Work/Life balance is almost non-existent. As a salaried associate you should be expected to be able to get your work done in a timeline that works for both you and the company, however that is not the case here. You will be judged, and possibly talked to, for leaving before 515-530ish regardless of what time you arrived and if you have completed your work for the day. The pressure to work on the weekends/off hours is always high as emails/calls arrive from higher ups at all hours of the evening/weekends and responses are expected immediately regardless of what you have going on. With the pandemic everyone shifted to full time remote and in August of 2021 people started heading back in. Since that time flexibility has remained, however they have started to push more and more people back into the office full-time and it is a matter of time before the BPM position has to be in office full time and they will lose the 2 days at home they have now. They recently started making BPMs work in the office during their 2 late nights a month, usually between 8-10pm leave time, when there are only ever maybe 4 associates in the office at that time, again with no real explanation as to the benefits of that policy. Managing people at Jackson is an interesting job that you need to be prepared for from the minute you walk in. If you want to get to know your associates and work with them to develop their career and help them grow, then this is NOT the place for you. There is no emphasis placed on employee growth because there is a perception that there is never time due to work volumes. This comes down to them being either constantly understaffed, due to people leaving at alarming rates, or due to the horrendous training that they have. The trainings are short and shallow and once you are out of the training, your employees are expected to be experts within a month and be processing with the same speed and accuracy as anyone else. They expect perfection from your associates and if they do not meet the extremely high standards that they set, you are expected to move forward with disciplinary action after 2 months of missing a goal, not to mention that you will not have the data from the previous month until the end of the current one. They truly see your employees as a number, full stop, and as easily replaceable, even after you argue time and time again that this is not the case. If they can't get an item done in a pre-determined time you need to talk with them immediately and figure out why and give a full debrief to your boss If you want to make any kinds of decisions about how things are done, again, this is not the place for you. The BPM role specializes in not being able to do much of anything beyond monitoring your employees, approving disbursements and attending meetings where they tell you what is happening, and the meetings are constant. Stuff always rolls down hill, and the BPM role is where it lands, you will constantly be asked to do things that do not make sense for your role and be an expert on systems that you have never used, but will never be asked for your opinion on what should be done with anything, just told how we will do it. If you love the corporate game then this is your place. You do not have to be good at your job to get promoted to another position, you just have to know the right people and tell them what they want to hear. So many unqualified people have been promoted because of this that it is disheartening and kills your desire to continue to work there. The people at the top have been there for decades and still need to have their hands in everything so do not be surprised when you get an email from the Sr VP asking why someone processed something on the wrong contract one time 2 years ago and asking you to do a full post mortem immediately and then ask what you are doing to discipline someone immediately, and if it was for a lot of money you'd better have termination on the table, but if it was for $10, don't worry about it . Or when you want to change a shift and it has to go to the same Sr VP for approval for some odd reason, like she really should have better things to do with her time then approve shift buckets. Also forget about having opinions or ideas about how things can be done differently or more efficiently, unless those ideas already align with what the VPs want. From the BPO level up is filled with Yes people who want to paint a rosy picture of what is going on and will stop at nothing to ensure that is what is communicated up and quash any bad news. Everything is constantly broken in some way, whether it be a contract that has too many transactions, or the systems they work with being down, there is always something you have to work around. There is a whole team of 15 people in the operations department that handles contracts that have broken on the system in some way. Coupled with terrible offshore tech support and an attitude of, well the system went down today, just means you have to stay late and be punished for things that are beyond your control. Seriously, for a company that handles the amount of money they do, it is shocking how unreliable and ancient their systems are. Pay is very low for the work done and effort expected. they used to try and be top of the pay scale in the area, but since going public have decided to be in the middle and that is OK with them.
