Pros
Love my work environment, have learned many things to add to my skill set, have met some very good people at Kindred. I stay because my particular work environment, schedule, and rate of pay are satisfactory enough that I don't yet find the "cons" reason enough to leave.
Cons
I am personally offended that Kindred leadership opts to take benefits and pay raises from employees in the trenches while gifting upper management with ridiculously large bonuses. No one should be receiving extras while some are losing pieces of their standard benefits. No employee should be taking cuts while others are being lavished with extras. I am also offended that with the insane buying power a company our size has, we do not have a better medical coverage plan. Kindred has huge bargaining power with so many employees. Instead, Kindred has given itself a cheaper price tag, leaving employees with ever shrinking coverage and ever increasing costs. It is disheartening that we fill out these surveys every year and see no improvement. Kindred leadership can easily see where they are going wrong and the choice is consistently made to pursue profits and let the non-upper management employees hang. Kindred Healthcare pays salaries on the low end of the scale. If you don't negotiate high coming in, you will soon have to go elsewhere to keep up with the increasing cost of living. Kindred has only given 1 pay raise in the past 5 or 6 years and this was not even a dismal 1%. Pay raises should be figured in to operational costs. Kindred has to pay more for everything else because inflation exists, employees have increasing costs, why would you think it is ok to skip out on raises and put your employees into hardship? If one does not receive raises sufficient to keep up with the cost of living increases, that person is losing money to stay with the company. I have seen many excellent employees go to greener pastures for better pay and benefits. I know of several more who are looking for new jobs and will be leaving soon. Kindred is losing talent due to their refusal to keep up with industry salaries and benefits. No Christmas bonuses, no Thanksgiving turkey or ham. I've never worked for a company before that did not give a Christmas bonus. Work life balance is fine, unless you want to take your PTO. My managers all take beautiful lengthy Christmas breaks that extend past New Years while we are not allowed to take more than a couple days. My managers are frequently on nice lengthy PTO breaks, but we are asked to flex time and work in advance instead of using our PTO. Then, we are only given a tiny window of opportunity to sell back the PTO we were not allowed to use and they only pay 70 or 75% of that value back. Not fair, since this is something we earned. It should be paid back 100% and we should be allowed to sell it when we need it or any time we reach the dreaded 160 hour PTO limit where we cease to accrue. Even though I have listed a ton of complaints here, I personally enjoy my job and find my salary (for now) to be meeting most of my needs. I am happy with my job at the present time, but if the pay raises don't start keeping up with cost of living, there will come a time when I have to go.
