nurse practitioner

customer service representative

health screener

software engineer

screener

UnitedHealth Group

I work for a segment within the company.  This segment was acquired by UHG in 2012, so my review is based on my experience within the segment and may not apply to the company as a whole.

A typical day within my office consists of arriving promptly to set up my work station, and within minutes of settling into my cubicle being informed of the latest scuttlebutt du jour - regardless if I wish to hear it or not.  Once the shift has started, I field incessant, repetitive, and mundane phone calls, repeating the same information ad nauseum to people who've heard it 10,000 times before, yet still ask questions and become irate as if our processes are totally foreign to them.  You are not allowed to place callers on hold, even if their issue requires brief research to be resolved.  There is often NO break in between calls, and breaks are often cancelled depending on which way the wind blows. 

High accuracy and productivity is expected at all times despite the fact that the computer systems and software are outdated, not well maintained, and frequently crashes.  Our phone systems are shoddy at best, and the phone prompts takes callers to every other department save the one they need.  It is sometimes impossible to answer a call because the antiquated telephony software becomes unresponsive, opening you up to a possible "call avoidance" infraction.

I'm not required to use any critical thought, creativity, or free-thinking.  Employing these traits will cause management to regard you as if you have three heads with five eyes a piece. 

Speaking of management - it is nebulous and unsupportive at best, and counter-intuitive and inept at worst.  No two managers will give you the same answer on any one topic, and changes are often made not because they are necessary for the "big picture", or for efficiency's sake, but just because they can be made.  Change is a constant (true with any organization).  But the changes within this organization are arbitrarily and cavalierly made without consideration to how they impact workflow efficiency, productivity, service levels, or customer satisfaction.  Managers and supervisors blatantly show favoritism at the expense of office morale.  Productivity suffers as a result, and management attempts to sugar coat their actions and place the blame on staff versus showing a modicum of integrity and owning their mistakes.  All of this has created a team that is anything but unified and a microcosm of misery that would drive any sane person to alcoholism.

My department's fascist approach to personnel management would make Mussolini a proud man.  Prepare to have personal liberties stripped as you walk through the door:  you are not allowed to have your cell phone (at all, for ANY reason, despite the fact other departments aren't held to this same standard.)  Most reading material outside of company provided propaganda is verboten (with the insane amount of calls coming in, it's unlikely you'd have time to read a sentence, let alone a whole book).  Need to use the restroom?  You're allotted an average of 4 minutes a day for bathroom breaks (I hope you're able to pop a squat, wipe and wash quickly for they DO monitor this.)  You're not allowed music at your desk, no matter how tasteful or benign.  And no browsing the web (although I wholly understand and somewhat support this, this organization takes it to the extreme.)  My personal favorite is the frequent use of scathing, electronic vitriol mass e-mailed to all associates in response to the impropriety of one or two.  Apparently, it is a foreign concept to address those individuals versus chiding the entire group.  There's a considerable difference between announcing the code of conduct and disparaging and entire group for the actions of a few.  We all have copies of the same handbook, code of ethics, and code of conduct.  These rules do not apply, however, if you are one of the manager's pets.  

If you have an issue within your department, a co-worker, or - heaven forbid - a member of management, don't expect help from Human Resources.  They are in place for the company's interest ONLY and couldn't care less about the individual.  You are just another number.  Never forget that should you be employed here.

Co-workers.  Hm.  Most of my co-workers are duplicitous and quite immature.  There's much gossip in the office, and no small amount of "fraternization" between ranks.  Many spend their time trying to police the actions of others versus letting management do their jobs.  Someone will always be worried about what YOU are doing and not about doing their jobs.  Oh, I should also mention there is absolutely NO ethnic diversity here.  I doubt this is by happenstance and is solely by design.  I feel that this has also contributed to the nocuous environment that pervades the office.  I find it hilarious that there hasn't been an EEOC complaint filed yet.  

The most difficult part of my job?  Aside from the info above, deplorable benefit packages (high deductibles, high premiums, scant coverage), dealing with the office politics, the often rude, opprobrious providers that call, and the lack of internal support is by far the shining jewels in this category.

The most enjoyable part of the job?  Well, it's something to add to the resume.  Leaving the office at the end of my shift is quite nice.  We accrue PTO quickly.  Good luck holding on to it, though.  

What I've learned?  I've learned that I can do - and deserve - much better, and as such, I have resumed my employment search.

2/3 managers on the team I worked with not fit to be management due to lack of common sense, lack of basic respect, or lack of willingness to learn from subordinates regarding simple things (counting, time-keeping, documentation methods) due to the mentality that THEY have the title so they know EVERYTHING even when on several occasions the situation absolutely defied common sense. The example that made me leave this job: if a task of ‘manually keep track of outgoing calls’ was given at 4:30pm one day and turned in by end of business at 5:30pm on the same day and everybody but one employee (me) was present to participate in this policy the first day. Said employee (me) was informed of this new policy the following day at 3:30pm and showed a discrepancy of 3 auto-logged vs. manually logged calls for the TWO hour window from 3:30pm-5:30pm that the policy was initiated (the following day due to absence). When I reported that the phone system was not logging all of my outgoing call attempts (which was the entire reason for us keeping track manually to compare to what was being logged by the system because everybody’s outgoing production appeared to be low). I was insistently told that everyone from the previous day had absolutely no discrepancies and 60+ outgoing calls in the 8 hour work day the day previous that the policy implemented.. ONE hour before end of business.. I had to explain several times in several different ways how this did not make sense and wasn’t possible for the staff to have the manual call counts from opening to closing and they HAD to just be counting the listed calls in the call log because nobody was informed of this policy until the end of the day. Again was assured that no other staff members reported any discrepancies the previous (and first) day of us manually counting our outgoing calls for 8 hours in only 1-2 hours apparently for no reason because management was telling me in a way that was implying I was lying about my outgoing production, insistently TELLING/LYING to me and saying no other team members were having issues. So they implemented this new manual counting form to be turned in by the whole team just because I was “lying” about my call volume? I texted 4 other team members who assured me they were also having large chunks of their work not being documented automatically by the system. I sent screenshots of these co-worker responses to my manager and I was told that “the situation will be further investigated and IF I’m right then adjustments would be made” but only after an investigation and “IF” what I was saying was right. WHAT ADJUSTMENTS?! I just wanted the manager to stop BSing and admit that she must have misunderstood what I meant.. but no, she meant “IF” 8 hours was infact actually more hours than 1 or 2 hours.. “IF” infact the staff members didn’t all have a psychic moment and just know of the forthcoming policy change and just somehow know to manually count they calls that morning? IF infact the policy was implemented the previous day via time-stamped email.. this was just the final ridiculous sounding thing uttered by management about a concern I had that directly affected my position and raises and I just stopped caring because it had become very apparent to me and several of my co-workers that the chain of command was a joke and if this is the type of management that United chose to represent them after several calls and e-mails to try and escalate the problem to different departments to find a solution.. as a completely remote employee with no access to in person buildings, departments, managers it is very hard to come to a resolution.. those of us who were unhappy were left with no other option but to leave mostly out of sheer frustration with the lower than average pay, mediocre equipment, never getting straight answers to questions and the blatant disrespect from management and disregard for majority of our concerns.. it wasn’t worth it in the end. I was so excited to get this position.. it took several months to actually obtain and get all the paperwork done and everything worked out and get an actual start date, it was nothing like the position I discussed on the phone and accepted.. my pay was never what I accepted upon accepting the position.. I gave up a really well-paying position that I loved at a facility that I loved due to what felt immediately like a mis-advertised data entry position. The one single task that most of us were assigned were basically just basic health surveys, not nursing related at all.. the call lists started horrible and ended horrible.. this job genuinely felt like blatantly harassing elderly people over the phone to obtain a few health history questions that I could have found answers to in the chart had I actually been able to do that. I have listed a lot of bad parts of this position and could list many more but on the other hand our main team manager was amazing and personally gave me some advice that I will never forget. She was a great leader and LISTENED and seemed to value us. She deserved the raise she got and when I left she was the overall team manager. I would absolutely never recommend somebody to work for this department doing this specific task as a job with the company. Maybe explore another option within the company because there are so many.. this was just not a good one and my experience was terrible and I regret it. 

From the beginning, they train you for everything, and almost always have help available. Almost. At times nobody will be available to help, and then you get scolded for too much dead air, or long hold times because you're stuck just waiting. But, they don't make you take calls you haven't been trained for. Its usually one off situations where some information is missing that you need to ask help for. 

Direct supervisors care about you, management, not so much. I worked in 3 different departments with them; Medicaid member services in Hawaii, Military and Veterans in the west region, and Medicaid provider services for Arizona, California, and Washington. In all 3, my direct supervisors were amazing, M&V management was pretty good, but management in member and provider services was pretty heartless. They don't care what you're going through or about your wellbeing. They talk like they do, but never actually approve anything because they want you working at all times. They constantly tell you that they won't hire more agents because we are over-staffed, even though the call volume is too high for our agents to handle , but their eyes bulge at a request for a leave of absence because we're understaffed and can't allow anyone to take time off... and then they volunteer our department to help other understaffed departments handle their phone calls. Everyone was so stressed out that multiple people were looking for new jobs. 

They also continuously give CSRs new responsibilities to lighten the load of other departments, but again, no pay raises or additional staff to help. They are always changing and "updating" old systems to new systems that don't work, and then tell you to work with it. One system that provided multiple different kinds of information was phased out to introduce a new system that only gave one kind of information, and it was highly limited information. My biggest complaint about this company is it seems like their system and policy creators never worked the CSR position a day in their lives, so they don't realize all their "improvements" are hindrances to agents who work the job everyday.

They have great benefits, but for the largest health insurance company in the world, their health insurance is very sub-par. Even the more expensive low deductible plans have deductibles that make your insurance too expensive to use. I was only able to use mine after gaining enough in my HSA. We're talking like 2 years. I couldn't afford to use it before that. When asked, they said it was because of government limits and they couldn't make it any cheaper. However, every other single person I knew at different jobs had way better insurance than we did. 

Also, I always got taxed much higher at United Healthcare. I made more money per hour with them, but I took home only like $70 more than when I worked at my previous job making 3 or 4 dollars less. And I took home less than other people at different companies who were making the same amount as me. I thought it would come out even when I got my taxes back but it didn't. My tax returns were pretty much the same as the others taking home more money. We all complained, they told us all our tax stuff was correct but gave us all a raise shortly there after, so we dropped it. But still, very weird.

I have a lot of complaints about them but overall, as long as you aren't requesting anything from management and you're able to role with all the changes they make, it's actually a really easy and chill job if you like call center work. It's pretty easy to make your stats and usually your direct supervisors are awesome and easy to work with. The pay is really good, and aside from their medical, their benefits are really awesome. You'd be surprised how many places you get a discount at. 

I would work for them again, but not at a call center position and that's only because I very much dislike the manager in my region, and I burnt out on call center work. It's not exactly easy to get a job in other departments when coming from the call center though. I tried. 

TL;DR If you're a manager, fine. If you're a worker, leave it to the contractors. 

What you get out of working there depends on what kind of person you are. I wish I could be more negative, but really, UHG is so big everyone's going to have a different experience. But here's mine.

From what I saw, they put more attention on managers and decisions-makers than those who do the grunt work. And there are managers everywhere (it's managers all the way down). Your boss will spend more time looking up at his or her manager, making sure they approve, than down at their employees making sure they have what they need. They don't have to deal with IT problems when it takes days just to merge your two lines of code into master because of something eight levels removed.

My team was way too big for an Agile methodology. In-office developers alone, there were 24 of us. You can't have a stand-up meeting with that many people. And that's not counting QAs or BAs. The software is EXTRAORDINARILY complex and tightly coupled. The main branch often breaks because it's so tightly coupled so someone can easily commit something that breaks it for everyone. They adhere so tightly to Agile Scrum, but don't say "no" to the hard decisions (e.g. regularly booking way over capacity, two week iterations that don't improve the product, but make it so those managers know what to expect so they can tell their managers). Nothing is spelled out, there's operational knowledge in scattered people's brains everywhere.

Creativity is not valued. By the time you get a spec to implement (which, good luck to know where your marching orders come from each day) it's been so finely tuned it's basically in pseudocode at that point. Their policies are dictated by out-of-touch managers six levels up. For example, no one has a personal space. You're expected to clear it off every end-of-day. This is so you can take your laptop anywhere to converse with others. Except A) most people need something of theirs to keep at their desk, like a keyboard rest or special chair or coffee mug B) you can't get to know anyone if they always sit in a different place. You only know them by names, not faces or location. How are you supposed to get to know anyone if you can't find them? So you end up using e-mail or IM for everything, even if they're right next to you.

They say they care about employees, but make no effort to make personal connections to them. I've been confronted with certain actions that were based entirely on hearsay evidence and the "no one else seems to have a problem figuring this out" deal. I've literally never had a conversation with my team leader (and I've had three in the 2 years I've been there. Four if you count having "no manager" for three or four months). And therefore I have no interest in pleasing that person.

Everything is by e-mail. Policy changes, organization changes, team get-togethers, all by e-mail. A team lunch can have 23 people. How are you supposed to get to know anyone in that capacity? Every year they post a workplace survey, and bug everybody to complete it, but I've never seen anyone change based on it. I was on the survey team one year and I saw point after point ignored. They even said they ignore the comments.

As an employee of the "Population Health Management" division my job was extremely specific... take and make the exact same calls pertaining to the same exact conversation, day in and day out. The only variety is whether or not we make the calls (thus giving us some background on the member and control over the call) or take calls (engaging with random members about a program they have preconceived notions about and little appreciation for). There was little variety in the work day and very few of the members are appreciative of the work we do. Due to this lack of variety, no additional experience is garnered that may help to advance your career (like most people working the telephones want) so you can reasonably expect to be stuck in the same role and at best the same division for the length of your tenure there. Since this is a service to employees of other companies, expect to work a large amount of evening and probably even weekends to begin with (I had to work 70% of my hours either after 5:00 PM or on Saturday) which leads to a poor work/life balance and, for many people doing an intense telephonic job like the one I have, depression. Also, near the end of the year (Oct.-Dec.) expect to work OT since that's when incentive deadlines are.

Despite many issues being brought to management's attention, very little is done to help find that balance and in fact on their yearly employee survey last year there were disclaimers that "...these topics may not be reflective of the action and directions of the company." This company is strictly in it for themselves, not you, me, or the members they serve. You can also expect to throw your self-respect and integrity away while being employed here since managers don't stand for decency, respect, and holding members accountable. If you stand-up for yourself when a member is being rude or disrespectful you can expect to be punished by a slew of potential ways including but not limited to... little to no raise, prevention of advancement for 1 year (happened to a friend of mine), revoking of work-at-home status, and/or termination. Lastly, managers and senior management would prefer to bend-over-backwards for member's to get their incentive than to help their coach's workloads and hold member's accountable. It's no longer uncommon now for "completion requirements" to be changed simply to ensure completion.

If you are lucky, you will be put on a team with a supervisor that doesn't motivate through the use of fear and micromanagement. I am blessed to have the managers I have/had, but many others don't have that opportunity. Managers have been known to screenshot a person's screen, monitor instant messages, or in my case, deny a "kudos" on the account of it "not being professional enough".

THE GOOD PART(S)... 
- They provide what has been dubbed as the "golden handcuff". They pay very well initially, but don't expect very much in the way of a raise (1._% this past year which is well below the 3% inflation rate). What this means is that eventually you will be losing money if you make a career in this position. 
- The job can be extremely rewarding if you get the right members. However, WFM (Workforce Management) adjust your schedule week-to-week so there's little chance of long-term connection.
- Senior management has stated there is a benefit to having employees WAH (Work At Home) so eventually you will be shuffled home to work.
- Since there is such high turnover, you can expect pretty solid job security. They are constantly looking for/in need of new health coaches.

Compensation is tremendous including base salary and bonus structure.  Dental is also impressive.  Most staff are friendly and intelligent.  Frequent social and charitable activities help morale.  Good work/life balance.  
Medical insurance is tough.  On-boarding was poor and lacked relevance.  Materials should have included a road map for success with roles/responsibilities of position, claims platform diagrams, lines of defense, instead of 50 pages dedicated to hooking up to WiFi.
Management is poor and ineffective.  My manager set me up for failure and did not follow through on her promises including getting my input on projects I wanted to work on and approving training I wanted.  She claimed after I started that she would be an advocate for me when in fact she was anything but.  I constantly had to go to her for work, and remind her of training requests I needed approval on.  Furthermore, she scheduled me for work I had no idea about and she didn’t either when I asked her.  Feedback was mostly critical/negative rather than constructive and often merely based on hearsay and anecdotal which from a manager is taken as gospel.  It also was rare that I received real time feedback from a manager; they would instead tell my manager all the things I did wrong and she would believe them.  While there are resources on HR Direct like Learn Source where you can chart your development, management is extremely critical of everything you do so unless they approve of you, you will not succeed in the department.  This can be challenging since managers often communicate poorly if at all to staff.  For instance, roles and responsibilities of various staff members are not clear or updated anywhere for staff to see and managers did not communicate these expectations to me until it was too late.  Some managers have different expectations so that complicates matters further.  Without this communication and coaching from management I often felt sabotaged instead of empowered.  What I learned in time was that managers delegate most of the roles and responsibilities they are listed as responsible for on that document online downward and Leads do it as well often without telling their team.  Turnover is quite high and one director seemed proud of that as she boasted that many staff don’t last six months while complaining how hard it is to fire people.  Managers seem to excel at negative feedback and seemingly would rather get rid of staff than develop them.  I had to constantly bring up examples of my contributions since managers will either minimize or ignore any strengths you might have and are all too ready to detail your weaknesses/faults which were not tied to any data/metrics and had little impact on the project.  Worse yet, managers are arrogant and overconfident in their leadership abilities and seem to be above reproach as they are consistently rewarded and praised by senior leadership.  Most of the department training is trivial and lacks practicality.  Since feedback is such a big part of the department and staff are so poor at giving it that should be a focus of training.  A big part of feedback is supporting it with documentation of examples rather than hearsay/subjective statements.  The feedback would be a lot more credible and constructive if it outlined strengths as well as weaknesses.  Otherwise the feedback can be perceived as a tool to knock an employee down by cherry picking those incidents that fit a narrative.

From the start UHG is an employer that focuses on productivity and profitability. Emails come out from various sources drilling that information into each employee's head. The organization also makes a good display of how they have values and they want you to succeed. They are very lax with their IT departments, they still haven't left windows XP (heck, they only got XP in 2005) Everything in their systems seems to be held together with scotch tape and a few safety pins. When a major event happens they aren't prepared to react or they don't want to believe it's happening. When they finally get around to authorizing a new system or upgrade they suddenly want to yesterday and put so much pressure on the development to get it done that the result is a complete mess that they say "look how much we saved" The people who have to use it say "jeez, how am I going to hit my productivity now with this disaster" as well as "this is the list of manual work arounds because the system doesn't do what it was supposed to do" I've seen this with service systems, claim systems, enrollment systems, phone systems, and email. Benefits are sub par considered the organizations focus on "health and well being" Depending on your department you may have excellent work life balance or a disastrous one where if you take a day off you dread returning because no one is able or willing to cover your role because they as well have such a workload. The 401k, health savings, and Stock programs are good until you leave then you have to close them or get fleeced with various charges on the accounts. Moving up in the organization pretty much means you need to live in Minnesota or Wisconsin because they have all the "main offices" in those areas. Other areas may have good sized locations, but read the next area to judge.

That is accurate in part, what they don't tell you is that they don't want you long term. It seems that the organization has a long and robust history of opening offices for a given function, say "claims investigation" they will go and hire hundreds of people for this task and things will go on fine for a few years. Then when they need to improve their profitability they will close the office (normally when the lease on the building is up) and everyone will be given the option to "work from home" from that point on they will systematically work each employee out of the organization. If you are hired in your late 30's or early 40's BEWARE. They will use you for 8 to 12 years and then get rid of you. This has happened again and again. A job would be moved from Florida to Georgia to Houston, California in 8 years. Nothing like being in your early 50's and needing to start over not having had to look for a job in over 10 years. As for management, I had some good, and some bad, the last was a individual who picked key phrases from the last management book he read and put them in an email. Ask him to explain what he means and he can't because he doesn't understand, he just likes to use the "catch phrases" to sound like he's in the know. Many of the other managers are the same. Organizationally the company uses a lot of pomp and circumstance to say how they value diversity, but when push comes to shove they are just trying to look caring, but are not actually caring or fair.

Working for UHG wasn't all bad, but I wasted too much time there trying to make a difference for the people who've lives depended on it. Most of the time I was cleaning up a lot of tragic messes that could have been avoided and I could have made in better impact with a different organization.

I would say that this place is pretty much an enjoyable job to have as long as you fully understand what it is that you are signing up for. Don't expect 100% consistency especially if they interview you for an upcoming position in a new segment that they are adding to the corporation. I understand that things need working into and circumstances change as things come up but also show us the employees a little more compassion just like they want us to show the members. A typical work day outside of your 8-16 week training is very structured (a PLUS) you have about 5 minutes to start your day and bring up your systems. After that depending on the department that you work for its back to back calls approximately 45-65 per day. Breaks and Lunches are scheduled based on business needs and are scattered throughout the day depending on your choice of 30-minute to an hour lunch. Management will give you the typical I have been there and done that.... I have held the same position as you and in most cases almost always they are being honest. Management will sometimes pick favorites and carry out conversations with individuals about other individuals. In the training department they seem to like to alter the company policies to their liking to suit their own needs. As stated on their Human Resources webpage "Company Policy" you do not overturn company rules unless there is absolute need with explanation. I learned a lot about health care at this company and still learn very much every day. I have never endured a training like they supply to their newbies I have completed three of their training's successfully and I would say that the first two were the best and most informative. Co-Workers are Co-Workers you all know how that is. My favorite phrase is "Come in, do your job, go home." Not that I don't like to build great morale and have culture within the company its just that when you are dealing with someone for more than 8 hours a day it can get to be a lot like your second family. With that being said there are ups and downs with each individual you meet but as UHC like to stay just give them the positive intent and we can all get along. The hardest part about the job is feeling like there is no end and never feeling accomplished. Maybe I never was able to grasp the point that upon completion of a call you should feel satisfied but..... I just don't I would like a job that gives me a task to work on and makes me work my hardest and really put my noggin to work in order to feel like "wow I just solved that issue" to have that satisfaction of completion in your workday is amazing. The most enjoyable part of my job that I experienced here at United Health Group was that I was able to take the time for my members that I had a really great connection with and write them a personalized letter about the conversation that took place on that day. Although it is still scripted and approved by legal its nice to add that personalized touch. :) One more thing I really liked about it was when I worked for the After Hours Crisis Dept. we were all like one big huge family; we did everything for each other all of the time. From birthdays to baby showers, holidays (including st. Patrick day) to mourning. We were all there for each other and I honestly can say that I would go back and work for free for that dept at any time. :) Well I hope this review is helpful.

No matter how much you go above and beyond on a daily basis, you are not recognized or rewarded. The only recognition you will receive is when you do wrong and you are pulled into a conference room and berated condescendingly by management. Multiple ethics complaints by multiple employees on treatment by management, go ignored.  This in turn causes high turnover among employees, either quitting looking for a better job or being fired for random reasons. 

The only room for advancement is within the callcenter line of business.  Applications for other positions outside of the callcenter conveniently are discarded for multiple employees even though well qualified. They keep you written up for everything from your stats to absences so that you do not receive raises year after year, you do not receive quarterly bonuses and so that you cannot apply internally for other positions. You are given rules to abide by which change on a weekly basis and your manager can change the rules to suit their needs.  

When you start with this company you are elated at working for a huge corporation thinking that this is the greatest job ever...and then you start seeing that the company does nothing for their employees except demand more and more from you without giving anything in return.  They do a survey each year for their management and company where employees are drilled, harassed and encouraged to lie to give them good marks.  If you do not give them good marks, your team does not receive a raise for that year. If you give them good marks, you get a raise and they get to post in media that UHC employees are the happiest employees ever.  When you advise of issues that are wrong and what could be done to make things better, they never make the effort to change the dysfunctional process.

Constant mishandling of accounts, angry customers calling multiple times because no one calls them back and nothing is fixed, delaying healthcare for people that pay large amounts of money to be insured. Constant systems issues going down daily. Constant outsourcing to 3rd world countries to save money which causes additional issues with accounts.

You are not allowed to take time off between November and March, and when you want to schedule time off it is determined by your seniority, skill set and stats with the company. By the time it is your turn to schedule time off all of the good days are taken, no fridays or mondays available, no time near the holidays and no complete weeks to take a vacation available.  You are only allowed to call in 4 days a year, anything over this and you are written up.  If you are more than 10 minutes late for work it is considered a half a day.  As soon as your write up comes off, they write you up for your call handled time.  In 2 years, there was only a few months that I was not on write up.

The only good thing that I will miss about this company is they provide $600 a year to help pay for your insurance if you complete health tasks and there is always opportunity for overtime. Otherwise, they do nothing for you at Christmas of Thanksgiving or any other time of the year...no parties, no bonus, nothing except suggest that you do a potluck and bring your own food for everyone else.

If you want to suffer from mental breakdowns, love disorganization, adore being micromanaged, awful pay, be overworked, and dehumanized then this the job for you. The training is around 18 weeks but oddly it’s not enough time. Technically it’s 3 and a half weeks of your trainer cramming a lot of info in then you thrown to the wolves for remainder of training. If you are lucky you will get a trainer that’s know what they are doing but I was one of the unlucky ones.

The day will consist of calls are back to back of angry “members” yelling  about health plans THEY signed up for while not being able to defend yourself. Oh and the surveys they do can make or break you. That’s right. Your livelihood is in the palms of strangers if you make them mad by telling them something is not covered when their plan state it’s not covered. . Having to deal with outdated systems and information. Phone numbers don’t work. Lack of help. Supervisors don’t have a clue what they doing but put the blame on you. All they know is the verbiage they were trained with. Meaning they can’t actually break nothing down and explain it so they tell you “Read the advocacy”. You may get put into 5-6 skills of calls. You will have to look at medical benefits, claims, do provider outreach, spending accounts, assist with pharmacy, etc. This were it get hilarious because they make you do that but they have departments dedicated to CLAIMS AND PHARMACY! And reps that’s trained efficiently in SPENDING ACCOUNTS! It truly make no sense!!! Then on top of that you may have to work 2 separate jobs by force and only get paid for 1. 

Hours are based on shift bid. Which is ridiculous because certain departments get to work standard 8-5 which is unfair. They claim people with highest metrics get the shift they want but it’s not true. If that’s the case then majority of the company would have the hours they want. Everything in this job is based on favoritism. Want to be promoted, get raise, or switch to different department? You’ll get it if you one of your supervisors favorite. If not you will be blocked by your supervisor. If you new more than likely you will get stuck on a late shift when you first start. If you have kids or married  DONT apply. You won’t enough time to tend to your loved ones.  This company preaches they care about the mental health, diversity, etc  of their employees.  Lies on top of lies. You nothing but a NUMBER. Micromanagement and egotism is out of control here. Just beyond childish. This place a stereotypical call center. If you don’t play into it then you kicked out the door asap! Management dont understand the definition of  professionalism. They instead go by their personal feelings. If they don’t like you even though you do your job well then it’s a wrap! I did come across a few good supervisors though. Only a few which is sad considering how big the company is. 

I only recommend to apply for this job if you a college graduate looking for experience to put on your resume or someone who is single and older looking for a new beginning in a career change. I do not recommend staying longer than a year. That’s it. The pay is NOT worth the stress. The benefits is terrible. You learn a lot about insurance. That’s the ONLY good thing about the job. If you be a “teacher’s pet” here you’ll go far. If not then you will go through chaos for the simple fact you chose to keep your dignity. 

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