BRONZE Best Agency to Work For – West: MOC Insurance Services

Want to know how important offering a work-life balance is to employees?

Just ask the people at MOC Insurance Services in San Francisco, Calif.

The agency of 50-plus employees won Bronze for Best Agency in the West. The ranking was based on a number of factors. What put the firm at the top were the quality and insightfulness of employee comments, as well as its high score on IJ’s grading scale.

“I really enjoy working at MOC Insurance Services,” wrote one employee. “I’ve been here for almost 14 years, and continue to stick around because of the flexibility I’m provided. I’m trusted to do my job without being micro-managed, which is very important to me. I work harder because of this.”

The employee, who described herself as a working mom, said the flexibility enables her to deal with family issues whenever they pop up.

“The management here is very understanding when I have to attend parent/teacher conferences or have to attend to matters that sometimes happen when raising school age children,” she wrote.

Flexibility and a free lunch were selling points for others.

“We have the ability to work remotely, which is very important to me,” wrote another employee. “We are all given the benefit to use the building fitness center and is paid for by the agency. We have lunch brought into the office once a month and the owner appreciates everyone’s contribution to the agency.”

More than one employee included free food as a favorite MOC trait.

One employee hit on the oft-listed flexibility, having a diverse workforce, motivation from the leadership, company outings to promote comradery, and “free snacks, coffee and drinks for all employees.”

Respecting the need for work-life balance is important to Van Maroevich, president and CEO of MOC.

“We understand the importance of work-life balance and we strive to accommodate the needs of our team members, both professionally and personally,” said Maroevich, who joined the firm started by his parents Ivan and Gladys Maroevich after he graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1973.

One employee described a search for a new agency when looking to exit the old one.

“I reached out to industry friends and asked them their thoughts on about a half dozen independent retail brokerages in San Francisco,” the employee wrote. “Everyone had negative or bland/neutral things to say about all of them except for MOC. Not one negative thing was said about MOC. And now that I am here, I concur.”

The quality of salary reviews and feedback from management was important to many survey respondents.

“MOC’s performance/salary reviews are not static,” wrote one. “They are dynamic in the sense that they are not rigidly defined simply by numbers correlating to a perceived level of performance at a specific point in time.”

Wrote another: “I like that the company offers annual reviews for performance and salary as it gives an employee the chance to better themselves and grow both professionally as well as financially. For the industry I find their salaries to be competitive in comparison to other agencies in the area.”

If flexibility was the top consideration cited by employees in their remarks, then team work could be considered a runner up.

“Everyone has each other’s back! Every year we adopt a few families at Christmas, participate in knitting scarfs and donating hats and socks to homeless shelters,” stated an employee. “And lastly, for me personally, my husband was very ill and was in the hospital for 2 weeks. They let me work remotely when I could during that time and for a few weeks after and never applied any PTO days. That says a lot about the family I am proud to work with!”