insurance specialist

agent

insurance agent

customer service representative

director

Horace Mann Insurance

The salary is not competitive, the company take advantage of the fact Springfield has few employers and low ball employees on pay.  If you ask about salary or tell them the industry standard rates they will laugh right in your face.

The benefits are terrible and will cost you a fortune each year lowering your salary, even for a healthy person by thousands per year. I hate to even think what it costs a family or people who are ill. Again they can get away with this because many employees have spouses who are state employees with good Healthcare or just don't realize that other companies care about employee health. The C Suite employees have a different Healthcare package. 

Speaking of C Suite employees, they are never in the office and do not live in the State of Illinois. During the Pamdemic they have continually told employees how important it is for employees to be in the office for the collaborative environment, but they are doing this on Zoom from their homes out of state.  They are disconnected from the Home Office and Home Office employees they can't even remember the time zone when ending meetings. When asked questions about the company vision they cannot give straight answers that convey their conceptual knowledge of the corporate goals.
All they care about keeping the stock price high enough that the mercenary executives they hire from the east coast that never come in the office can cash out their stock options. The short sighted quarter to quarter business decisions they make are endangering the future of the customers they claim to care about

They are making record profits year after year while continually cutting staff. Most employees are doing 2 to 3 jobs without pay raises. The raises do not keep pace with inflation or the minimum wage increases in the State of Illinois. Minimum wage went up $1 an hour which is $2000 a year last year, my cost of living increase was roughly 10% of that. 

There are numerous employees that have worked there 30 to 50 years which on first glance seems great, but in reality you have a bunch of later middle age and elderly people in poor health (remember the insurance covers little with large out of pocket costs most employees can't afford to visit a doctor) who cannot afford to retire. Seeing old women hobbling around at work who in 50 years of employment have not even cracked $60,000 a year does not warm the heart.

Since so many employees have worked here since high school they have no other job experience.  They think everything that  Horace Mann does wrong is normal because they have no other experience. Many employees do not have college educations or advanced degrees and are jealous and condescending of new educated employees.  Middle management is resistant to change and will halt any changes that are beyond their comprehension. The only innovation is forced by regulatory requirements they refuse to invest in systems and processes for the future. 

When purchasing new systems they purchase the cheapest option always which in the end costs them 3 times as much as buying what they truly need would have. They refuse to use standards and want to customize all software purchases to their needs but they do not have the employees with the skills to accomplish this nor do they want to pay to employee the people with the necessary skillset. They have a major software purchase within the last 2 years that has languished without progress because they purchased the cheapest option and are unable to hire an experienced developer to customize it because the wages and benefits are competitive. The project is a failure and a colossal waste of money.

I actually worked through an independent agency contracted with Horace Mann and their partner companies.  It was a pleasant atmosphere, particularly since my main responsibilities were doing presentations for school personnel which I was already accustomed to as I had done their employee benefits presentations for many years in the past.  The agency supplied a computer and printer and I ran most quotes and applications from home and then returned to school sites to finalize.  I enjoyed that.  

The General Agent recruited me when he knew I was ready to retire from the school district.  I accepted his offer with the understanding that I would only work part time.  Over the course of the next year, I came to realize that in order to perform to my own expectations (not his), I really needed to work full time in order to learn and remain fluent or familiar with all products and ever changing homeowners insurance in South Florida.  Being the perfectionist that I am who was raised by two successful insurance agent parents, I felt I was not willing to compromise my reputation by not putting in the time.  I simply felt being the best at what I was hired to do would require many more hours than I was prepared to give up at the time.  I had just left an extremely stressful job with many responsibilities and had begun to be the primary care giver for my homebound mother-in-law who was rapidly declining and since passed away.   Therefore, I resigned before the beginning of the next school year in order to free up my position and allow him to begin his search for someone else.  

I am approving the rating of the CEO because I do not know him but strongly believe the company would not have him in that position if he was not doing a good job.

It's difficult to pinpoint how ridiculous management is at HM. If a client or agent requests to speak to a manager, a manager doesn't take it. It gets passed off to a Service rep 2 or a Team Lead. That being said, they eliminated the Team Lead position. So if youre good in your role, you'll be passed the most difficult of tasks without the pay. 

Communication between departments is almost nonexistent, to the point where their own underwriting department wasn't aware that they were writing certain lines of businesses in the state until the processing department advised they could after a rejection they sent. Similar things happened between the service department and sales.

Agents are placed on a pedestal and typically get what they want if they're mean enough about it-regardless of what it is. Again, they have to yell at an entry level rep before it gets passed off as a "sensitive caller" template. Where management will eventually tell them they can get what they want but please be nice about it. 

The idea of Horace Mann is wonderful. I loved providing for educators at every turn. But the mismanagement of the contact center is asinine. If you are passionate about helping educators, joining HM in any other department will be vastly different results in work/life quality, happiness on the job, and desire to remain an employee. Stay away from the contact center. Upper leadership typically advises supervisors to find reasons to terminate employees to cut costs because, "they're focusing too much on employees."

This position could be so much better if they allowed for department specialization within the contact center.  Lots more opportunities at home office than there are in the satellite locations.  Part of employee scoring is based on customer surveys about the company not the individual they spoke with.  

Schedules based on performance (including survey responses) but little to no communication from management about when shift bids will occur or when new schedules will take effect ("you'll get an email later" is a standard answer for everything you ask) with no regard to people who need to make family arrangements. 

Compensation definitely not in line with the amount of work and skills you are expected to master. No such thing as taking an unpaid day when needed to save your vacation days, if you don't use your PTO it counts as an occurrence against you.  Even though they pay on the current schedule, OT and holidays take a month to be paid out.

Expectation is that you will purchase your own laptop bag for the company computer (not reimbursed) and make yourself available to work from home during inclimate weather... but working from home is not an option any other time.

I would love to give higher scores because of some of the employees but that wouldn't be fair to people who are looking for info on the position as a whole.

HM gets you onboard with misleading information about job description and advancement. The only way to move up in this company is to be dating, related to someone or friends with someone. They do not promote based on performance, skills, experience or time with the company. The most drama filled, high school clique, cool kids environment I have ever encountered. Team leads and managers are ill equipped and ill informed. They have issues with scheduling and almost impossible to take PTO. They give you a ton of PTO but good luck scheduling it and you get punished if it is not planned and you call in sick. CEO/President is grossly overpaid and so far removed from the daily operations. They treat their agents that the call center supports poorly and offer a week of poor training. Their QA for calls is unbelievable! It is impossible to score high or even a 100%. Most of QA is subjective to the QA scoring the call, it is basically their opinion and so much grey. There is so much in QA that is asinine and does not belong in QA scoring. I have worked in 4 other major call centers and have never seen a QA this convoluted and lengthy. If you want to be chained to your desk, constantly messaged when you take more than 2 minutes on a call or more than 30 seconds in after call or all of your breaks for bathroom or a drink questioned, please be my guest. However I advise you run far and fast!

This company is no different from any other "call center" or "customer service" job. In the beginning, you will be told how everyone in higher positions started where you are and you can some day move up within the company. This turned out to be a lie as several qualified employees have been looked over for positions they deserved without valid reasoning. Instead, the fate of their employees lies in the hands of robotic managers who do not offer any ounce of support, but instead look for reasons to terminate employees who make them look bad statistically. 

The company has had a high turnover rate due to people not feeling valued, those in positions to train are not even experts in the training material themselves, honestly, it is a complete joke. A lot of "blind leading the blind", so as long as you're good at sounding like you know what you're talking about, you'll succeed here. 

Pay does not equal the amount of work they will lay on you. If starting out entry level or in customer service, you'll likely be assigned the most tasks with the least amount of pay, and barely any assistance after completing training. 

It sucks, because this was my "dream job" when I first started, but after several management changes and abuse of authority, the work environment has shown to be unsupportive, unorganized and unethical. 

After working at this company over 2 years, the biggest takeaway is that the company gives off a very authoritarian vibe. Like most jobs, in the beginning there is a lot of positivity and you are being groomed to believe you are providing a great service to educators. But the reality of the job is a lot of work using inefficient systems and processes and pressure to do that work as quickly as possible (which in the end creates more problems, chaos and ultimately unhappy customers). On top of that, they have a QA department that is extremely critical. If you complain or provide any pushback, you will be retaliated against and or blacklisted. 

They reward loyalty but not competence which means that many people that get promoted are just not very good leaders nor do they really understand customer service. Leadership knows this but turns a blind eye to it and just parrots the company line at every turn. They want good soldiers not good employees. Despite whatever they may say, this results in a very negative work environment because you get very little work satisfaction because how you are graded is far more about how fast you work as opposed to how well you work. 

My advice, look elsewhere for work. The culture at this company is toxic to your well-being.

I wasted over 20 years of my life giving everything I had to this company! I did meet many wonderful people but this company could care less about long term employees.  I could easily name over 15 former employees in the same boat.  The HR personnel is a joke, produce lies, and unfulfilled promises are a normal business practice.  Customer service reps are subjected to performance measures out of their control.  An example is the NPS (net promoter score) goal.  Even if a customer calls in to complain about something the service rep who answered the phone had no control of (a poor claim experience is common), the rep answering the phone is accountable for whatever the customer has an issue for.  If the customer leaves a negative survey, the poor service rep that had to take the call is responsible.  They can have their work shift adjusted or they can even be terminated for poor performance due to something out of their control.  If you do question this unethical practice, you will become a target and the bad got for questioning 'leadership'.  I believe it led to my release because if I listed the actu reason I was given for my release, you would laugh and the joke!  I know I sound digruntled but stay away from this place!!!

I have worked for Horace Mann for over a year and all the time I get customer's complaining about why we are not more up to date with our technology. For example, customer's still have to call on the phone to change their payment method because we don't offer them an option to do it online. You go to schools and hold events to get meetings with prospective clients, but even if they decide to do business with Horace Mann all it takes is them having one bad experience with a customer service/claims representative and they are wanting to cancel and you lose a majority of the money/renewal that you made from that piece of business. And what they don't tell you is during the summer when school is out your business drops off a lot! And with the pay being straight commission you aren't hardly making money during the summer months! Also, the events that you are able to get lined up at schools are paid for out of your own pocket. So, you need to make a minimum of a couple of sales off of those leads just to come out even. Your commission along with your bonuses keeps going down each year, which doesn't leave a lot of incentive to stay long term. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
I struggle to come up with one. Free water and ice at the machine

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Being expected to do a job with zero training. No expectations were set. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very poor. The office in north Dallas was mostly empty, like a graveyard of old broken office chairs and unused computer desks. Culture is unfriendly and unengaging. Company paid no respect to their employees they hired to work remotely, then decided to make them come in the office every day. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
2+ hour drive there. 2+ hour drive back. All meetings were held virtually, despite most of the people being in the same building. Arbitrary rules for entering the building were very strict, I've never felt policed more about parking and being let into the building, despite there being less than 60 workers. Most of the covered parking goes unused for some reason, restricted to whomever they feel like. I had co-workers in my same position who would get covered parking.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Insurance specialist 9 salaries reported	$73,889 per year
Agent 3 salaries reported	$105,833 per year
Insurance agent 5 salaries reported	$72,200 per year
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour
Director 4 salaries reported	$105,750 per year

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