Are you in a call center? A few years ago I worked for a major car insurance company. It was a sales position out of a call center. We handled calls mainly from in state but also from some surrounding states. It was hands down the worst job experience I've had. The micromanagement, culture of distrust, and general animosity between managers and employees were so strong that morale remained perpetually low and most new hires left within 18 months, usually much less. You know things are bad when your African American coworker refers to your office as a "plantation." The low morale and lack of trust between management and employees pervaded both the sales and claims departments, and I believe underwriting as well, though I knew fewer people there.

Anyway, over the years I have met several other people who have worked for major auto insurance companies and they all describe a similar experience and business model - call centers with salespeople on salary instead of commission (with "bonuses" for basically the same 5 high performers each month), claims workers who need to do OT just to keep up with their assigned workload but who are not paid for said OT, company policies discouraging workers from taking their earned leave, complete absence of a work-life balance, etc.

I sometimes read company reviews and still see the same stuff being regularly described. It seems strange that this would continue to be utilized as a business model since they spend so much time and money training employees only to have them quit before they can make them any real money. A number of my coworkers, for example, took their training and licenses elsewhere and found much better jobs working as agents in smaller offices for fewer hours, better pay, ability to build an actual business relationship with the customer, and an overall improvement in their quality of life. I left the insurance field altogether and got a job in civil service, where I've been promoted, I make more than double my previous salary, and actually have the respect and trust of my superiors, which took a while to get used to.

Is this something you see in your company or in any others you have worked for? Can you provide insight, from a managerial perspective, into why this business model is still used by major insurers?