Zurich Financial Services Reviews

Pros

Right balance between work and personal life

Cons

Carreer opportunities not very clear.

Pros

Zurich Financial Services offers you with a friendly environment for you to do your work. Everyone there seems to be willing to offer you a hand when needed.

Cons

One thing that can be improved upon at Zurich Financial Services is that it should offer more wide spread training programs for its new employees.

Advice to Senior Management

I believe that the managers at Zurich Financial Services are already doing a pretty good job managing their employees and should keep it up.

Pros

global organisation, interesting deals, culturally diverse, solid performer, leadership is genuine at CEO level.

Cons

no transparency from mid-managers
don't want to hear new ideas, happy to keep doing the same
rigid and controlling

Advice to Senior Management

Be transparent, be open, treat employees respectfully, trust employees

Pros

It is a well known company, so it wasn't difficult to find work after I left. Other than that, I would not even consider working here.

Cons

Long hours, horrible pay, insanely boring work. The people clearly hate their jobs and are not social at all. I would not recommend at all.

Advice to Senior Management

Make it a more friendly environment to work at and the turnover probably won't be so high. When people hate coming to work, they won't stay very long.

Pros

International working environment, like the UN.
Work life balance is present
Decent package compared to other roles
Challenging work with incentives to span out of your comfort zone, with support.
Internal career opportunities

Cons

The work pace and process time can be lethargic and viewed as Governmental. This may impact time to market.
Working in Zurich is considered a marathon career, no fast track promotions here.

Advice to Senior Management

The employee engagement survey, although taken seriously by management, the actions and results should be executed with more attention. From an employee level, the actions are not seen.
Top down communication could be improved.

Pros

Reasonable salary and benefits. Comfortable working conditions. Pleasant people and experienced management.

Cons

Out dated computer systems and software. Frustrating audit driven processes. Chaotic culture of constant change.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of McKinsey & Company Consultants and Six Sigma Processes, which are dehumanizing..

Pros

The compensation is adequate and expectations are low. If you are looking to see out the last days of your career or have no ambition whatsoever then this is a comfortable place to see out your career. You can expect no challenges, no desparate demands on your time and they're unlikely to go bankrupt.

Cons

The management structure is completely opaque, there are no clear lines of responsibility and no consequences for failure. As a result, nothing much ever gets done. The IT infrastructure is horrible, truly embarassing, and the company is a mess operationally. The business is heavily siloed, each segment operates completely independently, as do the business units within each segment. This gives zero insight into actual accountability, projects are duplicated and often killed off at a late stage due to lack of interest or energy... it's a mess.

Advice to Senior Management

The first step is to remove the heads of Group Operations and IT. The company also needs to radically revise its incentive and review structures to reward performance, identify and disincentivise failure and to thin the wheat from the chaff in middle management. A 360 degree review process and a more generous but variable bonus scheme based on actual performance metrics would be a good start.

Pros

Zurich is company careers go to die. If you are looking to idle away the last few years of your career with zero challenge then it is perfect. The offices are full of happy pensioners.

Cons

The IT is horrendous - nothing works. Neither does anything else, really. There are no consequences for failure while success is either appropriated or envied. The bureaucracy is unfathomable, truly surreal. You soon learn not to go for the prize... as everybody has learned long before you.

Advice to Senior Management

Introduce a 360 degree review process. Fire the heads of operations, IT, and replace 60 percent of the staff in those functions. Introduce a three-strikes policy for your senior executive with zero tolerane for failure.

Pros

Great salary, great benefits, great opportunities.

Cons

Company has large focus on cutting expenses. 24 of us just were notified on 09/15/11 that our positions will be eliminated. The jobs are being outsourced to a contracting company located in Poland.

Pros

Very stable company world wide with respect in the market place. Great benefit package and compensation for those that qualify. The ability to work in many area of the company in United States and overseas.

Cons

Limited resources to effectively do your job.
Very low morale and excessive amount of work hours. No balace between work and personal life.
Too many audits that contributes to low morale.
Inadequate perfomanace ratings. Performace should be based on productivity and other related issues and not personal dislike. Managers have a tendacy to grade employees on personal dislikes rather their actual job proformance.
Excessive micro management by line managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus thier attention on the annual employee survey and act upon the issues presented by emloyees. There is a purpose for the survey and management should respond to all of the issues presented. Morale is a serious issue within Zurich that require some review by senior management.