nurse

health screener

trustee

business development executive

research associate

Health Advocate

Training: You will complete an eight hour training five days a week for about two weeks. I believe that if you’re training for another department (for example, benefits) then you gain an additional week or two to learn about that position. After the online class, you will meet with a few supervisors who will go more into detail about Health Advocate and initiate a few roleplay scenarios. Typically towards the last hour or two hours of class you will shadow another call center agent. You will then be grouped with other new hires and one supervisor for “incubator training” and they will allow the each of you to take turns answering calls. They will help you via Microsoft Teams if you have any questions. You will also be sharing your screen with them, so if they see that you’re struggling or made a mistake then they’ll let you know. I personally believe that the incubator training was not long enough. We spent weeks learning so much information in class and didn’t spend no more than a week applying that information to actual calls. They said they weren’t going to “throw” us out onto the floor, but it kind of felt that way. The day I had to take calls on my own was during a time when no one reached out to me to let me know this. I had to e-mail the supervisors to see who was going to be assisting me with the incubator only to find out (in the middle of the week) that I was on my own. This annoyed me, but fortunately I managed to power through. 

Job Overview: The job itself is pretty easy. You start to feel less nervous and get the hang of the things after about a week. There are so many job aids provided during training, so it can be overwhelming figuring out which ones to have opened once you begin working. The best piece of advice I can give is to remain calm and don’t rush. The more you rush, the more pressure you’ll put on yourself and that can lead you to making a mistake that causes you to be even more nervous. The longest a CCA may have to spend talking to a member is 10-20 minutes if they’re handling a claims case or assisting someone with finding a provider. You may also have to call a provider or insurance company while the member is on hold, making your call time longer. However, the more you work the more natural it will all become. Like I said before, compared to other departments the CCA position seems to be the easiest. 

Pay: CCAs are paid $16.73 an hour - at least that’s what I’m currently making. I don’t think it’s enough for the amount of work we’re responsible for. Yes, CCAs spend less time with the members but there will be times when we have to assist a member with obtaining their medical records. Sometimes a member will request that we call their insurance carriers and find out answers to their questions. We have to ensure that authorization forms for a claims case are filled out correctly and if they’re not we have to do follow-ups. You also have to verify the supporting documents the member sends for help with a billing issue. If your coworkers are gone for the day then your supervisor will assign you to handle their cases. Sometimes you just have to complete one of their tasks, but other times the case will be reassigned to you all together. Oh! And another thing, sometimes Medicaid members call requesting a ride to or from a hospital. As CCAs we are in charge of assisting them with this, but only when Medica is closed…which doesn’t make sense to me. I had a member say he saw HA’s number at the hospital for a pick-up service, but during training we’re told the member has to be transferred to Medica unless their office is closed. The company needs to work on making our services clear because we should not have to constantly be connecting callers to someone else. I think CCAs should make $17-$18. If you don’t live alone or in California then the paychecks can be pretty decent. On average, I make a total of $2,200 a month after deductions as a full time employee. With overtime during open enrollment it’s slightly higher. I live by myself in California, so it’s not enough to be able to save anything. I just feel like I’m not being compensated enough for the amount of work and issues I have to deal with. They should definitely increase the pay during open enrollment - especially since not everyone can work overtime. 

Supervisors: Upper management can be unreliable at times. If you have an irate member on the line who wants to speak with a supervisor then you have to put them on hold, e-mail all of the supervisors, and hope that someone can get back to you in time. Sometimes you have to send a second e-mail if no one replies to you, which is ridiculous in my opinion. As a CCA it’s your job to be able to handle a difficult member as much as you can, but we don’t learn about any specific techniques during training to help us with that. The supervisor hotline is for questions only, so you can’t call the number and ask for them to handle the member. The hotline is also unreliable. Sometimes no one will even pick up, lol. Not only that, but if that supervisor is unsure how to answer your question then THEY have to reach out to someone else. This can make the hold time for the member longer. It can be awkward taking them off hold just to tell them you have to put them on hold again to obtain the information they need. Some callers are understanding, but others will get frustrated and/or hang up, making the company look incompetent. If you ask your own supervisor a question in the group chat sometimes they will just tell you to refer to your job aids or call the hotline. Other times they may not respond quick enough. Some supervisors can also come off as rude, which only makes me less likely to depend on them when I need help. 

Company: Sometimes I don’t understand the purpose of Health Advocate. People are given our numbers if they have questions about benefits, but at times the benefits associate will end up transferring them to a benefits team outside of HA or to the member’s insurance carrier. People actually believe they’re calling their insurance carrier to begin with, which confuses them. They then get annoyed that they verified their information and provided a long story of their situation to the wrong person. You can always tell someone thinks they’ve reached their insurance carrier when they give their member ID number. HA has the right idea, but if we’re going to be the main point of contact for people who have questions then we shouldn’t have to transfer a majority of the calls. I have had plenty of callers tell me that they don’t understand our company and its services. Some people even think that they’re calling HR…it’s a miscommunication on HA’s end, as well as the companies who hire us. And if you tell a member something like, “Oh, that’s an issue your HR department would handle” they’ll end up saying that their HR manager was the one who told them to call HA. It’s all very confusing. I also feel bad for people who reach out to us for assistance with claims/billing issues. As a CCA we only handle the first part of claims cases - we don’t actually investigate the issue, but it sucks getting calls from people who have been waiting months for the bill(s) to go away because they feel like HA isn’t actually advocating for them. I get plenty of calls from people saying that they are never able to reach their claims specialist, which goes to show that HA needs to hire more people and train them properly. I can’t even imagine how many cases the claims department has to deal with. I also don’t understand why we get calls from people who never received their insurance cards. For those calls we have to complete a warm conference with the member and their insurance carrier, but then the member won’t always know which insurance they selected…Sometimes they get mad because they expect HA to know what insurance they selected for THEMSELVES. Every once in awhile you’ll also have people get mad that you don’t know which plan type they chose. For example, when a CCA has to open a case for a caller who wants to find a PCP they have to ask them what their medical insurance is and the plan type (e.g., UHC PPO plan). The member will then say they expected HA to have access to that information and get mad once they realize we’re not even their insurance. 

Overall Opinion: Things started off great, but overtime the job can get repetitive…there’s no room for growth or any mention of increasing your pay overtime. You gain a lot of experience handling calls, so it’s a great entry-level job. It’s frustrating how what you learned during training is not that accurate. There were instances when I would handle calls based off the job aids I was provided during training just for my supervisor to provide a whole new document that was a bit more accurate and recent. Once you get comfortable in the position, your supervisor will have to train you for other types of calls and it can be overwhelming at times. It’s a good job, but I don’t see myself being here long term. I just wish they paid more and the job itself was more meaningful. 

The interview process went very well and onboarding was smooth. When training started the trainer let us know that they needed people on the lines. So they condensed a lot of information into a couple of weeks and a couple days of training. This position should have at least a full 3-4 weeks of training with the amount of information involved. The trainer was very nice though and she answered questions to the best of her knowledge. You also get to do a little shadowing as well to observe calls and they have you do some role playing with taking mock calls. 

Once you are on the "floor" taking calls you are placed in a newbie chat and everyone is pretty helpful and nice. Some of the supervisors can come off condescending though and it can be very off putting when you are simply new and trying to learn. 

Your typical day consist of logging in, being available immediately (you have to login earlier than your scheduled shift time to get all your systems going --- you also do not get paid for doing this, but you have to in order to comply with immediate availability once you are scheduled to start your shift -- you take calls). You will receive all types of calls from counseling, crisis, and work-life issues and everything in between. You are expected to handle multiple cases at one time and they monitor your call time and call wrap time as well. 

This is amazing and meaningful work. However, there is clearly NOT ENOUGH care managers in this call center and because of that you will CONSTANTLY feel overwhelmed, annoyed, micro-managed, and burnout sets in VERY quickly here! They have some weird ways of operating here that makes no sense at all. 

For one, you will get harassed constantly throughout the work shift because health advocate doesn't hire enough people and there is a heavy high turnover rate as well. How do they do so? Well, you can be on a crisis call and you will get calls (even while on a call) coming through from other team members asking you to take another call. You will get emails all throughout the day asking you to take another person's tasks over (it's okay, I don't mind helping out here). HOWEVER, there seems to be random assignments with no regard to the tasks you already have in place for your day. You are also emailed CONSTANTLY during your shift with emails from other care managers who are monitoring the call queue (why they do this, I will never understand bc they can just take a call too) telling every care manager who is logged in to "take a call", "even if you are working on something else, take a call", please take a call" as if WE DON'T SEE THE CALL QUEUE RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!!!! It is extremely annoying and it puts a lot of pressure on us who are trying our best to manage the high call volume with hundreds and thousands of EAP clients and less than 15-20 people on the call queue working the lines. It's not right and the pay is not enough to deal with this. 

They will also push you into the call queue even if you are working on something important and trying to help another client out. It's not our faults that HA does not hire enough people. If you wish to be robotic then sign right up! This is a stepping stone job and nothing long-term, there are some that seem to have been here a while but very far and few. 

Higher ups tells us to focus on the calls in front of us but at the same time harass you in the emails all day. They need to work up another system and a way to handle call overflow or hire more people, or pay people more due to the stress levels -- something. Having care managers who are able to take calls email me all day about grabbing a call is crazy when THEY CAN TAKE THE CALL. 


I cannot in good faith recommend working for this company. I don’t know if the poor quality of training and lack of supervision or guidance I received just caused me to miss something, but I  found the “services” I was supposed to provide in my role to be pointless and inefficient. A vast majority of callers call in thinking they’re speaking to their insurance carrier, understandably so when they are not provided good information about what Health Advocate actually offers and when our phone number is often deceivingly placed on their insurance ID cards as their first stop for help. Members very often feel confused, suspicious, and like their time has been wasted when in many situations all we can do for them is transfer them to their insurance carrier, and I don’t blame them. I spent way too much of my time explaining to members that they are not speaking with their insurance carriers when they call us rather than actually providing useful assistance, and it’s frustrating as someone who got this job because they actually had an interest in helping people. 

Training goes in-depth into lots of information, however the training schedule and communication between trainers and especially between supervisors who work with you towards the end of training seemed to be very disorganized- nobody seemed to know who was supposed to help us with what. I also found that despite the quantity of what you learn in training, not much of it is actually helpful to performing a benefits role once you go live. Most of the knowledge I used in my role day to day are things I went and found out on my own or with the help of senior coworkers. 

My direct supervisor was often unavailable to take my questions. Even when they would try to help, they would just end up passing me off to senior team members instead. They did not expend much effort making sure my transition onto the team after training went smoothly- and it didn’t. I had other supervisors get snippy with me assuming I knew things that I quite literally would’ve needed to be a mind reader to know, or things that my own supervisor should have communicated to me but never did. I cannot take responsibility for doing things incorrectly when the correct way was never communicated to me. 

Many callers can be rude and harsh, however I think that this comes with the territory of any customer-facing job and I can’t really blame the company for that aside from the aforementioned inefficiency and confusion that they cause members by neglecting to ensure good information about who we are is given to them. 

The software used to perform and document work was extremely clunky and glitchy- it’s stressful to have an already upset member on the phone when your screen freezes and you can’t do anything for them until it unfreezes. And this would happen sometimes multiple times in a day. Submitting IT tickets could sometimes be helpful but there was often an assumption made that your own home internet connection was the problem even when multiple team members were experiencing similar system issues.

From where I stood, I honestly don’t see the point in this company even existing. Everything I could help with, the insurance carriers could do just as well and many times with better and faster processes. Again, maybe my individual experience is just missing something and maybe others in other roles can see the good, but I simply could not find much to take pride in. This was a very disappointing experience as someone who was looking forward to a role in which I could really assist people with navigating the wild world of healthcare. 

Good job security, but need for better work-life balance for staff.   Solid company.   Good local reputation.   Free coffee.  If you live near Exton, it's a great place.  Otherwise the commute is a bear.   Little to no opportunity to work from home or from other sites.    Little opportunity for career advancement.  Big disconnect between management and front line staff.    Lack of cultural diversity.  Free lunches once a month.  Inconsistent policies, lack of organization, Extreme favoritism and back room deals.  Lack of transparency. Management vision is short-sited/myopic.  More focus on quantity than quality.   Certain staff are lauded in front of others, putting a target on their back and engendering resentment/lack of  esprit de corps.  Painfully obvious that management has no idea what is happening on the call center floor.  Arbitrary polices and performance benchmarks devised by upper level management that does not work on the call center floor.  Call dumping.  Lack of individual accountability.  Enabling.  Management refuses to address issues around problematic workplace culture.  Lack of teamwork.   Employees are pitted against each other in what is deemed to be "healthy competition" for individual statistics.  Mixed messages.    More focus on trying to control staff rather than focusing on what is best for our stakeholders and the company as a whole.  Fear of change.  Resistance to feedback from front line staff.  There is a great push to keep things the way they have always been.  Positive change takes forever.   Nice rural location.   Performance reviews are more negative than positive.    Significant lack of support for front line staff and we have lost good people for that reason.  Poor morale.  Recent improvements in the case management system.  Lack of collaboration with the rest of the company.   Silo mentality; isolationist mentality that holds us back.   Little to no camaraderie.   On-call duties.   Nice parks nearby.

During the interviews, the role was not explained clearly. I'm not sure if upper management really knows what a typical day looks like for an EAP Care Manager or not! Training was 4 weeks, which was helpful but once they place you in the que to take calls. You automatically feel so ALONE! You are constantly busy.... It's sad that realistically you work from home as a call center staff, meanwhile you have a Master's! It's non stop, you get off the phone and then another call is either coming in or is being pushed by management for you to take more calls even when you're on BREAK. You do get paid more than average for being either licensed or unlicensed master professionals however it just doesn’t match the stress component. There’s no appreciation and it’s just constant criticism and constant pushing calls to you. It’s overwhelming and the on-call you have to do a couple times of year is completely out of control. They need to set better expectation for the organizations we provide EAP services too because essentially employees call in all time like we are a 24/7 crisis line! I didn't sign up to be a crisis worker at a hotline, I joined Health Advocate for a less stressful position. That was quite the opposite when I joined and started taking 30-40 calls in a 10 hour shift, where you're on the call with an employee for 20-30 mins at a time. Every single caller seemed to be in CRISIS AND needing support at all times of the day. I worked night shift from 12:30pm-11am EST and the workload/stress is unmanageable. Not to mention day shift goes from 50 CM's to under 10 from 8-11pm EST!!!! Management needs to hire more CM's and explain during interviews that your primary role is being a crisis worker, setting up immediate counseling or more intensive treatment rather than providing EAP benefits (legal, work/life, etc.) 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Better than average pay for a call center job

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Lack of resources to fully and properly assist callers and fullfill the duties of the job. Lack of staffing to handle call load. Due to lack of staffing and inability to keep up with calls, it affects our ability to make outbound calls for daily case follow-up and simply “do our jobs” and get things done. Instead, we have to wait until later in the afternoon and then ask for permission to make a call out to a member to complete mandatory follow-ups. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
2 or 3 week classroom training (remotely), an exam each week, 3 1/2 days live calls with supervisor monitoring and feedback, then released to work on your own.  10-13 trainers in 4 weeks! Every trainer has a different way of doing things so you are always changing gears, re-writing notes, doing things a differently. Staff throughout the company can be kind and helpful or can be very rude and nasty. Both are equally acceptable ways to operate. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Inbound calls center, many frustrated callers because they dont really understand who they are calling or what we do. They usually think they are calling their HR office, medical carrier, etc…. but they are not. They also get frustrated when I am unable to provide them with the info/answers they need because we don’t have current benefit information or contact information to refer to for their employer, benefits, enrollment center, etc… and have to submit a ticket to have their request researched.  Definitely not a positive experience for the members when that happens.

This is an honest review from a former Claims Specialist. This was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life. It will put you in a constant loop of stress, anxiety, and panic even when you're off the clock.

Employees are overworked, underpaid and expected to meet unrealistic metrics. Very few people meet the metrics. (Only the workaholics and those that are willing to compromise their physical and mental health) This company only cares about numbers and giving off the illusion that they're helping members. But it's all about keeping the client account... which means more money for Health Advocate.

Management allows the members to belittle you, be condescending and treat you as though you aren't even human. Members can be extremely impatient and demanding with no regards to the high workload the company gives us.

The company as a whole makes false promises in order to sell their product to clients/employers. They promise the members that we can get them reimbursements on claims or dismiss them from their medical bills they rightfully owe. But in actuality, it's up to the insurance carrier and the providers. Health Advocate has no power whatsoever the way that they allude.

In the years that I've been working here, the workload has tripled and they also took away our bonuses and pay raises. Meanwhile Health Advocate gets to pocket all the money at the expense of the hard-working employees that EARNED their bonuses.


This job has turned into a mental health sweat shop. Care managers are burnt out and it’s noticeable but they don’t care. There’s pressure throughout your work shift to take more and more calls, thus no time to breathe in between. How could you maintain a healthy mind-space to successfully do your job when your job and metric requirements are steadily increasing without any additional incentives, micromanagement impacts productivity, constant changes on a weekly basis that’s impossible to remember, 100s of emails a day to sift through, decreased case management and call wrap time (5 minutes max before you are pushed into the call queue no matter the case (high risk included), with expectations to have perfect file and clinical documentation (expect a snarky email if it’s anything less than despite the pressure to quickly wrap everything up). They don’t see that each case doesn’t fit into a nice little template? Oh! While you’re at it you must provide top notch customer service and be your empathetic, kind and nurturing self while under this type of pressure. As a social worker I am used to a fast paced environment but this is another level of insanity. NOT sustainable for long term employment. Hence the high turnover rate. 

Manager's are just there to find work for you to do and overload you with work at all time. There have bee. So many times, managers would step away to call or take someones call, don't do there tasks on time but micro manage you at every breath they take. As soon as you are done, you are suppsoe to help other members and departments. The worst part is that without any discussion or warning, managers will take tasks from another department and assign it fo you even if you are strugglimg to wrap up your tasks. When I expressed I have been on one call for over an hour, couldn't worl on my cases at all and wasn’t expecting to be assigned 36 calls all of the sudden, I was told by my supervisor, "expect the unexpected from now on".  THEY JUST SAY, "WE APPRICIATE YOU" but do everything to make your day worse. 

Managers are there to micro manage and don't do 0.05% of what the front line workers do. This job has literally  negatively affected mine and my collegues mental health and work life balance. If you have a college degree, find a better place. Most people who work here (even in management barely have an undergraduate degree). Pay is barely anything at all. You can't even step away to go to the restroom as it gets that busy somedays. REGRET THIS JOB 

I was excited to start this job, thinking I was going to be able to help a lot of people. I was hired during Open Season and trainers/supervisors gave extremely abbreviated version of training. They crammed what was normally at least a couple of weeks worth of training into barely a week. I had 2 days of "training" and then "shadowed" 2 different employees for barely 1/2 a day each (they still had to do their work, meet their quotas so I got to sit in on a few calls with each...not enough to prepare me.) They were in the middle of another company taking over and the level of ignorance and lack of management support in learning & working through two systems at once was mind blowing. Management acts very warm & welcoming during interview and first couple of days, then it's extremely difficult to get timely help, and they act like you're bothering them. Had two supervisors and each gave me different answers to problems on multiple occasions. Felt like I was operating on a wing & a prayer, trying to figure things out and praying I didn't make supervisors angry. EXTREMELY stressful. 

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