Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

All of State Farm right now is a hostile work environment...has been that way for a long time. Never realized until a few months back and it's getting worse. If you don't get Remarkable Customer Service when you speak with someone at State Farm, especially someone from claims, just realize that right now our work environment is hostile, we try hard not to take it out on the customers but we are only human.

We had our Claim Section Manager tell us on several occasions that if we followed the SCPs we would not keep up, not survive but he did not say what to not follow.

I followed SCPs but was told I am too old and slow, because I was trying to follow the rules.

They said to work all my team’s time limit demands and priorities. They said don’t worry about calendars or file notes being behind.

Then they terminated me using ‘one on one’ file discussions as examples of when I was “counseled” (not put that way at time) and any slow calendars, etc. They made a few slow files due to impossible work volumes and chronic inadequate staffing sound like hugh terrible trend.

I finalized realized I was not meant to be able to accomplish all the work. They cut back OT and increased the work requirements with less staff and support. Management gave inconsistent and incomplete feedback in a hostile work environment where TMs were afraid to speak with the angry Section Manager. I saw long term TMs quit and or retire. One the Section Manager had been yelling at and making cry until she could not take it any more.

Good luck.

I worked in Injury. Management will beat the drums about following the SCP's and KPI's. I do not know how people in Injury do their job except to deliver consistently unremarkable claim service or just work a lot of overtime to do a good job. Management would complain how my peers would not apply comparative fault or make good liability decisions, but my peers would usually have better KPIs than I would. I would observe some people just taking a liability position without further investigation because doing so was quicker. In order to do a quality liability investigation, a claims specialist must take time to do a good investigation. I was the best liability investigator on my team, applying comparative fault whenever I could. I also was pretty good at sniffing out fraud as well because I took the time to investigate claims.

The key element to good claim handling is taking the time to make sure ALL facts are being considered.

Management wants you all to to follow the SCPs because they know that you cannot follow the SCPs. For example, I worked in the Murfreesboro Operations Center. All of my fellow claims handlers for Tier 2/3 Injury were taken aside and given "additional" training which was not led by management. Rather, this training was informal and led by claim specialists who had been doing the work for several years. They said that we should not follow the SCP's because there was not enough time.

I remember being in a team meeting about how we should be trying to settle claims even if this includes lying. Management said that we should not use the term lying, but we should use the term "negotiating." I was good at "negotiating" settlements; there were quite a few months that I led the team in securing recorded releases.

I am by personality a cynical realist. I think the SCPs are in place for two reasons. One reason is that they do sort of set a framework in which to handle a claim. However, I think the most important reason is that executive leadership knows that not one person is going to handle every single claim within that framework. Management can then have plausible deniability about unethical claim handling, and they can have a reason to punish claim handlers that do not "buy" into how wonderful and how remarkable the claim process is.

Note: The State Farm claims process is remarkable. I always heard someone complaining about the service.

when we moved into Express we had all of two weeks of training..TWO WEEKS. Now if you came from ACC the Two weeks were boring, because you already knew how to handle claims....you just had to do it faster. Anything that requires more than one outbound call should get moved to Property...should but why when you know you handle it, but see if you take too much time handling claims well you will get in trouble because you have bad metrics. Then Property gets dumped on with stuff Express people can handle but don't have enough time, so everyone falls behind and everyone's metrics are bad,

Now that you aren't able to meet your metrics or TPR because you spend to much time cleaning up other people's messes, Express CH's spend way way too much time cleaning up AutoILR and ILR messes, you are then penalized once again because you aren't meeting your numbers with having NO task time, task time that will result in Remarkable Customer Service. Makes sense doesn't it? If we didn't have to constantly clean up other people's messes we would be so much more productive.

If you say anything, you're negative and not on board. It's painfully obvious the impact of so many poor decisions. It's a said day when the truth cannot be shared.

We have not been able to provide remarkable customer service since before the last Proximity re-org. Having to do your work, carry the load for those that left and then handle "stabilization" claims, which for those of you who don't know, is the term SF uses to take work from Claim Central and give it to the field because that have all the experience in the company. Oops, not for much longer...

No disrespect to CC workers, not your fault with poor training & the employee revolving door. The hubs were set up to fail, but leadership will not admit it yet.