Pros
- Really Like USI Gives Back Month in August. I know it is just a PR move for the company, but its awesome that they pay us to take a couple days to volunteer in the community. It's really Strengthened our relationships with local non-profits (some of who are clients of ours) - Bonus for all staff: all staff are bonus eligible -Good benefits - Reasonable Health and dental options, start out at 18 days PTO and get all stock market holidays plus an extra day slapped onto Labor day weekend (I see what you did there HR.. ;) good stuff). They offer an FSA, which has been awesome for me. You get access to a teledoc for when you have a little more than sniffles, but not quite cancer. EAP. - do a great job of conducting business within the company (i.e. I now use one of the wholesalers they acquired) - At least in my local office, the culture is great - people here complain the USI 401(k), but it gives you access to some mutual funds that would require multi-million dollar initial investments if they were done through your own stock broker. It might now have the exact investments you’d like (in terms of a vote with your dollars mindset), but I've been able to spread out among about 8 or 10 of the options and consistently beat the market since I've been here. As someone early in my carrier trying to be aggressive, it has been great. And then they offer a few bond based mutual funds and all the vanguard target funds as one would be nearing retirement. Not the best retirement plan ever, but not the worst. 50% match up to 6%, better than most of the other brokerages. - Even when I disagree with HR decisions, they aren't entirely absurd or borderline abusive like others in the industry. They're logical and reasonable decisions. They've at least kept their word to me regarding career progression. - At least in my office work/life balance is valued -Summit Awards and the cool prize thing - I'm in CA, so we don't lost PTO, but I know employees in other states are given the option of rolling unused PTO days they would lose to their 100% STD - USI HR won't pretend they are something they're not. Like I said before, they may make decisions that benefit the company that I don't agree with, but it's not like they smile at me and pretend they aren't doing it. They know who they are and they don't pretend to be something else. I frankly like that the company respects us enough to not treat us like children in that regard. I've worked for, and have interviewed with way too many brokerage's HR that talk to me like I'm an idiot, its hurtful.
Cons
-If your company has been acquired by them and you're paid what they consider 'above market rate', they will probably not be giving you yearly inflation adjustments initially, I was brought onto a legacy wells fargo office and have gotten salary adjustments exceeding inflation about every 18 months, but I know my peers haven't as WF pay scale was higher than the industry average. Basically I haven't lost ground and gained a little, not as much as jumping ship, but enough to make me not feel like I am getting completely boned. -HR can be a pain in the butt in terms of employee retention and minimizing turnover. - Sometimes I don't feel like management gives me the proper tools to succeed. This just may be because I'm in a weird part of the company in the MGA subsidiary, so I can't speak to the rest of the company - The operations staff is cut to bare bones in my office. IT's definitely causing problems in terms of day to day functioning