Hostile work environment ... Sweat-shop style
Pros
The other consultants like myself, were very nice and I made some really good friends. We backed each other up. Opportunity to obtain licenses in all 50 states, and gain knowledge of property and casualty nuances per state.
Cons
Sweat-Shop work environment and managers that did not know product. Would ask question and get different answers on how to proceed (would call MetLife and they would say one thing and Sutherland would say another) Most of the time you didn't get the correct answer to your question. It made you never know what to do. There is no focus on the quality of work produced, only on number of sales. It was "sell those policies" "sell" "sell" "sell". Office morale is very low because of all of this. New hires are getting paid more than original hires in my opinion because that will keep people there longer and they will put up with more of this badgering environment. Majority of agents are on performance improvement plans, with the threat of termination every month. Forget getting a decent bonus - that won't happen because of what they call quality scores. Quality scores are rediculous. If you don't say something in the script you get points off; if you are silent too long, if you sneeze on the phone, if you do anything that can be picked on, your bonus is chopped away till there is none. I remember a managers saying they would give people a 10% raise to work on Sundays and said "Well, you were complaining that you wanted to make more money." I was thinking, "Yeah, we were talking about our rightful bonus for selling certain amounts of insurance." You could sell $70,000 in one month, but if your quality score wasn't good (according to them), your bonus was cut until you didn't get one. I have seen 2 people do quality checks and come up with totally different scores. How can that be used for a determination in something important as commission pay. If you sell insurance, you should be able to make decent commissions for your sales. No one can work like that. If there is bad weather (snow like this year), if you don't come in you get a point for not coming in (up to 6 points, you're terminated). I saw it take one person over 2 hours to get home in a snowstorm because they did not want to "get a point". Points are used to control and ways to threaten. "Well, if you do that, you'll get a point and you won't be eligible for any personal time off that is built up." I guess they figure it will keep people in line. You are constantly threatened with having to pay the company back for your licensing in all states ($6,200) if you leave in the first year. We started out with about 70 people and that dwindled down to about 30-40 in just over a month. People just started walking out literally. I really can't blame them; you can only put up with this for so long. Now it is mass training to get the number of consultants back up so they can make their numbers. Management is puzzled as to why the rate of attrition is so high. How could they not know with people just walking out and not coming back? That to me would mean people are not happy at all and changes needed to be made somewhere.
