Job Title: Performance Consultant
Location: Bloomington, IL
Submitted on: 02-Jan-04
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One's view of State Farm as an employer greatly depends on an
employee's individual situation. State Farm is a very large and
dispersed company... approx 90,000 in the US and Canada. Therefore it
is difficult to paint the picture of State Farm with one large brush
stroke. With that said, State Farm has significantly greater financial
and leadership troubles than most employees or clients are aware of.
Fortunately or unfortunately, in my position I regularly submit reports
to the company's top leadership. You would think that this would be an
enjoyable position and I would yield significant influence with the
Chairman's Council and there-by future company direction. ...Not the
case! Due to the small-town/conservative ego-centric mentality of our
senior leadership they lack the foresight to conduct business analyses
proactively and there-by make most company decisions based on ill-
informed opinions that appear to come straight from the... well you
know where I was going with that. That evaluation may appear a bit
harsh....and you're right. However, the basis of this opinion in not
from any single experience. Rather, I and my colleagues are repeatedly
asked to conduct analysis only after there is a significant business
problem. Let me skip to the chase here. My division has sent approx. 13
separate reports and given 4 presentations to senior leadership during
2003. Of the 13 reports and 4 presentations, all of them indicated
gross-incompetence in the decision making processes utilized by company
management. Being presented such information repeatedly over a period
or years, a reasonable person would expect our SVPs to at least raise
an eyebrow. Again, No! Rather, our senior leadership will never
acknowledge when the have made a mis-judgment and have implemented a
flawed program, processes etc. Instead, the reaction is to throw more
training at the problem or hide the mis-judgment with another program,
process etc. Training only accounts for approx. 5% of an employee's
performance. Compensation, work environment, processes, procedures,
ergonomics etc account for the rest. You can??t fix a flawed program,
process, etc through more training or worse yet another program that??s
based on the same misconceptions of the current and future business
environment, it don't work.
I??ve already written too long to go into the financial woes of the
company. I??ll simply state the latest??.the actuary debacle disguised as
the new Auto Underwriting Rating Plan. Those familiar with the plan
know exactly what I mean. The new plan has way too many flaws to list
here. But does approx. 300,000 possible rates seem logical.
These comments were offered not to undermine our leadership or to ??bad-
mouth?? the company. Rather, this is just one voice of a concerned
employee. All of the associates and agent??s I have the pleasure of
working with on a daily basis are extremely hard-working competent
employees who deserve a higher level of competence from their
leadership. Unfortunately, our company is suffering from a severe case
of nepotistic-good??ol-boyitis.
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