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Insurance Services Office

Now known as Verisk

Is this your company?

Not reaching its potential - Anonymous employee Insurance Services Office Employee Review

4.0
27 Apr 2011
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

ISO is a very stable company, layoffs are unheard of here. Multitude of different support and business areas that one could work in and the company does provide pretty good base benefits (401K match, healthcare, time off, tuitition reimbursement, professional training, etc). The culture is fairly laid back with most people just putting in their 8 hours and then going home. People are generally nice.

Cons

Maybe the company is to stable.....lots of dead wood in the hallways, people that have been here for 20-30 years are able to hide out and do nothing because management A) does not care, B) is personally friendly with them and thus protect them, C) does not want to deal with firing the person. The people in Senior Management positions are either incompetent fools who were put in their positions by other incompetent fools that retired or by very smart people who just do not have a clue on how to motivate/manage people correctly. . Many have no real leadership skills or vision for advancing their respective areas and are just coasting along getting paid high salaries to just "manage" their group. Promotions within the company often leave the majority of people scratching their heads because many promotions are based on personal relationships (or just outright wacky decision making) rather than qualifications & track record. The business areas within ISO are very silod, and business units are often run like little kingdoms which creates all sorts of problems because they all want to have their own marketing & sales staff and want to do things their "own way", which causes the company to come off as disjointed and makes it hard for common functions such as marketing to do anything substantial in the way of creating a common look/feel to all the customer facing marketing activities (like websites, newsletters, etc). The place can also be very political. Finally, don't come here expecting much in the way of compensation each year. Although you may be hired at decent rate (in fact, if you come from the outside, you may be hired for "more" than the person sitting next to you or even training you! the employees knows this and lament the fact that the company is so "cheap" when it comes to rewarding top employees). A top rated performance (A player) will give you anywhere from 3 - 3.5% raise, so there is not much motivation to bust your butt since average employees probably get around 2 to 3 %. If you get a "promotion", you may get up to a 10% raise...but promotions get harder and harder to come by as you climb the "grade" level ladder as at a certain point, the CEO himself has to "approve" a promotion to mid-level management (which is a little crazy for a billion dollar company).

Explore other reviews about Insurance Services Office

5.0
28 Sept 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Independent worm from home w little supervision. -Opportunity for advancement -company car

Cons

Travel weekly, occasionally overnight. (Once or twice per month)

3.0
12 Jul 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Friendly atmosphere and flexible hours. Solid benefits package. Employees are encouraged develop as insurance professionals and not criticized for taking exams regardless of the outcome. New employees receive excellent training and more often than not good mentors when they first come to ISO.

Cons

No one has a clear understanding of how the promotion system works as you may see individuals with a distinct skill set and numerous accomplishments having the same or a lower rank than other people in the same division who are not nearly as talented or accomplished. This leads many veterans to accuse the promotion system of being more influenced by personal relationships and connections than actual performance. There is an initiative to seek out talented individuals to fast track them into management roles but the huge flaws in that logic are that a) there are few management positions available because underperforming managers are hard to eliminate no matter how many workers they may alienate b) not every good worker is suited to be a manager and c) there is no attention paid to what happens when an excellent worker gets promoted and there aren’t qualified analysts to fill their position. The lack of attention and resources directed towards the pool of talented workers who are not in management has led to many individuals burning out and becoming complacent or leaving the company as their voices are either not heard or disregarded as there have been few, if any substantive changes in procedures over the past decade.

4
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