Willis Group Reviews

Pros

Willis provided a very generous time off package. The Hours were very flexible. I felt I was paid very well.

Cons

Willis' corporate management is very antiquated. They practice bell curve reviews. So for every good review they provide, someone has to receive a bad review. Corporate management seemed clueless about how to manage or gain employees respect. Middle management was also clueless about how to manage.

Advice to Senior Management

If upper management requires employees to attend a meeting promptly at 9:00, make sure management shows up on time, and not 20 min. late carring Starbucks.

Pros

A lot of growth opportunities because you are thrown into the fire immediately. You are given a lot of responsibility - when you work with good brokers, you are given a lot of client interaction.

Cons

Unfair salary review and adjustment process. After a few years of experience at Willis, I left company and received a 90% salary increase. Bonuses are retention bonuses, not performance bonuses. It is an abrasive environment. They say that they encourage you to speak up but your voice isn't heard.

Advice to Senior Management

Would you rather keep 100% of employees by avoiding layoff's through the method of no salary increases and have the key performers leave... or would you rather trim a few at the bottom and retain the key performers? If you are going to "listen" to employees concerns, actually listen.

Pros

IT dept rocked, benefits package fairly priced, great place to be if your male and do not want to break a sweat while "working"

Cons

majority of those laid off were women over 40, no producers in office led to lack of business growth, no one held accountable for accounts not paying thier led to layoffs, very political lots of self congratulating without any production,

Advice to Senior Management

Fire managers who do not collect funds owed to business, to many bankers at helm not enough insurance pros, fire the producer who doesn't produce replace w/ productive sales force

Pros

Willis is a great place to train so absorb as much as you can (yes even the compliance!) then get out at the first opportunity.
It is also good for networking, with employees coming from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities.
Less importantly in London the company has an impressive, well located building and although these next two shouldn't be at the top of your list the canteen and gym are pretty well stocked and equipped!

Cons

At senior level management seems to be looking purely at figures and statistics without taking into account or having any regard for the human resource impact as they consider employees to be lucky to work for the "World's Greatest Insurance Broker" and believe there are always people prepared to take your place at less pay. We are obliged to implement this culture at divisional and team level and it is hard to lie to your staff.
Our staff are overworked and overstretched with no resources forthcoming. This makes it difficult to run your team and there is very high employee turnover as a result of this push to overstretch margins and no doubt clients are starting to realize this. If you work hard to meet objectives and achieve them this is accepted as standard even though you've had to work unreasonable hours and bend rules to achieve unreasonable targets.
Official statements and communications to employees and clients often have different "unofficial" of unwritten versions behind close doors and at executive management meetings.
There is no long term strategy from senior management, only focus on quarter to quarter.
It is disappointing to say but the only way to obtain any kind of salary increase is to threaten to leave and to buy into the politics of the greasy promotion pole...not really possible if you are someone with any integrity and honesty and you simply expect cream to rise to the top in a good well run organization. Unfortunately Willis appears not to be well run and consequently it is an entirely different substance of another color that rises (and there is plenty of this in Willis management)

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on helping your employees and keeping the good ones happy and give them the tools to do their jobs. This will means that clients are kept happy and maintain good long term relationships with happy knowledgeable employees who stay in the company. Clients are retained and client base will grow...giving sustainable long term returns to investors.
This is the complete opposite of the current short term investor focused scenario where our employees are genuinely unhappy.
I can only think the company is about to be sold hence the reason for finances needing to appear to be in excellent condition.
However I'd never recommend anyone to join Willis as an employee (except for 3-5 years as a first job) nor any client to instruct Willis to act on their behalf

Pros

Its a good place to stay if you do not want growth and are not a professional

Cons

Once you work here, its difficult to handle pressure and deadlines

Pros

Willis is one of the largest employee benefits brokers in the U.S. As an employee, you will learn a great deal given the wide range of benefit plans and client sizes within their client base. The people are, for the most part, willing to share knowledge and assist in your development and knowledge. Willis is also on of the largest property and casualty brokers in the U.S. which provides opportunity to provide more to clients than just one set of solutions.

Cons

Willis has much potential to be a great employer because of its size and capabilities. However, the organization has its client management team spread so thin amoung the clients that the producers often end up client managers. This problem limits the producers time for sales production and contributes to work/life balance challenges for the client manager. Client managers work significantly beyond 40 hours due to a heavy account load. The bonus compensation involves signing an agreement to pay back the bonus on a prorated basis if the employee resigns which deflates the reward of getting a bonus. The insurance benefits are all paid entirely by the employee except for the medical plan, which are only high deductible plans. The retirement plan is a 401K where the match requires 5 years vesting before the employees owns any of the match.

Advice to Senior Management

The ulitimate goal of the organization should be growth and retention of clients. The business model must be built around this objective. Instead of attempting to get more with less, Willis needs to identify ways to increase the support of existing clients, reduce client management responsibilities of producers and have producers focus on new sales. Unfortunately, the current model and staffing causes the producer who has a mature book of business to become challenged to find the time to sell new business. Client managers need some analyst and/or administrative support so that they may build strong relationships with existing clients and support new sales.

Pros

Everyone there are pretty nice. Global information are shared by everyone in the North American as well as UK offices. Associates get trained about the basic insurance industry and insurance policies knowledge at the beginning of hiring. Associates there have all kinds of education background.

Cons

It seems like it's not easy to get promoted. I saw many associates who are over 40s are still in the position of account manager. Also most of the associates are kind of old, who have already been in this industry at least 10 years.

Advice to Senior Management

it will be better for Willis to computerize its management, make adjustable templates for different analysis, electronically store data. At the mean time, provide enough incentive to the associates who have successfully prepared insurance for their clients.

Pros

Ability to purchase extra vacation time however, just means the work has to get done in even less time. Some flexibility in schedule.

Cons

-Constantly being asked to do more work with no extra compensation or additional resources
-Management does not like questions and is unwilling to risk internal political capital to make the proper decisions ("do the right thing") or think outside the box
-Bonuses are actually "retention awards" which means there is a 3 year payback clause. Not a "bonus" at all
-Little to no collaboration. It's all about management covering their own behinds
-Interal compliance standards provide more work for associates and little client value and only serve to protect the company from litigation
-Management implements decisions first then notifies later and for little regard for those that the decisions affect. For example - I had a peer that was working as non-exempt and earning overtime. Management decided to switch this individual to exempt and told the individual after the fact AND did not adjust salary at all to take into consideration lack of overtime pay. So wrong on so many levels.

Advice to Senior Management

Although I find Joe Plumeri somewhat genuine in his speach, I think he needs to look closely at how his management chooses to implement his guidance. If he's OK with it, then he's been fooling us the whole time because I find how things are managed internally quite opposite from Joe's speaches. At the end of the end, appreciate the work your employees do on a daily basis and not just by saying so to your shareholders but actually showing it. Try first by providing actual bonuses than "retention awards". Support employees by providing an enviornment where management doesn't loose political capital by moving issues up the corporate ladder. Maybe management should also do symbolic things like not accepting bonuses or increases when the rest of the workforce has been on a salary freeze for two years. For example, when you tell the workforce that there's no salary increases or bonsus but Joe gets an $8M dollar bonus, that looks bad. I'm just sayin.

Pros

Flexible scheduling, borderline adequate salary.

Cons

No career mapping, inadequate management/leadership, pompous c-suite, bonus "clawback"

Advice to Senior Management

Get off the soapbox about rejecting contingent commissions and invest in your human capital across the corporation.

Pros

Team works well together to get the job done, truly places emphasis on clients. They get the job done and remember who they are working for.

Cons

Willis does not offer competetive benefits package, support workers are not offered much growth opportunity - reward for growth in role not rewarded as should be.

Advice to Senior Management

Willis group can improve by varying reviews by group, commencing review of benefits and how they are offered, as well as reviews on anniversary of hire not 1 date per annum.