Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

Agree. Their goal is to get as many to quit as possible. Less they have to pay in severance and benefits. They are no doubt going to close all offices except the hubs and corporate. They will keep the metrix, time clocks, point system and no time off to get rid of employees. And just when you think we can't be more miserable they do something else...like change or rather screw you out of more benefits. By the time they close the offices there probably won't be a whole lot of employees left. Just the ones hanging on for retirement.

"Understand you are a commodity that can be replaced and they do not care. They have stacked deck against you to set you up to fail because they want you to leave. Don’t take it personally."

This is very true. I cannot even understand or fathom how their insane work environments are what SF or any other business wants. They really do seem to be playing games with their employees, like they want you to just get in your chair, put on your headset, and work non-stop all day every day on high alert, full of stress, including holidays and weekends, never having a PTO day off (unless it was approved ages ago) until you just quit because there is no other way out of this madness. This is a strategy designed to get certain people to leave (like those that, you know, might want to stand up for themselves and their self-worth), and it is in plain sight.

This strategy came from Corporate, and it is so scary how effectively and uniformly it has been implemented everywhere that there is no way it is anything other than what it is.

I'm in an office not closing currently and claims folks are dropping like flies. I guess the - no future writing on the wall- has them leaving. It's scary. Folks with 2 yrs to 30 just quitting for other insurance companies mostly, some go to anything to get out.

Hmmmm, I wonder if things changed much after the "all management meeting with corporate" in Injury. Were there new ideas that were generated and put into effect yet?

good thread

Bodily Injury (BI) Claims Specialist Update from a HUB:

-2 weeks ago all BI Management had an all management meeting with corporate. Corporate provided current financial overview and asked for suggestions on how to turn things around... 2-3 ideas brought up but squashed. More meetings to come? Who knows....

-Daily life: Claim inventory for everyone is well beyond manageable and expected to meet daily production and phone call metrics and keep track of the files that need to remain top priority like litigation, coverage investigation, Arbitration files, etc. The current design of this position is INSANE.

-In addition to the above, there is the “miscellaneous “ metric of making sure you don’t get on a naughty list for a slew of things such as being late on submitting something for approval to management, not clearing injury reports, etc... really trivial items compared to the work you need to tend to every day from the high inventory of claims.

Bottom line, perfection is expected and now this feat is to be accomplished with a reduction in overtime.

-Leadership fear is rampant. Very difficult to speak up regarding new / old ideas to implement that would increase productivity and make the claims experience better for the customer AND employees...

-On a positive note...even though it’s an EXTREMELY challenging place to be right now, I still love the Farm and want us to succeed.... if only corporate executives (that are obviously calling the shots) would be open to different ideas that may go against the model of what a consultant said would work.

I pray every night that our corporate executives see the light.... we shall see.

Peer to peer criticism sounds like gestapo or communist tactics to get everyone to turn on each other. The problem with this is how you have to work others people’s files for demands and priorities ahead of your own. People being told to cut corners and not follow procedure guide but not told which things to cut, then being written up by management and now peers for deviation. Crazy town. Good luck. Don’t let hostile environment harm your health. Glad I am out. Still recovering. Moving on.

Short of EEOC claim and or class action not much you can do in most states, even with vile executive and management behaviors, and discrimination against older employees, or people who used FMLA or sick leave.

Their bottom line is cost reduction at this point. It will likely continue to ratchet up to continue to get older employees to retire or quit (which saves a lot of money very quickly). The future of claims handling will need fewer people. They can use out sourcing and new younger employees at cut rate pricing to fill the gaps.

Understand you are a commodity that can be replaced and they do not care. They have stacked deck against you to set you up to fail because they want you to leave. Don’t take it personally.

The maddening thing is there is not much we can do about it. Do you want to give them more of your time and energy? They know this. This unethical behavior has been going on unchecked for awhile from what I can see.

I hope press gets story out and there is class action. But even if that happened it will not correct the current unfair, manufactured inevitable failure system, and toxic treatment.

Be well, be prepared. You do have worth and there is life after State Farm.

The only people with a future in the new business model are the executives who voted to adopt it.

The latest push in claims is for employee feedback forms which is basically peer to peer criticism. if you see something in a claim file you don’t like management is encouraging us to send the form reporting that employee. They essentially want us to rat each other out and get our coworkers in trouble The culture around here is already toxic. Why on earth would they want to make it any worse?Everyone knows that you have to constantly kick the can and cut corners to get your numbers. We don’t have time for quality claim handling.

Make sure you take these complaints to Glass Door, if you haven't already.

Future prospective employees need to know to avoid this place.

It's a different world than ever before. We are treated like customer service reps at a call center making minimum wage. There is nothing professional about these "professional level" positions. I can't think of a worse career choice in 2018. No respect and no future. Long hours, constant criticism, micromanagement, stress, anger, frustration, low pay. Dealing with angry insureds and claimants is hard enough, but you have to also worry about the metrics, management claim reviews, and the peer-to-peer criticism that we are encouraged to give using a SF form. You have to plan your time off 1 year at a time, and you might not even get all the days off you request. Meanwhile, mandatory "non-optional" overtime OT is a thing every. single. week. Management will tell you on Monday that you have to work 5 hours OT during the week and sometimes also say you must come in to work some more OT on the upcoming Saturday.

Claims was once a noble profession. Those days are long gone.

Proximity estimator positions not looking good. Increased single bid areas and select service impacting our presence. Don't expect to be around much longer, unless you plan to relocate to Phoenix or Concordville. Heard some news that Columbia may pull estimatics out. So that doesn't leave many options. Only good news is many body shops are hiring. Just going to try and hang for a bit longer.

Unbridled Hell. So focused on #s that corners have to be cut impacting our customers..... our Team Managers are either updating their huddle boards, meeting with us to talk about our numbers, in their own meetings to further discuss numbers, and report montlhly on our and their #s

The sad thing, all these metric reporting and reviewing get in the way of our actual day. Claim handling can take 5 minutes or hours, depending on facts of loss, injuries, fatalities, complex issues, but we needed to watch #of tasks worked????

We were providing excellent service prior to EOM..... but for some reason, we can continue full blast. We don’t need metrics. We need a good phone system and have begged for years. Wish they let us do our job. Poor Total Loss sends out gifts when the customer gets pissed off and we actually received a handout on how to apologize. Phone calls are routinely sent to wrong segment, so iLR can get customer off phone to get their metrics.

Estimatics is micro managed hell, with constant changes for no good reason. Only thing that matters is the numbers you produce with no concern for quality. Shoving Saturday’s down our throats the to work in dirty body shop offices because they are too cheap to own or rent a stand alone building for estimating. This place has been trying to eliminate estimators since 1996 and I have been there since 1988 and good and sick of their sh--. Time to move on.

Before I was outted it was awful. I made it not even a full year in the new world.

Metrics, metrics, metrics. Before I had time to do a proper investigation, talk to people, hear them out and come to fair claim settlements. I never felt like I was doing wrong by the customer. (Though it was stressful)

Before I left, property tier 1 was constant phone calls. It would just drain you, you’d go home and do it all over again. No investigating, no long discussions just tasks. All that mattered was your score on the board. Eff that.

People would drop left and right, mostly for new jobs but some did get coerced into retirement or fired. My question is, how can they get away with this? I honestly think the executives had nothing better to do and just decided to mess up people’s lives. Now they are bleeding money and anyone with real career aspirations will think twice about State Farm claims

Total Loss is still being forced to work way too much OT and the metrics are ridiculous.

Property will probably never catch up.

Injury is pure hell right now.