CVS Health reviews

Low salary, company culture concerns

1.) Yearly budgeted hour cutting causes job insecurity and unsustainable workloads. 2.) Store Manager and Store Manager In Training (SMIT) roles are terrible for work-life balance and are incredibly emotionally/mentally demanding. 3.) The theft policy is standard for corporate retail (non-interference), but the added incentives for management to reduce shrink can lead to issues in the workplace and added stress. 4.) The customer survey system sucks, and it adds constant stress. 1.) Every January-March, there are massive reductions in budgeted scheduled hours from corporate (reductions of 1/3 to 1/2, including pharmacist/manager hours). It can lead to less job security in the field. You often hear managers use their PTO hours, don't clock in, or don't schedule themselves, but still work a shift because there is so much work to do, but not enough hours. They'll also do this to have enough hours left in the budget, so that their full-time workers still get >30hrs and their part-time workers get >8hrs of work. Store managers in California are paid hourly because of a class action suit regarding this. There are also several stories of pharmacists who felt pressured to work off the clock, including after hours, before opening, and during lunch, to catch up on work. 2.) The Store Manager and Store Manager in Training (SMIT) roles can be exhausting. Expected scheduled hours are 45 hours, 6 days a week. SMITs seem always to be surprised when they hear this, so I don't think they say it before you are already in. The District Leaders and District Asset Protection Leaders (DAPL) can be incredibly punitive and create significant stress as they continually demand more from their managers (who then pass it down the chain). Getting "chewed out" is common and frequent, and you will get written up, etc., often. Store managers receive yearly cash bonuses based on store performance, which can be helpful, but it is easy to lose out due to one or two metrics. In places where managers are paid hourly (ex: California), the income is very decent due to the constant 5-16 hours of overtime every week. In areas where they are salaried, I would not recommend this job unless you value the experience on your resume for future opportunities. 3.) The official theft policy is to not acknowledge thieves or acts of theft. You can only deter via friendly customer service. In practice, DAPLs and Store Managers will constantly pressure colleagues to intervene in theft, often just short of directly telling them to stop it actively. Store managers and DAPLs have a lot of their promotion opportunities and yearly cash bonuses relying on shrink being less year over year, consistently. In less than ideal stores, they can get pretty emotional with colleagues who they think are just letting people steal from them. At the same time, it is a quick firing from the company if you get caught breaking the non-interference policy. 4.) The customer receipt survey system (Pharmacy and Retail) is pretty rigged against you. You are only evaluated by the average of the results of "likelihood to recommend CVS" question for the month as a pass/fail. Not even the customer service rating question matters. For ratings=6/10 or lower, you are given -100 pts. If it is 7/10 or 8/10, you get 0 pts (effectively negative). For 9/10 and 10/10, you get 100 pts. The passing average for the month is 60 pts on the -100 to 100 pt scale. Thus, one 6/10 review requires five 9/10 or 10/10 reviews to reach or regain a passing score (2x 10/10s to cancel out an 8/10). This monthly pass/fail is one-third of your store health's metrics, and consistently failing it will lead to write-ups, mandatory training sessions, and significant stress.