The Standard reviews

Incompetent managers, too many managers, little hope of better managers. Our management is, for the most part, not from the retirement industry and, therefore, does not know how to be proactive enough in the basic management/re-organization of the division. None of our floor managers are up to date enough in the systems or the legal aspects of the business to be able to actually do their jobs.

Family and friends are easily hired ( yes I meant this to be both a Pro and a Con) Despite the new Senior Management leadership in SRS stating a major focus is to put in place tighter controls and backing this with extensive process control and mapping efforts- with some sucess- there seems to be huge inertia to NOT completely embrace this. There remains huge inertia from upper-mid management and lower against trying to get numerous systems, procedures and financial reporting under tight control. It appears to be a combination of 'my systems' weren't flagged during a audit, or sure it's broke but it's consistent in how it is broke or in some cases it's the old 'I push a button and have no idea if the numbers coming out make sense or not, and I don't care'. Some amount of the above is going to take place in every company but I have seen enough - and been around long enough- to know it's too pervasive at The Standard for my comfort level. And maybe more importantly, we are putting in extensive effort and resources by Senior Management direction to improve processes, this is the time to truely and openly clean up systems, procedures and reporting. If you don't have time to do something right the first time, when will you have time to do it a second time? I spent so much time on the above two paragraphs because I have felt borderline ethically compromised on several occasions. Not a great feeling and even worse when upper management is indifferent to your concerns. There definately is an above average amount of favortism in areas, but not completely stagnating. I know pay is below average ( even my boss told me that) and benefits are weaker then what I have had elsewhere. Many of our systems and capabilities are archaic and almost 'criminally' hamper the ability to make any level of improvement simply or easily. Need to update something worded incorrectly on a page of the website, you get back something like not enough IT resources to do it. Really? need to change one significant word on a web page and The com[pany doesn't have the resources to do that? SO instead we risk a client reding something and getting the wrong impression, or actually the right impression that we incorrectly gave them.