Aviva Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Aviva full-time for more than a year

Pros – Really a great place to work and people are great

Cons – Progression is not that good

Former Employee – worked at Aviva full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great colleagues
Great environment
Keep staff well informed
Salary fair
Amazing redundancy package

Cons – To many restructures (on average every 18 nonths)
Lots of 'suit speak'
If you're in with the right people you'll do well

Advice to Senior Management – Stop restructuring so often and allow for the changes to bed do before altering structures again

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Aviva full-time for less than a year

Pros – None, even the coffee machine was rubbish

Cons – Populated by white middle aged, middle class blokes devising products nobody wants to buy with unsustainable commission levels to support greedy distribution channels

Advice to Senior Management – People who get a senior level job with Aviva sigh with relief they will never have to put in a hard day of graft ever again.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Aviva full-time for less than a year

Pros – Competitive salary and strong market position

Cons – Team values
Freeze on pay rises
Wide scale redundancies

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Aviva full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Fantastic Work-Life Balance, encouraging flexible working and mobile work practises.
Has lots of potential for positive change and efficiencies. Good flexible benefits package.

Cons – At the Aviva Group Centre there is such a poor handle on HR and talent management issues. In three years I had 10 line managers, and not once did a HR representative email or talk to me about these changes.

The 6 monthly appraisal system is completely flawed and is just a tick in the box exercise. Talent Management practises strangely only are available from 'Head of' and above, which to me is completely backwards.

Recent mass redundancies made it openly apparent that the organisation is extremely politically motivated and senior management therefore are hard to trust.

Advice to Senior Management – Sort out HR practises in AGC and don't let senior (people) managers and directors have full control on HR issues, otherwise you will find that constructive dismissal cases will start appearing.
People managers need to be trained on how to manage people, my experience of 10 in 3 years will say that most didn't have a clue as to how to motivate, lead and manage a team.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Aviva full-time for more than a year

Pros – Blue-chip company, wide-ranging experience, great benefits even if headline salaries not spectacular

Cons – Heavily exposed to Europe, muddled strategy, terrible HR/people management

Advice to Senior Management – Choose a strategy and stick to it for longer than 6 months.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Aviva full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – job for life type place

Cons – civil servant mentality holds the place back

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Aviva

Pros – Good pay and quite a good HR team at the top. They really do care for customers and all the issues facing customers. They have tied the promises they make to customers to the ones they make to employees, so things like 360-degree reviews are in place. Teams genuinely try to cross-pollinate and work together on shared problems and share the celebrations when they are due.

Cons – Cronyism nullifies a lot of the benefits - if you have a terrible manager, you have little chance of going anywhere except out the door.

Simply awful attitudes to men and women with young children - think hard before taking maternity or paternity leave at all, else you may find yourself replaced.

The permissions culture invades everything - novel solutions to tricky problems will not be implemented or considered. Committies make decisions in ways that cater to political and self-serving interests, not interests that benefit teams, products or employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of the permissions culture, allow more autonomy and weed out the Heads and Directors that hold back the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Aviva

Pros – The company is going through plenty of change, many exciting challenges and projects.
It has a proven track record of success and does seem to look after it people well

Cons – the company is populated with people that have worked there for years and have too many legacy attitudes that come from a job-for-life mentality. The long term employees are bad for growth insofar as they don't have an appetite to work hard and get the job done and rely on "that's not how we have done things" where as a more dynamic and progressive attitude is now needed.

Advice to Senior Management – The speed at which change is needed is not happening fast enough and is caused by a risk averse mentality, coupled that with poor communication, lack of clear direction and a Function or Market level leave many very very nervous and anxious. Such anxiety fosters poor performance. When you consider the inertia in some countries and unwillingness to act as part of a wider Aviva, France for example, these changes are more difficult to surmount.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Aviva

Pros – Immediate team was great to get on with professionally and personally

Cons – Lack of management direction, poor communication to staff, lack of delegation to deputise in the absence of a manager, too much contractor hire, not the market leaders in renumeration

Advice to Senior Management – Pay market rates, communicate more, encourage development, talent recognition