Benefitfocus reviews

Where to begin?? There are so many?!?! Sadly this was once a great company. Shawn loved his company. Then it went public and Ray came in and all hell has broke loose. Global resources are a joke. It just causes more work for everyone in the US. The reorg is a joke because no one knows what they are doing!! They waste so much time on pointless meetings and the structure changes day to day. People get promoted not on their hard work but if they are friends with their managers. It's seriously a joke. Each day I hear more and more people are being let go and they are actually the smart ones that they should keep. A client can complain all they want about someone on their account but if their Manager is their friend, they end up promoted. Ha! You are asked daily to lie to your clients and god forbid if you defend your clients legit complaints you get looked down upon. Sales promises things to clients that BF can't even do. Especially when it comes to payroll. Clearly sales isn't trained properly on what can and can't be done. Implementation team tries to throw garbage to client managers so they can get rid of the client and make them go live way before they should go live. No one is ever held accountable for this. Bad implementation cause for an over horrible experience for the client. The executives that were great ones either have left or are being demoted which is such a shame. The culture that was once great is gone! It's all lies that BF cares about their employees they certainly don't anymore. When Shawn was in charge they sure did. HR is the biggest joke. All employees can attest to that. You can go tell them things till your blue in the face and tell them things that are going wrong and show them proof and they do nothing about it. Whether BF wants to admit it or not, layoffs have been happening all summer. I left by choice but I know lots of good employees that were let go. Salaries are the biggest joke!!! They are nowhere in comparison to other tech companies in Charleston or the nation. I know the BF response on here says they are, but no they are far from it. Especially for management. Call center...those poor unfortunate souls!! They are treated as if they are in high school. Watched liked hawks even when they go to the bathroom and get graded like they are in elementary school. Run if you get a job offer in that department. Their management team seriously needs to be questioned by the executives! There are maybe two managers that know what they are doing. Benefitfocus University is also a joke and a waste of time and money. Here's an idea, if you need to let go of people ,let go of the jobs that are not really needed and keep the people for the jobs that are really needed and under staffed. Oh one last thing the majority of employees hate their job, are stressed out of their minds, overworked, hate management, and have had to get on Xanax or some other drug. People have had anxiety attacks and breakdowns and managers don't really even care. Oh and the back stabbing there is out of control!!! Don't expect to get promoted unless you're in with your manager. If you are in with your manager, you can be the dumbest person but they will promote you. I can go on and on but I can't waste anymore of my time on Benefitfous because I had to when I worked there.

I've read through a lot of these reviews and I think that some good points have been missed. Regarding the salary - It is competitive to other local companies for full time jobs. Other companies at which full time is considered 40 hours and overtime is paid for additional hours. In the past Open Enrollment lasted 3-4 months and was a crazy but the rest of the year was pretty relaxed and made up for a terrible season. The last two years it seems it hasn't stopped. Many employees are working "OE hours (60+) well into spring when it should end in December/January. This is likely due to the fact that the number of clients are growing exponentially but the number of employees aren't. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Dozens of employees have been let go in the last few weeks for various reasons and there's just not enough time to replace and train those people before OE. Some say you can't be "forced" to work the crazy Open Enrollment hours - but you can't do your job satisfactorily in 40 hours and if you don't do your job well you'll be fired soooo... The company is hiring quite rapidly in India. I have nothing wrong with outsourcing, I'm no dummy and I understand the business need for less expensive labor. If a company is going to make this decision, however, they need to invest enough resources into properly training and supporting their employees half way across the world. Someone hired in the US isn't fully competent for 6+ months and that's with dozens of knowledgeable people surrounding them. I've been at BF two years and still ask questions constantly. The company cannot expect to hire 25 new people thousands of miles away, dedicate one person to them for 2-3 weeks and expect them to be able to function independently. It doesn't help that the company we use for outsourcing, Valuelabs, is terrible. The employees have no experience, no analytical or critical thinking skills, and do not take any initiative. Other companies I've worked with over seas, including in India, are light years ahead of the children Valuelabs hires. While BF did use this company before getting our new COO and President, Ray August, started with us we've quadrupled (at least) our employee base over there since he started. This is no surprise since he has a long standing relationship with Valuelabs and has done this with many US companies through his career.