Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

I don't think TX will ever be formally Corporate headquarters. The previous post about lapse can improving its correct however we are not growing. It may take two to three years before we all see growth again. EIP bonus a no go except the merit part. Meanwhile AAA to Liberty mutual and everyone in between paying their employees more.

Given that there is a 90+% chance that the next governor of IL will be a Democrat raising taxes....... it would not surprise me if corporate legally does move to the TX hub.

Dallas is not the best Hub. They spent more money there because they once thought of moving the headquarters there. The problem people have is they need to understand the culture when you move to other Hubs and some diversity courses. Dallas has a lot of issues but they put it out there that it is from another Hub.

Both the profit and policy/gain loss trends look much better y/y and will show significant improvement at year end.

In what magical fantasy land are you living?

Here in the real world we are LOSING policies at a prodigious rate.

Both the profit and policy/gain loss trends look much better y/y and will show significant improvement at year end. No specualation just black and white numbers.

"The small percentage of employees who fell behind would soon be gone"

Unfortunately, this was never the case...they hung on for YEARS

26 years in claims.... I can remember when you had to work hard to keep up with everyone else because you were surrounded by the best and brightest employees in the industry. The small percentage of employees who fell behind would soon be gone. You worked hard for the Farm because the Farm was willing to reward your efforts. All that is gone now, and we continue to lose customers (903,000 just last year). Profit? WHAT'S THAT?????

@SZPqoFX-2yzs - I don't see us surviving long term, and I think leadership is thinking the same thing. Otherwise, they wouldn't be trying to alienate as many employees as possible. The actions they are taking are deliberate.

I hope we as a company get through this rough patch and start valuing employees again. There is no reason to book vacation a year out. There is no reason for time clocks etc if you would take modern leadership practices and give employees flexibility like we used to. A higher caliber employee means you don't need a command and control culture.

Please do not respond feed the troll (previous poster).

playing golf on company time, driving company cars for personal business, taking three hour lunches, going home for three hour naps, taking and abusing sick leave-like for months at a time, if you owned a company, would you pay for those "benefits"? You proximity reps s--- and should have been fired 15 years ago when they closed the field offices.

I'll also add on to the excellent posts below regarding the high points of State Farm's former culture.

One thing that's way different these days was the feeling that if State Farm hired you, it was committed to you as an individual. I'm not trying to imply that SF was a charity (I'm sure their interest was motivated by the business need), but what I mean is that they much preferred training and growing their own people rather than hiring in new kids from somewhere else.

And as a previous poster said, there was a feeling that you would keep your job and be presented with opportunities as long as you did a good job, and that you could retire here.

There used to be so many classes you could take to make yourself a better, more informed employee. State Farm doesn't offer nearly as much of this anymore. Now it's every man for himself, nor loyalty (in either direction), and minimal investment.

There is a now a feeling that the company will cut you loose on a whim if they decide you're no longer the perfect fit, rather than investing in you.

And no, I don't think State Farm as an organization is better off because of this. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot.

I'll tag onto @SZPqoFX-gbx : There used to be a "State Farm Family" atmosphere. It was not uncommon for multiple generations of family members be employed by the Farm. It was a place that you felt proud to recommend to your friends and family to work at.

"fun" was occasionally encouraged. When I was hired Proximity was a salaried position and was told that when it was busy I would be working 80+ hour weeks, but when things were slow, I could go play golf. One of my best memories with the company was going out with my TM and another rep to play a round of golf. Don't get me wrong, we worked our butts off when we had to, but fun was also encouraged.

There used to be a work/life balance. They understood when you had to go to your kids ballgame or performance. One rep I knew was a coach!

Finally, we had the opportunity to meet a lot of other reps from all over the country and make life-long friends. Before there were deployed claim reps, when a storm hit there was a call for volunteers and you could be sent away for 4-6 weeks to work storm. All the reps would be in the same hotel and in a lot of cases you would go out to eat together after working 12 hour days and bond. I still have some people I stay in touch with 30+ years later.

To me, the bottom line was that State Farm had a lot of very nice people working for it, who all had a shared sense of customer service values and mission.

TL/DR: State Farm used to be a lot nicer place to work.

I agree SF was actually a pretty great place to work over my 23 years. There was and always will be problems. However I was treated as a professional, had a great work life balance, made great raises and really felt like there was a certain amount of security if I just did my job well. That's the biggest thing I see is that doing your job well isn't rewarded like it used to be for many people. On the topics of Hubs yeah Dallas is probably the best however it is extremely expensive compared to many small Midwest, southeast, towns where SF traditionally had a lot of their offices. I know friends who are not necessarily better off here. They are normally those still raising kids that suffer a little bit in this big city. I'm passed that stage of life so not as many variable and thus not that many expenses. Dallas is expensive and like last poster said will probably continue to get worse due to the population boom.

To the previous poster:

I don't think State Farm's culture really exists anymore. What little remnant of it that remained in Bloomington after the last 7 years of executive misfires has been obliterated by the latest reorganization. Plus, not EVERYTHING about SF culture was golden.

And to be perfectly clear, the corporate culture you speak of (both good and bad) is NOT what tanked State Farm's brand. It was our executives who did that with their terrible decisions over the last decade, many of which were identifiable as crap by employees.

But since you asked, here are the good parts of State Farm culture, as I always saw them:

1) The company really used to care about its employees. Or, what I mean is that they acted as if they cared by taking actions that made their employees lives better -- whether they really cared is unknowable. For example: During many previous layoffs, employees were often offered a de facto opportunity to relocate if they were willing. SF took this nicety too far by giving some people jobs who no longer had a place in the organization, but they did this because they recognized that employees may have dedicated their most productive working years to State Farm and because they wanted State Farm to continue to attract solid talent who would remain loyal in return.

2) You could take time off for just about anything you wanted to. Management didn't bat an eye if you had sick kids, or if you were out sick for a week. Did some people abuse this? Sure. Of course. But you asked. State Farm flexibility was always a staple of their culture that made the lives of employees easier. And again, just to reiterate, this was NOT what tanked State Farm's brand.

3) No micromanagement, being trusted to do the job. I cannot vouch for every area in every part of the country. I can only say that for the vast majority of my 18 years at State Farm that micromanagement was seldom an issue and my co-workers and I were trusted to get the job done.

4) Very little backstabbing. There simply was no point in backstabbing someone in the old culture. In fact, the only backstabbing i saw during my 18 years here was by certain leaders. Co-workers rarely did this to one another.

5) State Farm wasn't just "fake nice." Yeah, okay, it was a little "passive aggressive" at times, but most of the time it was "really, actually nice."

A perfect culture? No.

And I have no idea what's going on in the hubs because I've never worked there.

And perhaps it's true that there really were backstabbing, mean-spirited maniacs proliferating throughout parts of the company I never worked in who spent most of their time micro-managing others. I'm not an oracle.

But this is how I always experienced it.

As someone who has only worked in a hub, can you explain what you think SF culture is? From what I have learned, it's State Farm nice (aka fake) and thinking State Farm is the best so our customers or potential customers should feel the same way. Where has that gotten State Farm? The "SF nice" attitude has led to people not questioning decisions, not holding leadership accountable for their mistakes or putting leaders in positions where they have no experience because they know someone. Thinking we are superior and not keeping up with the times (i.e. favoring the agent model while falling behind with technology) has led customers to chose price over the brand name.

I’m in Dallas HUB. Home prices are soaring and a sellers market. Houses sell within in days after a bidding war. It become very attractive to businesses that are relocating from CA. and NY.... it’s growing too fast and will be a pain to commute in next few years.

And OP is correct, there’s a different caliber of employees being hired and a stark contrast that have been with State Farm