Q&A With Amica Mutual Employees

In my 20 years at Amica I’ve never been on anything resembling a team outing, other than the handful of times we all exit the building for a fire drill.

What team outings?

Cheap and almost nonexistent.

Paid vacation, paid sick time, health insurance, 401k and a pension.

401k, pension, medical, educational funding.

Leaving to go home.

I was hoping to learn more about insurance. I did, but at a price to my health and with no hope for career advancement.

Beige. Bland. Conservative. If elevator music became an insurance company, it would be Amica.

Tense with gallows humor (aside from management).

All over the board. Some are fantastic, witty and super hard working who will volunteer to help out when needed. Then there are other employees who spend their day on their cell phones (at their desk) scrolling through Facebook. Some managers are amazing coaches who love to see their employees grow and thrive. Other managers, well, may have good technical skills but have no people skills. There’s a little bit of everything.

Some were good people, some were evil incarnate.

Over the past few years Amica desperately wanted to grow (increase its policy count). Quality of the new business plummeted (for instance lots of minimum limit auto policies were written) and staffing was not increased to properly service the (significant) uptick in claims. Customer service suffered as did employee morale.

They are trying to attract yuppies to purchase policies due to an aging policyholder base, but are having problems with poor underwriting as reps try to generate enough revenue to keep their jobs.

Staff the claims & sales offices appropriately. We have been chronically understaffed. For years. Amica’s competitors are poaching Amica employees (with better pay). If you keep offering low pay the best job candidates are going to go elsewhere. Sending out quarterly emails to the employees thanking us for the hard work/working weekends/working catastrophe duty/maintaining the JD Power award doesn’t really cut it.

Better oversight of branches by Corporate, because the local mgrs are experts at covering for themselves.

He’s a nice guy. But he really has no idea what the ‘first-line’ customer service employees deal with every day.

The senior employees think he is too much a numbers man and has no understanding of what is important for morale. The new employees are generally clueless sycophants.

If you like working nights and weekends with no OT pay then it’s great.

Great for the management, horrible for the reps.

It’s ok, you start out with two weeks. It can be difficult to get time off during the summer/Thanksgiving/Christmas if your co-workers also want it off.

If you take vacation, you will come back buried in work and regret the vacation.

If you’re willing to work hard and keep a positive attitude you will do well at Amica. You’ll do even better if you’re willing to relocate to another Amica office.

Phony, aggressive, shallow.

Closing a file.

I grew as an administrator, and learned the type of environment to avoid in the future.

There’s enough work/phone calls/emails to keep you busy, not a lot of time to talk to your co-workers.

Horrible in Claims, not much better in service.

Employees are reviewed annually. Raises are typically 2-3%

Once a year and barely enough to keep up with inflation. They spend money on benefits and shortchange employees on pay.

Sometimes I don’t mind it. Other times I dread going to work.

The reps had some comeraderie, but it was a pressure-cooker otherwise of office politics, malfunctioning systems, and constant changes.

Not difficult at all unless you are out of town on CAT duty.

What social life?

At Amica you always have a few pages of overdue activities.

Challenged every day not to run away screaming.

It would have been nice to know that you are oftentimes assigned a roommate when you travel.

That you will be run ragged and have no chance of advancement in certain positions based on merit. All promotion is based on who likes you.

It could be better. Most people I know are counting down to their retirement.

The management is constantly pretending and couching dissent or criticism, as mere “negativity” even when employees have valid points that bear addressing, especially from long-term employees. Morale is not good at all, unless you are one of the boss’s pets, and they do play favorites.

Most of the diversity is among the customer service level employees. Not as much on the executive level.

They try for racial diversity, but as far as gender, the upper mgmt of the company is mostly male.

We all sit on the floor in smaller cubicles. It can be difficult to hear what a customer is saying on the phone when people all around you are talking.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Cubicles for reps, private offices for mgmt.

Reimbursement (up to $800 annually) for gym memberships. Jeans on Fridays. Free coffee and tea.

Pension program, which is rare anymore.

Learn all you can about the company before your interview. Have some good stories on how you delivered excellent customer service at a prior job.

Appearance over substance and kissing up. Don’t appear to know more than the management. I saw them turn away a candidate that had as much knowledge as the Claims Manager.

Depends on the job. Most involve several rounds of interviews.

Usually two interviews prior to hiring.