Pros
Claims system is easy to navigate once you've familiarized yourself with the system, MOST leadership is eager to help and guide you toward success on your career path, amazing medical benefits, and bonus is nice depending on how the company does that year.
Kontras
Unless you're in a bodily injury or SIU role as a claim specialist, all of the other claims departments are team based - working in a team has many advantages don't get me wrong but it has many disadvantages when handling claim files.. Yearly raises do not accurately compensate employees for the hard work that they put in the year prior. The raises are based on your rating you receive. One year I was given an average rating: "meeting expectations, exceeding in some" and my raise was $0.37 per hour! I would've honestly rather have been given nothing, it was almost insulting to think that's an adequate raise.. They under-pay employees by a long shot compared to other insurance companies.. therefore the turnover rate is outrageous. People are comping and going and leaving departments in literal shambles because people are constantly quitting. Which leads to the next con. I have worked in 3 different departments at State Farm & they all put "freezes" on promotions when the department is under-staffed. Therefore, the employees that are exceeding and doing well are unable to move forward with their career paths and continue to be burnt out from the current state of the department they are in. These good employees sometimes eventually end up leaving to other companies because of this. It's a shame when that happens. The promotion freezes happen all across the company, in all departments, from what I have heard. Mandatory overtime is also something that they will activate at times. Before going into my current role, my last department was on mandatory over time for almost a year. I always did it and I'm not 100% sure what the consequences for it were but from what I have been told, if you don't complete the over time, it just negatively impacts your rating at the end of the year which ultimately impacts your raise. I can only speak for the claims roles when I say this as that is all of my background.. but the training for claims is terrible. Needs to be complete re-evaluated from the bottom to the top. I am lucky that I started in an associate claims role learning the basics and slowly transitioned into higher specialist roles building on my experience. With each promotion and each training class I went through I couldn't be more thankful for my experience I already had or I would truly have had no idea what I'd be doing. They often hire people from "off the streets", with little to no claims backgrounds and put them through this inadequate training process - this is leading to more turnover rates because these people are overwhelmed and unprepared when they hit the floor in their roles. I've seen this in 3 different departments in claims. Training needs a serious revamp.