, computer systems, still using IE6
- a few fantastic, competent coworkers; many employees are nitwits who can barely spell or speak proper English
- very dry social atmosphere
- management creates a Kindergarten atmosphere; lots of silly posters and banners about doing your job to "keep the boss away" promotes a culture that values negative reinforcement
- company imposes fairly high burden on its clients in terms of forms, paperwork compared to competitors
- drab offices, full of fluorescent lights and ugly grey cubicles designed to drain any creativity or positive energy from your soul

Advice to Senior Management

- Bite the bullet and invest the money to conduct a massive IT overhaul
- In this horrible job market with 10-20% real unemployment, continue to hire intelligent, eloquent people who can communicate effectively
- Use positive reinforcement and employee engagement to get people excited about the company instead of forcing staff to be wholly focused on keeping management out of their cubicles
- Offer more processes and tools online for clients so they don't have to fill out so many forms on paper

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

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

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.

Pros

TIAA offers excellent benefits although they have been scaled back in recent years.

Cons

The environment at TIAA is as unprofessional as it gets and management allows it to happen.

Pros

Good benefits, generous retirement contributions and paid time off. Good people who honestly care about the customer.

Cons

Limited advancement opportunities. High stress environment. Company keeps asking for more from employees, but is reducing benefits package to be 'more in-line with the industry standard'.

Advice to Senior Management

Significant structural challenges are present that keep the company from performing at a higher level. Having seen several CEOs come and go, each see the same problem: silos. Each CEO was determined to eliminate them, but there are still there. Company needs a complete overhaul of it's structure to better serve customers.