Pros
- Ability to wear shorts on some days. - They have some desirable markets
Cons
- This is a small company that, at times, tries too hard to operate like a large company, but they don’t seem to know how to do that. - They will tell you that they consider themselves to be a sales organization, not an underwriting one. - They are known to take a good idea and take it well beyond its benefit. A perfect example is their SOPs or standard operating procedures. These can be great for learning a new process, but they have literally hundreds of these which makes it nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for. This is because they required everyone to write new ones as part of their review process. Now, employees still have to review or rewrite several of these every year. - SVs or standard variances are given to an employee whenever a process is done incorrectly. Employees are told they are meant to be a training tool and not punishment, but these are used against employees on their reviews, which makes it a punishment especially since it can affect a merit increase. Even worse, employees are pressured to write these on other employees. If they do not, this will negatively affect their review. - They value their agents far more than their employees. If an agent is upset, they will almost always do whatever it takes to make them feel better. Sometimes they will drag an employee to the agent even if they did nothing wrong. This has also trained the agents to tag management and other underwriters in their emails when they don’t get their way. - This company has a culture of creating “yes” people. They say they are open to listening to employees concerns and new ideas, but when employees speak up about some things, it is not well received. From what I can see, this has trained employees to just always say yes to everything and never question anything, which isn’t how a company will improve. - They have a “team” for everything. There are teams of people for all kinds of different things, but none of them seem to be very productive. Employees are encouraged to join a team, but it seems like most do so just so they can look like a team player. - They have the most elementary training and development programs. The A-Team leads these periodically. Some of the topics include empathy, anyone can be a leader, or taking accountability. Because of the “yes” people culture, everyone sits through these and adds a basic comment when they can so they are seen as a participant. If the value of these trainings is questioned, the employee is made to feel like they aren’t a team player or they simply don’t want to be better. If these basic topics aren’t something an employee already understands, they shouldn’t have been hired. - The absolute worst part of this company is how they will treat you if you decide to leave for a new opportunity. It was not a secret to my manager that I was looking for a new job. Despite all of the flaws JM Wilson has, I wasn’t leaving out of anger, but solely to improve my life. I was specifically asked to give a 2 week notice, which I did. Once HR heard about it, they fired me on the spot without pay. I was told this is very common, but it is not. In less than 2 years I had earned the company over $.5 million in revenue, but they refused to pay me a few thousand dollars for my notice. I can’t think of a more disgraceful way to treat an employee.