Very poor place to work! - Claims Federated Insurance Employee Review

Culture is toxic - leadership is by fear and intimidation rather than by inspiration. There is no opportunity to rise to the senior management level for Underwriters, Claims Adjusters, HR, IT, Loss Control etc... as all major functions are headed by a Marketer or former Marketer. Employee's are viewed as a liability vs. an asset even though lip service is give to the latter concept. No true innovation is possible as senior managemt will broker no opinions or views different than their own - their attitude is "my way or the highway" (and they mean it!). Very poor communication from the top - no accountability to the owners of this "Mutual Company" who are the policyholders. While starting pay is on par with the competition, salary increases are difficult to obtain and measly at best. Bonus' are very small for this wealthy of a company except to a very few (senior management and a select few favorites). Lot's of cronyism and favortism - very much the typical "good old white boys club". In this organization, raises and promotions rely much more on "playing the game" and who you know than how hard you work or how good you are at your job. Performance evaluations are completed on the Jack Welch model (get rid of 10-20% each year) which is fine in a production setting where productivity is easily objectively measured, but does not work well in a company where most of the measurement is subjective (major catagories of the yearly performance review are "Passion" and "Energy" - how can you even begin to objectively measure that!). Managers of even the smallest units are forced to designate someone as "needs improvement" (a professional death sentence) without regard to whether that person exists or not.