customer service representative

actuary

analyst

director

business analyst

If I had to summarize with one word or phrase to those seeking employment, still working there, or wanting to contract with Via Benefits, I would say: "Run!"

One interesting fact about this toxic environment: When I quit, I LOST 5 LBS! I did nothing different except quit. In fact, I hadn't been to the gym in two weeks AND had been eating poorly! Just let that sink in.

There are three major reasons why you should have nothing to do with this company:

1-The company is VERY money focused.
2-The company doesn't care about their employees.
3-The company doesn't care about their customers.

Now a little more detail:

The company's training is horrendous. The company has several different locations and training is inconsistent throughout. I felt as though the different locations might as well have been different companies for how different the training/policies & procedures were. 
Employees inadvertently give out wrong information or cause customers to lose funding permanently, etc.
A customer could call into Via Benefits, ask a question, and get about 4 different answers. The sad thing about employees giving out wrong information is that there's a very poor system in place for punishment; it is essentially left up to the supervisor to punish the agent. 

There is such poor communication from management. One supervisor would say this and another supervisor would say that. An example is policy changes. Haha, this one is honestly such a joke. Policy changes happened last minute constantly.
It doesn't matter how big the change is, they will do it when they wish. Change the bonus structure? and it's going to affect you negatively? Well, that's going into effect next month.  There have even been times when there were policies put into place RETROACTIVELY! 
Sometimes we found out about policies through an IM chat, or just because a coworker just happened to hear it in passing. This was incredibly unprofessional. This company doesn't value their employees at all and this is just one of those many ways.

There is ZERO sense of teamwork and comradery. It is essentially everyone for themselves. As long as you are churning out  applications, you've accomplished the goal. Often, we would have no clue what the other departments did, even though what they did affected us directly and visa versa; yet there was often a policy change in one department that the other had no idea about.

There is really nowhere to provide feedback. If you have a great idea that doesn't line up with managements ideas, good luck. Assuming your supervisor even passes it along and it keeps going up the chain like it should, it will be tossed on the back burner for later. Or more like put in a box, and thrown in the basement. The sad thing is I have heard some awesome
ideas from employees that should have been implemented years ago. No company will ever go anywhere as long as it never listens to its employees. Eventually no one will have anything to say, and the company will at some point wonder where it when wrong and hopefully realize where they could have looked for ideas.

Some other random things include things such as how complicated/inaccurate the website is. It doesn't have disclaimers that it should, such as "this medigap policy may be subject to underwriting." Considering the general age group that is being dealt with, I am surprised the website hasn't been simplified. Even I found it complicated.

The system the company uses is old and outdated in my opinion. It is in need of constant updates. The company is putting band-aids on something that should have been replaced a decade ago. The system freezes, stops working, and sometimes even giving out false information.

Finally, the company doesn't allow any references for employees. So good luck if you have been there for years and want to leave.

If you are still working there and are reading this, don't make the same mistake I did and waste your life there.

I definitely didn't cover everything but all I can end with is: "Run!"

Flexible office structure and relatively easy to work from home. Benefits are decent enough and one of the few companies that still has both pension and 401k plans. Investments department full of some very intelligent people you can learn from and has a relatively close-knit family culture who will accept you if you are normal enough and well-adjusted.

Extreme warning to avoid this company if you have a disability. Made full disclosure of disabilities (in my case, primarily autism) and management did not take it seriously. If you have a mental disability, the company will work hard to keep it hidden and treat it as a personal issue, all but telling you to leave your autism at home because it's interfering with the workplace. 

Will refuse all reasonable accommodations and outright tell you that you should be able to figure out something vague like everyone else or they would not have hired you in the first place, even something as simple as "clear and explicit directions." Refuse option to do an internal transfer to a position that would would be better suited to your skillset where you can perform better and provide value. Employees will also make it certain that there is a threshold for questions that are beneath them, especially senior employees which discourages new employees to ask them in the first place.

They will keep disability hidden from everyone else so that co-workers can keep berating you when the disabilities get in the way and give you negative feedback (again, all accommodations refused and employees are not informed that you are disabled). Co-workers who do not like you will intentionally give misguided instructions and risk sabotaging a client relationship so they can blame you for doing something incorrectly or when you do something exactly word-for-word, you didn’t “interpret” what they had in mind. In both cases, they will leave negative reviews such as "uncoachable."

In performance reviews, disabilities will continue to stay hidden and never mentioned while disability symptoms will be used against you, leading to the inevitable termination. If you work here and have a disability, consult a disability and/or employment lawyer ASAP. Employees and management will take advantage of the ambiguity of disabilities like autism to retaliate against you until inevitable termination or they hope you go away on your own. 

To add insult to injury, they will deny you unemployment as well. The company will perform all actions on their end to avoid legal liability from wrongful termination due to deliberate ADA violations, while continuously posting on social media about how they are committed to creating a successful workplace for people with disabilities.

You could do worse than WTW and you could do better. Some teams are phenomenal and would be 4/5 or 5/5 stars. Most aren't and that means that even if your team is amazing, you work with other people who are not great. Some of them are down right terrible.

Opportunity to exceed expectations will depend on the team but BDA primarily is a great place to be. The benefits aren't the best but they are not the worst. WTW is oddly like that. The reason is due to an easy workload. No one at job level 58 or above (less senior) works much more than 40 hrs/wk unless something major is happening or their looking for some advancement.

FLEXIBILITY
You can work out of any WTW office or from home if your team is more relaxed. 

PTO
Everyone gets 15 days of PTO until they work for WTW more than 5 years. There is a pension if you blindly want to sign your life away for 20 years of mediocrity.

SALARY
Salary at various job levels is based on what you come in at regardless of if you are at the low or high of your role's salary band. This tends to be non-negotiable so come in strong if you plan on working here. WTW will never bring you up to the industry standard if they got you at a steal. You will have to determine if your supervisor will fight for you to get a match from an outside offer. Raises and matching outside offers are different pools of money for teams.

NEGOTIATING JOB OFFER
There is nothing outside of base and bonus that can be negotiated barring extenuating circumstances.

JOB LEVELING
Product managers are job level 58. Senior product managers are job level 53. Associate director product managers are job level 48. Directors of product are job level 43.

SUMMARY
Despite what it sounds like, I actually enjoy what I do here and I am using this as leverage for my next role. I could see myself leaving and eventually entertaining a return because of the lax schedule. Your experience at WTW will ultimately depend on the team you work with (aka pay attention to supervisor). It's a huge company and some team cultures really work while others are toxic with little to write home about.

Seasonal benefit advisers get trained in early summer for the Medicare sales season.  There are many insurance company certifications to complete before the sales season starts, and this is a stressful period. Essentially all customers have health reimbursement accounts, which makes the selling of plans easier. People call during open enrollment, you assess needs, and get them into plans that will serve them well.

I learned about health reimbursement accounts and about many different insurance company offerings.  My supervisor helped me with computer applications and functions that I had never used before.

Management is young, but smart.  They pretty much come out of Utah, so they are a straight-laced and decent group. No scum bums at Willis Towers Watson! You can be PROUD to work there.

Adherence is less strict than in some call centers, but they will call you on infractions. The caliber of employee is pretty high---no bedbug problems there!! The supervisors are absolutely fantastic and know how to help you---they are WONDERFUL. One of the seasonal trainers is older, and he is FANTASTIC, too!!

The hardest part of the sales job is getting certified every year for all the plans--rubber really meets the road for this---it's stressful because you don't have control over when the certifications are available for completion. You may have to be working on many, in a short time frame, in order to be able to sell when enrollment begins.

The most enjoyable part of my job was helping my customers.  I care a great deal about my callers.

One thing I missed while working there was having co-workers that I really liked as people.  Yes, they were a high caliber bunch, but competition for the few "year round" slots created some meanness that I haven't experienced elsewhere. Competition does not mean that you should be nasty to co-workers.

Only advantage was Mon- Friday, Seasonal position but leave you thinking your going to be permeant. Get through the training, and then Bait n Switch and change contract on you and not tell you that your being reduced in Pay. NO COMMUNICATION, every thing is pass the buck and dont bring it up again, or they will give you demerit points and attendance point if your a bit late, which i was not late, and the fact is, there Licensing dept seems to think they are lawyers and can say you dont qualify to sell and that you have to be switched to a different role, with out a new contract, they feel as though it is in there right to reduce your pay without notice also, and then tell you that is how it is. If you dont like it.. Leave. The HR dept will sweep things under the rug instead of being the mediator and trying to find a resolution, allowing for a HUGE Discrimination Factor and BIAS decisions amongst others when in fact they should not be making those kind of decisions. I would stay away and find some where you can feel appreciated. They will tell you that you can get a bonus but find every way possible to keep it away from you and keep you around and treat you like a monkey on a leash. It is very sad for a 2.5 billion dollar world wide cooperate company to behave this way, but again if you dont like something get away from the Negative atmosphere and appreciate another position elsewhere. This is one company who will Pump it up and make it sound great, but then emotionally cause you Harm. There Platform is of outdated software and can not handle the volume, always cutting out and this is how you get paid. once your logged in to the SSC, and you also need to log in to the time punch, but only pay you from the SSC. The amount of education is a learning factor and have learned alot but to continue i would not. CEO will not support the people also... upper management are affraid to do anything to help you out.  

I had a lot of opportunity to learn valuable skills with WTW. I started off as a contractor for customer service and was a manager when I left. I got to work with a lot of great people who were solution-oriented, creative problem-solvers. But, the pedal is always to the metal with WTW. There is never an opportunity to catch your breath. 

Upper management was always talking about automating processes, but the only things that seemed to be automated were emails that created more work to be done. The timecard process was unnecessarily complicated, and constantly took up valuable training time when onboarding new employees. The reviews needed for timecard entries was time consuming, and the reminders to complete the reviews and audits were automated, but the process itself was not. 

There was also a lot of inconsistency with how work was delegated, and how people were selected for positions. Several of my colleagues were chosen for roles that I was interested in. Conversations I had with this colleagues suggested to me that I was every bit as qualified for the role as they were, however I was never selected for an interview after applying multiple times. When I asked for feedback, I was instructed to reach out to HR to ask how to get feedback. This was from a company that frequently claimed to be "feedback oriented". 

I worked here for nine years, and had a lot of great experiences. But, they made no effort to retain my talent when I resigned. They tried to give the smallest pay increases as possible, and managers always had to make noise to get any sort of pay increase that was even close to keeping up with inflation. At the end of the day, you're just another person who can be kicked to the curb when they no longer feel like dealing with you.


Actuarial Service Center

Work: The average day is tricky to describe because it varies so much. You work on multiple client teams and each team has different projects. The variety is the only positive in this job as it is interesting and challenging work and doesn't become monotonous. The work is very technical, so expect a large learning curve. 

Hours: The hours here range throughout the year, with different peak seasons depending on what clients you are assigned. If the work is distributed properly, the hours on average should be 45/week, except for the busy seasons which average 55/week. This is not usually the case and as management has stated "work comes to good people", so the reality is if you do good work on your client teams, you will get more and more work to the point of being overloaded. Then when you ask to offload some of your responsibilities because you are drowning in work, management will reply with "stop being so good" and ignore the issue.

Workplace Culture: When I first started here, the group was very collaborative and welcoming, but as the group has grown it has become very toxic. The only way to get any help with hours and pay is if you butter up management by participating in harmful gossip. The lack of professionalism in this office is staggering. The fact that the one of the leaders of the group talks so much about people, even going so far as to make fun of how some coworkers look, is uncalled for and disappointing on many levels.  

Pay/Benefits: The company offers nice benefits, but the pay is well below market value. For the hours we work, the technical nature of the job, and the value we add to the company, we are paid very little. This, along with the hours, has caused massive turnover. 

I used to think I could work at this company for 40+ years but that is no longer the case. I'm sure there are some good groups within the company but steer clear of this one.

They DO NOT offer permanent positions for YEARS!! You can be working there for 5 years as a temporary employee. They treat employees awful. They do not accept Doctors notes, as someone who has a medical condition and needs accommodation my supervisor did not help one bit in trying to get me some accommodation. You are treated as a number and supervisors are down right rude and are very two-faced. Supervisors will go and tell one person one thing and then tell you another thing. They have an awful point system and you cannot go above a certain amount of points or else you get written up and have to be put on a "60 day look back," you also get double points if you call out or leave early the day before or after a holiday. They really look down upon leaving early or calling out (even if you are sick), they also will not send you home unless you are sick, you literally have to throw up at your desk before they consider you "sick enough" to be sent home. Each department is treated differently even though they all have the same rules, some departments follow the rules closely and will write you up if you do the wrong thing and other departments could care less what you do. Supervisors are lazy and do not give adequate coachings or good feedback. You are just a number and unimportant to them. You are also dealing with senior citizens who can be very grumpy and disrespectful towards you as a rep and no one does anything about it. And communication between departments is awful you have one department tell the customer one thing and you have another department tell them something different, the customer never gets a clear picture of everything. Overall this company needs to be ran better or maybe just ran by people who know how to treat their employees better and people who know how to actually run a company

Worked at WTW for three and a half years.  I appreciate that I've been given the opportunity to take on new roles as I worked my way up from processing client tasks.  You do gain learning experience from working with well known clients and learning from talented team members (depending on the team you are assigned to...).  I can say I was able to obtain accomplishments from handling high volume, detailed client projects from start to finish.  However,  the workload can be VERY stressful during open enrollment, with little to no work life balance for the last few months of the year.  Since the merger, the reporting structure of the client teams has obviously changed, and reporting to a new "manager" in a different state I find takes out the personal relations of developing your role or "career path", especially if they don't work with you directly often or interact hands on with a specific client project.  I think this also divided the culture within the office.  Regarding pay, I've also taken on considerable responsibility with a level change, and not even a shift in my pay range - not cool.  
Although with the new "career path" being rolled out, I feel  opportunities for real advancement to other advanced roles are limiting, unless you actually put yourself out there and prove your credibility to the higher ups, and even if you get promoted, if you can't deliver then why bother.  The culture has a slight air of competition that may not be immediately apparent, but you do need to find ways to improve in order to move up either by taking on new tasks or roles.  If you can't grow a backbone and survive this type of environment, I suggest you look elsewhere.  
But most of the people are friendly and helpful, (depending on the team you are assigned to...)  I've been fortunate to work with some really smart individuals.

Micro Management at its finest!  I have worked for (6) companies over the course of my career, and my experience with WTW was one of the worst career choices ever.  Within my first 30 days of employment, I received about 4 hours of systems training with team members and about 2 hours of training with the Team Lead.  MICRO-MANAGEMENT to the point of harassment. You better not be (1) minute late in the morning, back from break, lunch, etc. or it will be documented and reported.  Do not leave work (1) minute early or it will be recorded as an occurrence.  Each tardy is an occurrence.  Get (6) in a 12 month period and it is a written warning.  Management expected for you to be at your work area 15 minutes prior to your start time.  But do not clock in until your shift starts.  What?  Is that legal by Labor laws?  If you are late for ANY reason, you have to personally call Management and give a detailed explanation as to why.  Management will even discuss and disclose personal employee information with the team!  Highly unethical and unprofessional behavior.  Extreme backstabbing and complaining by employees and Management created an unbearably hostile and low morale work environment.  Most employees were like robots and rarely said a word except with their buddies.  Say more than Good Morning and it becomes a MAJOR issue for everyone.  Company promotes ethics, respect, teamwork, integrity, world-class training, work/life balance, etc. but NOT TRUE at least in Nashville. EVERYTHING is tracked and recorded.  I did encounter a few very nice employees in other departments.  Maybe my experience would have been different in another department not sure.  I left my position with WTW and consider myself fortunate to have done so.

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