It seems like claims is a pretty horrible place to work, and maybe some of understanding. However, many of the other departments (like the one I work in) are really great and a completely different experience. I wonder why that is
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I am high up in claims. You are not going to get promoted out. We don’t even let TM claim managers promote out. If you only knew how many qualified TM managers are in year 2-3 of applying for job postings only to be denied it’s mid blowing. Let me give you a recent example, a claim TM 17 years + who was a fire TM for 10 years and headed the dept was not offered the job. The reason? “They weren’t qualified and didn’t have the experience”. I am serious! Do you know who got that job? A 4 year employee in general claims with zero background. Sure…… that makes sense. NOT.
We are in the twilight zone of hiring. What you need to know is that once you are in claims it’s very hard to get out. They need the bodies. It’s okay to raise metrics to terminate people (which will be very true now going forward), but you are NOT leaving claims dept by promotion or lateral. Buy a lottery ticket. You would have better odds.
@1siz Are you joking? Underwriting is a nightmare too. Still using technology literally from the 1980’s. It ridiculous.
Poster 1sz hit the nail on the head.
Over a year with ZERO hiring with one of the highest turnovers of any company in insurance (actually i think SF is the highest turnover)
Handlers are now swarmed with a HUGE portion siphoned off from the dept they chose and dumped into Total loss, ILR, or Express indefinately. Lots of promises for the future, were helping SF ect....however your 3rd point is fantastic because....
Its great you have thousands of CA/CS who think their unvoluentary reassignment is going to help them promote, when you just put hiring freezes on those people when hiring does start.
Handlers are over worked, under appreciated, and fed up with being treated like middle school delinquents....the metrics that doesnt help anyone but the accountants, and a downward spiral morale.
Everyone stuck and unhappy here....which will work out great if SF wants half the company walking out the door when everything opens and GEICO/Progressive start to higher en mass....which maybe the goal is this exactly, dump the good half of the claim handlers to competitors, keep the mediocre/bad handlers who cant leave.
Would 1000% not recommend claims to anyone. Especially if you are getting in at the CA level. Yikes do i feel sorry for the poor people joining SF at CA level, not realizing the uphill battle that will take at least half a decade to promote. All the silly management games they will need to play, all the rug getting pulled out with hiring freezes put in place to counter large hiring sprees that could otherwise be promotion opportunities. Ahh all the fun....
Plain and simple..State Farm is a toxic work environment...but I would like to know what Dept. the OP works in?
I work in Executive and I absolutely love it. The only problem I have is that my salary is a little low compared to my industry peers. The benefits are fantastic. We fly on company jets so as not to rub elbows with the commoners. We have a fantastic executive health program, an excellent retirement package, and our toilet paper is like silken pillows. Why everyone does not love working at State Farm I will never understand.
I am in injury claims as a CS, i was previously in sales, I've been with the company just under 10 years. We own our inventory, so it's different then the team environment that the rest of claims uses. I'll review the 3 main areas I see that injury claims constantly struggles with.
1- metrics- this is a RA2 professional position, but everything we do is tracked, more so then my previous sales position. We track things not to make our job easier or to settle more claims, but so a pencil pushing analyst can make another chart. Now I hit my metrics but not everyone else does, we will get back to that later. The operational leadership never pushes back on the paper pushers request to track this or that. Does this help move claims forward is never asked.
2-staffing- your leadership may have shared the good news about SF adding new customers, the last year and a half has been great from that standpoint! In that same time frame, my demand pool has hired 0 people, no one is in training. Historically, the demand pool loses about 30% by turnover. As people leave or go on long term leave for stress, that inventory just gets spread out more and more. Lots of CSs have close the 300 claims to manage. Want to take vacation? Sorry, unless you bid 6 months in advance there is no time available.
3-development- so now you have read this critique and must be thinking, wow claims is a very challenging environment, what do they do to reward their handlers? Well, the handlers that are constantly hitting their metrics are told to help their under performing team members, settle their claims etc. Oh you would like to work on development for other opportunities, well we won't release anyone because of the turnover, but you can do TM tasks like leading huddles and up skilling the team.
I didn't work in claims, so I don't know how bad it was/is. But, It was pretty awful in my dept too. All jobs got worse and harder because metrics and more entering data so we could be tracked more so than the actual work we were hired to do. They started not worrying about end product but micromanaging every single step to get to the end product, no matter how small that step. I honesty expect them to start timing bathroom breaks, how long it takes you to take a sip of coffee, and how many breaths you're allowed to take at your desk. It was unbearable and morale was so crazy low.
I meant underwriting, not understanding. Literally the department I work is is great. Leadership is solid, take PTO on any flexible basis, lots of appreciation and ownership. I just don’t understand how and why claims is such a cluster.
That's a good question and a wonderful place to start dialogue.