For the last two or three years we’ve had so many RIFs, and I cannot figure out why. I’ve been here for almost 17 years and this is just so unusual. We are walking on eggshells feeling like it could be us any day. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, and we seriously wonder if the company is just falling apart. Does anybody have any insight into why we’re having so many RIFs?
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@a4 that would follow Gail's plan to retirement. Same as at UHC. Sell the staff, take apart piece by piece, whatever you can't move overseas sell to a vendor and pay the same people to do the job but now they are outsourced and now that the company is just a skeleton, barely hanging on compared to what it used to be ...exit and take your 66 billion with you. Seeing that this is the exact same footprint she used at UHC this must be exactly what the stockholders wanted her to do here.
@bj Awe, that’s sweet! The company cares! Lol
@b9 I disagree. The company definitely has values: protect SLT bonuses and shareholder value at all cost, especially if it means adopting unproven AI and dramatically reducing member (and employee) outcomes.
My director selects 1 to extract knowledge, then give poor review to eliminate the person. The company always let her hire more every year, or eliminate another team to add to hers.
She is the messenger of God and her act is always God's will.
I am afraid.
I've been here a while too, and I've never seen anything like this. For the first five or six years I was here, it was rare to hear of a RIF, or even a termination. We just all came to work, did good work, and went home at night confident we'd have a job the next day.
Then, the occasional RIF. Small, perhaps every other year. Then once a year at most. Until we are where we are now, where they're constant, senseless, and those let go are sworn to secrecy lest they lose their severance packages, and now even the severance packages are smaller and shorter.
The upshot is that I have never felt so much like I'm walking a razor's edge than I have for the past 2-3 years (after really kicking up around 2019), and it constantly gets worse. It used to be that you'd have to be a "not meets" or have the misfortune of being a part of a small department restructure, or maybe even have a sh---y boss, before you had to worry about your job. Now, even high-performers are on eggshells, and with good reason, because they're being sent packing too. Your boss valuing you doesn't even help you, because they're just as likely to get riffed as you are, and even if not, they often don't have the last word.
It's a bit of a frog in boiling water kind of situation, where you just kind of accept that this is how it is, but when you stop to think about what it was like ten years ago (and back) versus now, the difference is striking.
It's truly depressing. I know that I'm not the only one who views every escape from a RIF as just getting one step closer to the one I don't escape.
It’s a dysfunctional organization period. Leadership is non existent and the company has no real values.
@ad I will take Option 2 for 10 0 Alex
If you have worked here for more than 5 yrs you will see a consistent decline in interest, appreciation, or care for the people who are doing the actual work. The average employee is only a number, totally dispensable and not valued in the least. Constant "coaching" is not mentoring, or helping someone grow it is micromanagement. It is to remind you that you don't deserve investment, just silent obiedience. You are "rewarded" by keeping your job - for now -such short term planning, no true strategy other then sell, sell, sell with no clue if you can actually deliver what someone else promised. If staff can't they are punished. The Sale is rewarded.
This is the greediest organization I have ever worked for - When the CEO is making 20 + million a year and the average peon gets a 1.75% merit - it tells you all you need to know.
Option 1- If you are running a company and intelligent - you would have a strategic growth plan, competent, lean leadership and would reward workers who help you to execute your strategy. You might even sacrifice some short term financial gains to execute your well thought out, strategic but still agile plans. Option 2- If you are lacking in ethics and intelligence you would surround yourself with sycophants and rely on consultants to hop on the latest fad and jump from one half a-s strategy to the next without the ability to properly execute any of them. Your friends in high places will lie to you about how things are going and you will believe them because you are totally removed from the real work. To show savings each quarter you’ll move work off shore, RIF people; demoralizing the staff who are actually keeping the lights on. You’ll shuffle leadership and scapegoat them and pay huge fines to cover up that your data is bad and you are walking a very fine line between incompetence and illegal actions. I think there will be more Medicaid/Medicare audits and more massive “oops our bad” payouts. The senior leadership team will get their bonuses and will get a temporary spike in stock options so they can cash out and make even more money. You’ll note the CFO tried to cash out in less than a year. It is public record when the SLT sells stock and there is a whole lot of selling and very little buying, which shows how much confidence they have in the organization- (not much). The short term slash and burn approach isn’t sustainable. Just like in agriculture eventually nothing will grow. It appears that there is no logic because in my humble opinion the only logic is individual greed.
No direction whatsoever. Leadership is dropping like flies too. The Florida market has been running without any senior leadership for months, everyone is jumping ship due to the lack of leadership and constant RIFS. Elevance is a sinking ship.
Maybe we're strategically positioning in the hopes that someone buys us.