Great place - Applications Specialist Home BancShares Employee Review

Team environment and self managed projects

Communication, consistent guidelines and better support.

You could make instant issue debit cards in branch. Offered a forgiveness account for customers who couldn't open accounts elsewhere,based on a point system for a fee. Offered Free Account to Employees with rewards and quarterly cash back. Offered refund for atm charges occured by using a non Centennial atm,as long as you brought the receipt in.

When I began my career at Centennial Bank it was after a buyout of a Smaller Community Bank I worked for,for 2 plus years. My smaller bank offered great benefits, an HSA savings account that they deposited money into monthly,great PTO,great vacation,Christmas Bonuses, Matching 401K,tuition reimbursement,all federal holidays paid time off, my insurance (Medical/Dental) were around $100 a month altogether. My birth control was free Then we were bought out by Centennial: Vacation time cut,staff cut-making it nearly impossible to take PTO,vacation. Branch staff was combined between 2 branches..numerous people left or quit.Making it nearly impossible to get PTO because it had to be scheduled to include both branches staffs.The training for the merger consisted of 3-4 Days Max. Not nearly enough time to train on all New products systems. Some of our equipment was so old it had to be replaced in the first couple of weeks.They cut out 2 paid federal holidays, maxed annual raises to 2.5 percent when we were previously offered a higher percentage. I was told I would get 5 percent after my annual review was then informed that the cap was 2.5 percent. Our day to day individual customers or small businesses making it day to day,became unimportant. The same customers who built the previous bank. Fees for Cashiers Checks,fees unless you sign up for banking. All of our interest bearing accounts rates were reduced to next to nothing. Non customers weren't charged fees to cash checks but customers had to buy Cashiers checks? Ridiculous. The main branch is in Arkansas we were in Florida, the branch capture machine went Dow numerous times a week. Our phone systems were downgraded, to dial the branch you had to go thru a call center, which made customers very unhappy.It could take up to 15 minutes to reach the branch you needed to. Limits for transactions and what management onsite could approve or reconcile was laughable. When you have one branch manager going in between 2 locations and run a skeleton crew,getting approvals thru emails and other short staffed branches, or the "help center " that would transfer you to numerous people was very time consuming and not very time/customer friendly. Everyone was supposed to train to do work for other positions without the pay. A teller making $10 hr expected to do a much higher paygrades job. Where is the employee care? They cut our Christmas bonus and incentive came by selling. Selling accounts people don't need,referrals that need up unanswered or us being told 3 different ways to refer and no one wanting the referrals,which resulted in angry customers. I was there 6 months after the buyout never once had an audit to see if we were even operating correctly. With the minimal training and minimal staff-wouldn't you want to touch base besides phone or email? My insurance premium tripled and when I went to process a claim I was told the insurance information I was sent was incorrect. I then found out Homebancshares company wide opted out of covering birth control. So along with the tripled cost I got the added cost of a $25 bc without insurance would cost me $14 with my very expensive insurance. 2 Pprinters for a whole bank. They run a skeleton crew but hate paying overtime so your schedule can change day to day. Sick days aren't offered upfront so if you get sick and haven't accrued enough time you don't get paid. The time you do accrue, you have to basically lie and say your sick to use. For someone whose looking for room to grow, a company who takes care of their employees and values them I wouldn't suggest Centennial on a branch or hourly level. Corporate yeah they got it made. The frontline day to day "face of the bank" Not so much.