Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

I believe ECS took State Farm 10 + years to develop, and cost the company BIG BUCKS... it was a huge waste of time, money, resources. State Farm could have paid for software from a company that does this for a living, but they were to smart, and smug for their own good. When the finished product came out, it looked like a throw back from years ago when technology first started developing, IE Atari vs PlayStation 4. Stupid classes like FISH, phone Dr, classes on what not to say or do, such as s-xual harassment, when most of the time it was management from top to bottom level who needed the classes. Justifying their own jobs, for golden parachutes, and telling us in team meetings that they want to "get rid of the SLUGS" - nice way to refer to your employees, and that was from the BIG MOUTH of s section manager. Or spending time having fairs, such as Founders Day, where they would make fun of the competition, and waste time and money, or Halloween where one of the teams all the women dressed as prostitutes, or lets not forget classes where we were given team building tests that had physiological questions which were the same or similar questions for identifying ADHD. My favorite was the fair where lubricant and condoms were given out, this from a company worried about s-xual harassment. Management who did not know what the systems could do or not do, along with thinking they knew who did a great job and who was slacking. Waste your $$ State Farm, it wont be long. Phone monitoring by management, who would put totally wrong notes in regarding a phone call, and then refused to correct their mistakes as it would take too long. BTW demeaning people, monitoring their every move, including bathroom times, etc has cost this company a lot. Unfortunately they are now a BAD

Yes I agree with @zqg. And the individual that you named worked in external sourcing then HR and then was promoted into Systems Leadership. This is not someone that is concerned with the employees best interest.

They’re not considered,”dead wood” if they are willing to relocate to a hub. Quality of the employee is irrelevant.

State Farm has lost its way and forgot who they are. Anyone who has studied at a higher level understands Porters 3 generic strategies and how they play into creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Cost leadership, Differentiation, and Focus (niche). State Farm was founded on and was, up until recently a differentiator. Our advantage was the experience, the good neighbor service and the time we took with customers to truly service them and take care of them in their times of need. Sure we were a little higher priced but you got impeccable service and sales handling. Geico and others swooped in based on cost leadership strategy and competing solely on price and they had some gains in the younger market (maybe their “catchy” “funny” commercials worked a bit) and State Farm freaked out and decided we totally need to switch our whole strategy platform around and start competing on price. This actually has a terrible effect on the market because when more players crowd a specific strategy, especially cost/price it puts more and more pressure on those playing in this space to drive prices further down to keep winning. So, by us switching to that strategy we actually expedited price concerns and hurt ourselves more. We should’ve stayed in our strategy sphere but clearly didn’t have the right leadership in place to do this and make this call. I by no means want to sound like I’m an “always right guy” but this whole millennial shopper and price thing is blown out of proportion. Millennials chose many higher priced restaurants over fast food places because of the experience and perceived benefit, Apple still performs really well last I checked and part of their gimmick is superior service via Genius Bar and when calling in for help getting a person or warm body to help versus automation. Millennials choose a lot of higher priced activities over other former lower cost activities (think bowling alleys, lower cost activity but continues to die). It isn’t always about cost and price. We needed to stay our course and continue to do what we did well for years and that was being a differentiator by offering superior service and quality sales channels. If we marketed ourselves correctly about who we were and continue to be we could’ve won in our space and still grown even with the younger crowd. Probably would’ve ended up with better customers on the books too as in less risk amongst the younger customers we gained because they would be looking for quality versus cheap crap. Some of you will come back with it’s all about price and no one wants service anymore blah blah blah...Why then are we losing policies hand over fist and most complaints are about our claims servicing. People leaving us because our service s---s because we lost our way and our identity and tried to go into a strategy sphere that we don’t belong in. You can still succeed in markets, even with the millennial generation even if you aren’t the cheapest. I propose it’s time to get the right people in the right seats and get back to our identity and core and stop counting beans or getting promoted and staying in high level leadership even though we failed on a huge boondoggle project we were in charge of leading simply because we obtained a bunch of designations and even got our Masters of Science in Management from American College with a thesis of cost savings due to outsourcing (Ashley P. is not on your side folks). And don’t get me started about EOM, McKinnsey came in got their millions and hovered around our servicing channels with stop watches selling management in the need for robotic human servicing and left. Leadership bought it hook line and sinker because McKinnsey used the special tagline “Data driven” “Data driven results” blah blah blah...Folks data isn’t everything. I bet data could’ve never predicted my father in law leaving State Farm and pulling all his policies at the ripe old age of 80 because your claims service s---ed that bad and pissed him off. I guarantee no model would’ve predicted a 50+ year customer leaving but it happened and why...because McKinnsey said you should only be on the phone this long or take this many contacts and days to complete the claim. They wowed you with their fancy PowerPoints and you were awed. This is the one thing I do agree with some posters on this board with, some people really probably need to go or at least classes offered to increase their knowledge of technology so moderately complex PowerPoints by some consultant don’t wow us into terrible decision making with last ramifications. People are not robots and never will be so stop the EOM crap! Now State Farm decide do you want to go back to being a differentiator or do you want to continue down this overcrowded cost leadership market space. If you choose the latter, I’m afraid you’ll lose.

The State Farm way... He who has the most connections stays.

Unfortunately, it’s been that way for the four decades I’ve worked for the Farm and probably won’t change.