The Chartered Insurance Institute Reviews

In short: incompetent CEO/executive management, toxic working environment, unhappy workforce leaving en masse, culture of fear and uncertainty, ill conceived and poorly executed initiatives and income in decline. The crass and obvious attempts to divert attention from these systemic failings with token gestures eg improved holiday don't fool anyone. The preceding reviews cover much of what's wrong, I would just add the following. The rot flows down from the CEO. Rude, dictatorial ("It's just a suggestion, it's your area of responsibility" - believe that and you'll be joining the ranks of the ex-CII pdq), dismissive (oh, how we all love that flat palm in the face gesture), lacking vision or ideas. I could go on, but you get the picture, and if you'd like to get a feel for the person go online and view the CEO's inspirational speeches to-date. As the saying goes, it's all in the delivery. The biggest problem is the CEO will not counter any opposing views or criticism, internal or external, of her behaviours, her decisions or the actions of her appointees. Nothing will improve till she realises opposing views can and do have merit. She clearly can't be reading these glassdoor reviews! The CEO is 'complemented' by a supporting cast of Directors too scared to challenge her through fear of losing their jobs and in turn infect the rest of the organisation with the same paralysis. They are either desperate to reach retirement (Sales, Secretariat, Customer Service, PFS) or over promoted in a once in a life-time opportunity and willing to throw anyone and everyone to the wolves to make it last (Marketing, Learning & Assessment, People Engagement - HR to anyone else). In practice, they all go along with every half-baked idea the CEO comes up with (the source of these being either overpaid and ill-informed consultants or her London Market chums), neatly abdicating responsibility to the project teams where they get bogged down in endless discussion. The CEO has been purging her inherited experienced and proven management team (the CII had never been more successful than at the point the current CEO took over) and surprise, surprise the CII is now in free fall, with revenue dropping across the board. Why sack them? Insecurity? Incompetence? Because she could? To pay for the army of consultants? A combination of all of the aforementioned? Who knows, but she has. And it's still ongoing. The result is a rudderless ship, that's taking on water, steered by a 'captain' with limited experience and skills into stormy waters with no clear destination in mind, and unwilling to seek advice from the personnel around her who in turn are too scared to offer it. Think Titanic, but in this version the Captain makes it to a luxury life raft leaving everyone else to their fate. The only fun to be had is watching the Directorate (mainly white, middle-aged men) continually lining up to state in rambling fashion their life-long and unswerving commitment to diversity and inclusion (could it have something to do with this being the CEO's hobbyhorse?) Think David Brent and you get the idea. They won't be winning oscars anytime soon.