claims representative

underwriter

software engineer

intern

business analyst

Auto-Owners Insurance

The work environment is a supportive and positive one. Associates are generally happy to share their knowledge when asked, and direct managers have a keen interest in helping associates grow and improve and pursue their personal goals within the company.

The cafeteria prepares good food for a reasonable price, making it a natural and comfortable place to socialize during lunch with colleagues when people are in the office.

The Lansing campus has a Hub space where associates can gather independent of their team to socialize when they work in the office, though the space is likely to be under much more competition in the future when associates are required to come in more frequently. The Hub periodically hosts fun events such as bake-offs to attempt to draw people into the office more.

New hires are offered plenty of hardware to help them set up a remote workplace at home, including a laptop, additional monitors, and a docking station, maybe plus some other stuff as needed. Tech support is good at responding in a timely manner if you are experiencing tech issues.

However, upper management is difficult to appease when it comes to arrival times and remote working. If an associate finds themselves on "the list" from having too many tardies, it is a long and grueling process to find redemption in the eyes of upper management. You will be subjected to 6 months or more of strict monitoring, in some combination of key fob log tracking and physical observation, and you will need a manager willing to strongly and persistently advocate in your favor to find your way off "the list" without any lingering consequences. This provides an incentive to stay away from the office, since even minor traffic delays causing minor tardies (<1 minute late) can lead to stressful monitoring for prolonged periods of time if it occurs too often. Given the recent construction occurring in the immediate area around the Lansing campus, this can be a non-trivial risk if you don't plan accordingly.

Upper management is also starting to roll back the work-from-home program under the rationale that more people in the office will foster greater team-building and communication. However, many teams are spread out across several campuses. Some associates who once would go meet their team once a month will soon be required to go in multiple times a week, at which point they're far more likely to stay near home and cease visiting their team altogether. This change risks undermining its own goals with some teams, and frustrating many associates who are accustomed to having much more liberty to engage in remote working.

The remote work policy change is unlikely to meaningfully affect new associates who aren't already accustomed to 95% remote work, but upper management has (anecdotally) demonstrated a willingness to change policy with little to no warning, and not in a way which favors the associate. I would advise that new hires don't take policy for granted for the next year or so, as upper management seems to be in the midst of a policy rework in areas concerning tardiness, remote work, and consequences for associates who find themselves in trouble in the eyes of upper management.

Overall, I like the work I do and the people I work with. I intend to stick around for a while. I'm learning and growing and I can see the effects of what I do. But I don't find myself inspired by the higher-ups, and occasionally find myself grumbling about their choices.

Interned and worked for Auto Owners for a combined ~5 years. The technologies you get to work with in IT are usually old, and the skills don’t transfer all that well to other jobs in the industry. Some changes are being made, but most of the code you will touch day-to-day are huge, monolith projects full of spaghetti code with small updates made over the course of 10+ years by a lot of new college hires. Very little automated testing too. 

The company likes to say they’re going agile, but in practice only a few teams have true agile practices, the rest are waterfall. If you want your team to be agile you need buy-in from all management and your coworkers and the BA/QA team and getting all of them on board is a tough feat. Upper management claims to want faster delivery to production, but won’t prescribe an agile solution to middle management so nothing has changed. 

With the pandemic they were forced to allow everyone to WFH and in my experience productivity soared as I wasn’t getting pulled into random conversations every 10 minutes plus the time saved on commuting was great. Post-pandemic they plan to go to a hybrid model where you go in a certain amount of time. They claim to offer “100% WFH” for some positions, but still require you to come into the office 1 day/month and you’ll also be required to come in for your annual review. It was disappointing to hear this was the plan. 

There’s no true CI/CD that’s used (at least in my experience) and some of this goes back to the lack of agile, but has a lot to do with a culture of “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. This mindset needs to be actively quashed if AO wants to keep up in the 21st century. Lots of clunky, internally built tools that slow your workflow down. 

They provide lots of access to training and certs if you need them. Continuous learning is encouraged which is great, and I feel not enough associates take advantage of it. 

They have good benefits for the folks on the business side, but from an IT/software perspective they’re average. Lots of software jobs offer similar or better benefits except for the pension, which you can make up for by leaving and increasing your salary by 50% in most cases. 

On the topic of salary, they severely underpay for the software/IT industry. Average for the country is somewhere around 100k/yr and they usually start you off around 60k. The explanation for this is that the home office location is in a low cost of living area, but with the availability of truly remote jobs from other companies, it’s going to become a very poor excuse and they aren’t going to be able to compete. Raises are also peanuts, barely enough to keep up with inflation. You also can’t ask for a raise, in my experience. You’re basically told “we can talk about it at your review”. 

The culture is great, coworkers are nice, an management was pretty hands-off, but very available in my experience. I have heard that management can vary drastically though, so YMMV. 

I started here right out of college and within just a few months saw how we really do care about our people. Not only the associates, but the policyholders, claimants and agents that represent us. It's very rewarding to be a part of an industry where we get to put peoples lives back together. No matter the incident, big or small, that person had to deal with a negative event and we get to be a light of sunshine for them when things are going bad. It puts things into perspective.

Working here has been a blessing for me. I've been here for 19 years and have had 10 different positions. I've been able to continue my education by enrolling in insurance related classes, I've been able to travel to various branches throughout our 26 operating states as well as attend conferences, I've met some of my best friends and I know the work I do has a direct impact on our bottom line as well as helping people in their lives.

For the most part, we have very good, caring management, but there are always those that shouldn't be in a managerial role. It just takes time to figure that out. Often associate/manager issues are two sided and it can go both ways with the associate being the issue as well. I haven't loved all my past managers, but I know that things will change because they always do.

Our benefits are amazing, including the pension plan which you're vested in after five years of employment. We have separate vacation, sick and personal time, which I like because I can plan for my vacation time while still allowing me to have sick time to use when I'm actually sick! The vacation and sick time both roll over from year to year which is another bonus. There are so many good benefits to working here, but the bottom line is if you work hard you'll be rewarded for it.

You can work overtime or work the basic hours and it will not affect your raise.  When they do the reviews they put your skills into categories and rank how well you do on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being exceeds expectations. They will rarely give you what they call exceeds expectations and even though I would get at least 5 categories of exceeds expectations my yearly raises were only 1 to 2 percent of my salary.  I worked a ton of overtime and volunteered for everything just to get these 5 stars.  I was told by one manager that I was capped out on raises and providing me a new growth opportunity is my reward, this was in my 18th year.. I took that growth opportunity and recently a recruiter found me so I left AO.  The schedule is not flexible you have to pick a schedule and stick to it. There are some work from home options. AO is a great company to start out with, you have to wait 5 years to be vested, meaning allowed to collect some type of pension. AO is perfect for college graduates since they will train you.. They also seem to promote you quickly in the first 5 years but then when you have reached all levels but one you have to wait around 12 to 15 years for the next promotion.  This has been a pattern for some reason, I have no idea why. The other good news is that it is impossible to get fired. I saw people sleeping at their desks. So you can be lazy or work hard that's up to you. If you are ambitious and self motivated you may be frustrated and you can make quite a bit more money working somewhere else or remotely. I waited a long time to figure that out. Management is hit and miss. I have had great managers and not so great managers and I have had about 11 managers in my 19 years.

If you like being in a very structured environment where you are told WHEN to breathe, when to go to lunch, when to urinate, then this place is for you. Because I wasn't 12 years old and could think for myself, I ran QUICKLY.

Had an instance where I was told, by a reliable person, a 4yr degree was required for transfers (most transfers are lateral moves). Someone above THAT person told me differently, went back to original person, who in turn, came back and nailed ME claiming said person never told me that.

What are we? 6th graders?

If you are in a department that deals with agents and your agents disagree with you and ask to speak with YOUR supervisor, GUESS WHAT? Your SUPERVISOR won't back you and WILL bow down to the agent even if you are following AO's policies!

You will find different rules for different departments. Some departments can make up their missed time while others can't. Some departments will pay you while you are at doctors appointments (and then write you up for the time you missed), other departments won't (and still write you up).

And, don't be late. At the time I was there, the doors are LOCKED at the top of the hour. If you are even a MINUTE late, you sign in with security and your supervisor will be notified.

IMO, an employer will get back what the give. I never volunteered for overtime and as soon as 5p hit, I was OUT the door.

Your salary is squat, but the benefits I had were AMAZING. It just wasn't worth the headache, the backstabbing, drama, micro-management outrageousness.

Run. There IS better out there.

AO pays about $10k less a year than other local insurance companies for any job. Entry level employees are looked down upon if they don’t have degrees. Even after the pandemic there are no positions that are 100% remote, I guess they need to justify that big new building somehow. They are hemorrhaging people and it will continue as long as they stay rooted in their archaic values. Problem employees with a lot of time at the company get promoted even if they don’t deserve the position.  They see everyone as easily replaceable and do not value the individual. Their new tagline is “simple human sense” but unfortunately they don’t take care of the humans who hold up their company. Bill reps and claims center reps are told if they have a degree they are overqualified for those jobs, yet these are foundational roles in the company. I was once told that a friend of mine who was hired would move up quickly since he is a man. As soon as your FMLA expires you will be at risk for being fired. Minimal parental leave for parents. A company this size, with billions in surplus should be able to afford giving new parents months off. No help paying for college. If you come in with a degree they’ll pay you more because they assume you have debt. If you are fortunate enough to not need their health insurance then you MIGHT be able to get up to $2000 a year paid toward your student loans. But if you are paying cash for school and avoiding loans you are SOL. If you are looking for a good ole boys club with minimal flexibility and low pay, this is the place for you. 

Worked there for over 10 years, middle management are more like puppets.  They prey on new college graduates because they are naïve to how the company functions.  The technology is far from up to date.  The software/website is constantly down, get used to apologizing to agents.  NOTHING is consistent at this company, every line of business is different (huge complaint from agents, yet they fail to fix it - you're fighting a losing battle to try to help get it consistent).  The company lives in old style ways, its not the 50s anymore.  Many good employees with over 10 years experience have left the company when they are tired of fighting to help advance the company and getting no where.  They do not live up to their morals/values.  Very rare to get a great manager within the company.  Starting pay is around 34K if you have at least a 4 year degree.  There is way too many "cons" to list.  The only regret I have is I didn't leave the company sooner when my co-workers did.

The only good points to the company are, most positions are mainly M-F 8-4:30, incentive bonuses - if its a good year (which is sprinkled throughout the year to get you to stay), typical health benefits most companies have.  AO writes in 26 states, so there is a rare opportunity to move to a different state.  They recently elected to outsource the 401K and now act as though its a privilege that they pay for the outsourcing (must be approved annually).

AO does not have competitive pay, though they do have good benefits and offer a pension. Experiences vary depending on the division an associate lands in. Some departments are excellent while others lack in various ways. The company does not exist on the front end of "leading the charge" in any fashion. They wait for other companies to begin trends, wait until the trend has been proven successful, then starts developing a strategy to include the trend in their business practices. It is a frustrating practice.
While they brag about their practice of promoting from within, AO tends to only promote people: 1. if they have proven themselves to be beneficial to the company's bottom line, 2. if they are a problem. Often, promotions happen because of 2. problem people (which is ironic considering their old slogan) are promoted to other departments where they cannot do further damage to the company's bottom line. Rarely if ever is an employee fired.
Good forward-thinking employees who want to help change the company for the better are never promoted. They are seen as too useful by their departments and will be held in their position until the associate gets frustrated and leaves, or has given up and proves to no longer be useful.
This is not a company for the bright and optimistic. This is a company for the adequate; people who want a job they can get into and retain for 20+ years without working too hard. People who want to live on the leading edge need not apply.

A typical day at work is met with a lot of work if you are fully trained and limited work if you are not.  Management is approachable but don't have big expectations.  The culture is struggling because of turnover which was happening before the great resignation.  Training is thorough and you are set up to be successful in your role.  If you are struggling, a lot of effort is put in to help you succeed.  Sometimes this means that people that are toxic or not invested stay with the company longer than the team would want.  The most enjoyable part of working here is the bonus days.  The hardest part of working here is not everyone pulls their weight and the turnover with a lot of new people means the longer you work here the harder you will work and your pay does not drastically increase but trickles up slowly and does not keep up with inflation. 

From my first day I was given a great deal of responsibility in controlling the personal success of my internship. Everyday I would be in control of my own claims dealing from the call (either receiving calls from claimants or making calls to insured and/or claimants), to issuing payments dealing with thousands of dollars of damage. I learned a lot about dealing with people from a business standpoint, from people who expect a great deal of professionalism to people who are trying to pull a scam on the organization as a whole. I had the pleasure of dealing with a very successful branch manager and was able to develop a working relationship with him. I also had the pleasure of speaking with and getting to know a highly successful regional vice president. My co-workers were very helpful and I was immediately welcomed into the working force. The hardest part of the job was dealing with different situations everyday and not knowing how people would respond to what I was telling them. This was also the most enjoyable part of my job because I was able to formulate new solutions multiple times per day.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Claims representative 106 salaries reported	$66,788 per year
Underwriter 34 salaries reported	$67,585 per year
Software engineer 6 salaries reported	$70,767 per year
Intern 46 salaries reported	$17.80 per hour
Business analyst 17 salaries reported	$57,995 per year

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