TIAA Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

Benefits, Work-life balance, campus is great

Cons

Work stations may be outdated

Advice to Management

Keep being supportive of young talent

Pros

Benefits, work life balance, compensation

Cons

Red tape, slow to change

Pros

Work life balance. Plenty of down time to study and learn other things.

Cons

No salary increases even if you’re a top performer, they require you to sit in a role for over 3 years to even be considered for a promotion which will only get you a $1-2k salary increase. The bonus structure is below industry norm for roles that are not executive level. Management is not transparent and is at another level of micromanaging. They require you to get rated off of score card metrics based on what... you enter into the system. It’s a completely inaccurate way to measure someone’s performance as many are known to falsely enter things into the system. Not an environment for someone that is ambitious and wants to grow. This is the perfect environment for the slacker who just wants to clock in and clock out and not work with smart people or be challenged whatsoever. The role is basically a licensed telemarketer. They want you calling people to set appointments. That’s it.

Advice to Management

Have a career development plan in place for the ambitious. Provide fair annual salary increases of at least 5% like all other firms, allow for promotion prior to 3 years in the seat. Stop playing favorites with the score card. Someone that is red across the board shouldn’t get a full bonus and then someone that’s green across the board get 50%. This review is coming from someone in good standing and a top performer.... You will not retain great talent by continuing to be subpar. Lastly allow for easy transition between TIAA and nuveen for those that want to get into asset management.

Pros

Work-life balance, which means that if you mentally check-out for a month or year, nobody will notice.

Cons

Promotions are based on favoritism and heavily influenced by geographic location. Systems are poorly designed and there is little evidence of end-to-end process thinking. Recent changes like canceling "work from home" or changing paid-time-off policies all point to a degrading employee value proposition. As the good people who have better options depart, the downward spiraling of morale and collective skills... will accelerate.

Advice to Management

If you are one of the good ones: split the company into smaller operating units with P&L aware leadership that creates incentives for employees at all levels. Open book management can save this bloated beast. Others: retire. You can espouse mediocrity on your own time, no need to drag others into yours.

Pros

Pension, not many firms offer it. However, vesting is three years, which is a tall order in the current environment.

Cons

TIAA is smoke and mirrors. Do not believe for one second the hype about it's "culture", work-life-balance, best-places-to-work nonsense. The reality is that this is a sinking ship. This is a firm desperately trying to play in the big leagues and it can't come anywhere close. It is decades behind it's competitors in technology, processes and thinking. At a time when it should be retaining its best talent, those... that can are walking out the door. What is left is mediocrity, longtimers and friends of executive. This is a tier 3 organization. If you are in NYC, you are damned. The firm is moving to Charlotte. It would move faster if it could, but it has run out of space on campus. Instead, they have made life for New Yorkers miserable at a WeWork location. It is a sweat shop. Everyone is crammed next to each other, there is no privacy, it is loud and filthy. In the eyes of management, there is now free coffee (something TIAA did not offer its employees in the past) so we should be most grateful. If you are a shmoozer who like to push work off to others and not be accountable for anything, you belong at TIAA and you will thrive. If you care about your work and doing a good job, turn around right now and run as fast as you can away from here.

Advice to Management

Your decisions are short sighted and only buying you time before you are also shown the door. I think you know that.

Pros

Great benefits, many great people, strong balance sheet and sticky clients

Cons

Tough work/life balance; shop is constantly trying to reinvent itself.

Advice to Management

Hire a few more analysts and make up your mind what you want to be.

Pros

The benefits are really good and salary is also on par with industry standards. Their bonus structure also pay off really well. TIAA's work life balance is set well and so one is not overwhelmed at all times. Availability of the tech related stuff, whether its VC conference rooms, MS office packages, they're up to date with the latest technology. PTO's and general holidays are awesome and almost competitive... with many other companies

Cons

Very traditional and conservative company. Restricted and monitored internet and system access. Very limited or no scope for flexibility for working from home when required. We would need to take our PTO's when sick, probably the reason why they provide us with more hours for accumulation.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing for your employees. Give more room for flexibility, specially for people who are client facing but not essentially providing financial advice to clients.

Pros

Great people, good benefits, long-standing honorable mission.

Cons

New leadership is ruining the company. You can become more competitive AND not burn a companies fundamental values to the ground. Not thinking progresively, actually going backwards in work-life balance offerings.

Advice to Management

Take a good, hard look at the changes you are making and make certain this is the way you want to go. Many, like eliminating WFH, will only sour your employees opinion of the company.