Travelers Companies Reviews

Pros

The pay is the industry standard
room to grow
aupportive management

Cons

Can be political at times

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what your doiing

Pros

Large organization with many talented people.
Excellent updates routinely provided on industry you work in and how the company is doing, strategies, etc.
Good vacation time, matching on 401K is great.
Ability to learn, grow, and develop a broad skill set. Can wear many hats depending on your role which is a good thing as opposed to being a task manager within an organization.

Cons

Management depending on your department views promotions more in terms of duration employees are in a role as opposed to whether or not someone can do the job.
Upper management provides extreme conservatiive postures on business yet the expectation for field employees is to grow portfolio which is a conflict within the organization but may be specific to the NYC Metro territory.
Very little flexibility provided to employees in terms of virtual arrangements, senior management needs to realize that the way of the world is becoming more virtual and the new generation of good talent will eventually want virtual arrangements to invest in the organization long term.

Advice to Senior Management

When it snows offices almost always remain open unless state of emergency is declared and employees within the Edison NJ offices even with laptops are not given the ability to work virtually which makes no sense. Please realize in these scenarios that managers are showing a lack of value for employees which will ultimately result in higher turnover. If you want dedicated employees please show some compassion for us as we are what makes the Travelers organization an industry leader.

Pros

Lots of opportunity if you are a new grad
Great benefits

Cons

Communication by managers is not great.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership needs to interact with those who actually do the work.

Pros

Large company that can give great exposure to a large number of people.

Cons

It is difficult to break out of the traditional career path within a department. The company still needs to work on Diversity and applying it to the whole company, the department.

Advice to Senior Management

Build leaders not managers, a good leader is someone who motivates employees by example not someone who just tells an employee what to do.

Pros

Good time off if you are not on the front line customer service support. Benefits are great and reasonable. The pay overall is good if you climb up the ladder.

Cons

They are sending work overseas and have downsized departments some with warnings some with out. They have sent a lot of work to India but are keeping this hush to the consumers. Management puts on a face for you to try and keep you happy but usually there is alternate motives. There is no real "job security" with jobs being cut back and work being sent overseas. Most people at Travelers dread getting up to go to work in the morning and its sad.

Advice to Senior Management

Start listening to the "non management" staff. Have HR actually meet with the teams in the center without the managers there to really see what is going on in the company because I guarantee you they will be surprised with all the negative response and how unhappy the overall staff is. Business center morale is horrible. Random drug test the staff to weed out dead beat workers instead of laying off good workers to send work to India!

Pros

-many career opportunities
-great benefits
-offices locations throughout the US
-very stable company
-fiscally responsible
-always looking to improve
-great co-workers

Cons

-Various jobs do have a tough work/life balance as there is high expectations for their performance
-currently there is a restructuring taking place

Advice to Senior Management

-look for merger/acquisition opporutnities
-continue to be fiscally conservative
-look for global expansion
-continued assessment of metrics when determining staffing model

Pros

salary
office environment is decent
training is good
they do offer performance bonus money
innovative

Cons

Managers , managers ,and hr staff - ugh!!! - not good !!! the things that I saw and told by managers there is just unreal !!!
Managers being friends with co - workers beyond work environment
If you remain in one position long enough you may fall behind because new processes are not relayed properly
Most people that work here " know someone " if you manage to get a job otherwise your - extremely lucky
Laying off several employees and not replacing them

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should not be friends / living with / cousins with people that they are managing or same departments
When performance goes down this should be shared with others besides immediate supervisor
Salary should be based off of job position or how long you have been with company. Hard when you find out new people making same as you (if you have been with company long time)
Might want to address the whole "lay off - sending everyone to India" rumors

Pros

Vacation Time (plentiful, although not necessarily when you want it)

Cons

Micromanagement

Leadership is laughable: talent, education, intelligence have no bearing on opportunities for promotion; promotions will be give to the most perky, vacuous, & bobble-head nodding applicant.

Worst of all, STOP sending our jobs overseas! Yes, you can hire someone in India or Phillippines to do the same work for a fraction of the pay but how about having a little moral conscience while you're raking in the piles of money, Senior Management.

Stop telling us how times are hard and we need to cut raises, bonuses, jobs; we SEE the quarterly earnings reports too. Employees realize we are being taken advantage of because the job market is lousy.

When I walk out the door at work on Friday I'm already dreading coming back on Monday. As soon as I can find something else acceptable - even if the pay is less, hours worse, benefits package smaller- I will quit. I want to be able to take some joy out of my work again.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop being so short-sighted. The relationships you are destroying now can't be bought back later when the economy improves.

You can micromanage your employees down to the second (which you do, literally) but all you will do is cause them to resent you and do as little as possible to get by. I worked three times harder for you when you gave me the credit and the room to do my job to the best of my ability.

Stop basing every decision on how many dollars it puts in your pocket in the short term.

Hire American workers and stop sending our jobs away. A little integrity PLEASE!

Pros

room to grow, ability to create change and have impact

Cons

some decisions about use of and access to technology are short sighted

Advice to Senior Management

Keep listening to your field and middle management; not all is as it seems in Hartford.

Pros

Salary OK, benefits good, co-workers OK

Cons

Unrealistic expectations, no support, no recognition or encouragement