This is a serious question, can State Farm survive what's happening to it right now without losing all of its best employees?
And once it loses all of the good employees can the company survive, period?
One thing those on top keep forgetting is that employees are the ones who built this company. without us, State Farm wouldn't exist.
My opinion: Chairman's Council, Legal and Investment departments so far, unscathed. HR, Claims, IT, Ad Servc, Bank. Op Ctrs, parts of Agency and Mrktng and customers are all paying the price of poor executive decisions and years of empire building. I'm sure I missed other departments already "impacted". Just look at who is out, this is a total age discrimination case. Even with all these changes, State Farm is definitely at risk of staying afloat. How long before they go after the independent agent contracts? SF is becoming a huge call center and a poor one at that. No accountability, now "leaders" with no knowledge nor experience. CEO if left in power, will continue this discrimination for at least 3 more years. Customer service and even internal service continues to decline. As they continue this brush fire of 50+ employees, retention will take big hits, why would you keep your policies and accounts with a now unethical company. So sad to see such a great company declining bc the CEO worships the almighty dollar. No doubt changes were needed, should have started with the executives making the poor decisions which brought the company to this point. How the company has been able to get away with not reporting this massive layoff to government officials is beyond my imagination. This impacts the entire US and there will be a ripple effect. This is not simply cutting the fat, they are cutting seasoned employees and changing department names and job requirements then posting the jobs of the people they just kicked to the curb. Hiring much younger and less expensive employees. Prepare agents, your contracts are being reviewed by floors of Corporate lawyers and lawyers retained throughout the US.
I know two departments that have not been affected by cuts: Executive (no dead weight there, no sir) and Investments (main source of profit).
I have to believe that they don’t think the good ones are or will leave. Otherwise they would curtail this mass chopping of multiple departments to try and stabilize. At this point are there any departments that have not been impacted?
The technology in the future will surpass the value proposition that SF has rested on for the past few years. The differentiating factor between when a customer buys a Lemonade or SF will fall solely on customer experience, and our ability to solve their issue to their satisfaction. No longer can we rely on our underwriting practices, and actuarial models to make us competitive in the market. That means, we have to offer amazing services, friendly encounters, and resolve issues asap... When you demoralize the company by the mass amount of devaluation of the their most critical asset.. IE the employees, it makes it hard to achieve those goals. Maybe a bean counter and a numbers board is not the right person to be put in charge of a company that is driven by sales, and service.
What makes you think Tipsturd cares how great SF is. He's using the rule of 70. If you can get it right 70% of the time and save on operating cists then do it. Why bother with getting it right 90% when 70% will do. Turn over employees every 10 years. The joke is on the Tipsturd in 10 years the higher paid employees by attrition will be gone anyways. He didn't have to rip the company apart.
This is Michael Lloyd Tipsturd speaking. You may refer to me as Lord Michael or simply your majesty. Let me begin by assuring all of you little people that as far as you know you will survive. Unless you are over 50. I have instructed all of my little nazis to start writing you up for future terminations. I don't worry about breaking the law for I am the Lord of Winterfell. Minions down om your knees for your golden showers.
The Farm will survive, but it will be unrecognizable. It will be merely another low-rent operation providing mediocre service for a cheap premium to customers who will stay with us 6 to 18 months instead of 12 to 26 years. Supposedly we will eventually return to an operating profit, but that could be a myth if we continue selling s--t service.
Once a premium brand whose customers will willing to pay a slightly higher rates for the best customer service along with fairest and fast claims in the Industry. That niche is gone now since SF decided to be like the rest. So once in a marketing sweet spot to cherry pick the best customers is now gone. So can SF ever compete on cost alone, I don't think so. Should have been content with what they had going, minor changes would have worked.
SF will survive but as a completely different company. One that lacks the integrity and family feel it used to have. I agree business decisions had to be made. But the way they are being executed is ruthless.
Can you survive? Sure! The business model has changed, and there will be far fewer employees needed do to technology advances, but people will continue to require insurance, but they will buy it at the best value/ lowest price point and that is not State Farm at this time.
Playing devils advocate and stealing from "The Princess Bride", the easiest way to replace the Dread Captain Roberts is to fire the crew and hire a new one. That way, the new people don't know any different. In our case, if you get rid of all the experienced people, the new employees won't have an institutional memory of what we were before, or the way we used to take care of our customers. There is also the side benefit of cutting payroll and benefits costs.
State Farm has become a company that is ruled and run by numbers. They no longer see a value in good customer service, solid relations with other companies that provide the repairs to vehicles and homes or happy employees make better employees. Just focus on metrics and nothing else. Customers are not concerned with metrics so they will no longer see value in State Farm and will leave. The compAny will survive but it will never be great like it once was.