Express Scripts reviews about "manager"

Forced ranking (calibration) is the worst. Managers have to rank employees 20% Stretch (full bonus, merit increase), 70% Target (smaller bonus, smaller merit), and MUST put 10% at threshold (no bonus, no raise). Even if you're have all excellent performers. You manager must debate your worth against others in your salary level, with other managers who know nothing about you but have a say in your ranking. They dredge up things from years ago to "prove" a person is not worthy. Because of constant mgmt changes, little historical knowledge is retained so these stories get inflated. Lord of the Flies esque. Long hours, little "thanks" from management. Sr managers don't have a clue how the department works. Lots of busy work.

Hired 120 temp employees off the street and expected them to produce at a high level. Senior upper management foreseen great business only to lay off the entire department in less than 6 months. Went live on 01/05/2015 and was completely eliminated by mid February 2015.

NO Work life Balance what so ever. Can not work in this role if you are starting a family. Burnout is inevitable. Most managers are young, really young and it is a clique. If your not in your ratings, raise, and bonus will suffer. Process to interview for other departments is insane too.

difficult for external candidates to get in

Lots of change to processes makes work difficult, Disorganized company, lack of communication with different departments and sites. Pay is ok but can pay better for the job. Some Low level grunts are doing Sr manager work if your intelligent which leads to no compensation or recognition. A few third party companies under esi.

Even though the merger was many years ago, integration is still in an unresolved state. I suspect this will not get resolved for another 7-10 years. Cultural clashes aside, the problems at hand are difficult to solve due to complexity of healthcare and PBM business in general. And every day, things get more complex as the industry invents more products to shift around cost burden, resulting in further patchwork solutions. Unfortunately, there is no one in the company that has understanding of the entire breadth and depth of the problems at hand. Many smart people have already left the company due to stress, poor pay, unjust demotions / promotions, performance management, loss of confidence in leadership. Staggering number of talented people simply walked away on their own in recent year. The unresolved integration issue puts tremendous amount of burden on almost all employees including service reps, account management, sales rep, project managers, developers, product owners, alike.

Express Scripts does not believe in building knowledge and keeping knowledge. The company is very unique in what they offer and how the internal systems work, yet ESI believes that anyone from outside the company can step right in and pick up where someone left off. They do not value a person's longevity, experience or knowledge of internal systems. If you are a consultant, you're hired. If a permanent employee, the job prospects are not promising. Managers fail to understand all the tasks and roles that their people perform as part of their daily roles. If you fill a void that is needed yet it's technically not in your job description, then no one knows about it. And because managers have no idea what you do, they assign too much work to complete in an unrealistic time frame. If someone does leave the company, there are no exit plans to transition the remaining work to someone else. It becomes an afterthought of what happens to the work in progress. It's then handed to someone else that is already overburdened, to figure out a new system or project. Even when several weeks notice are given of someone leaving, it takes months to find a replacement, if a replacement is even hired. None of the job descriptions make sense. They do not define a person's role, and if you need to find someone from another department, good luck trying to track down the name of the department to find someone. You need to reply on internal connections and asking around. There is no promotion from within or from areas outside of St. Louis. Even though ESI merged with a company (Medco) that had locations throughout the USA and had talent from across the country, unless you are located in St. Louis, then the chances of being promoted or being hired are slim to none. There is poor planning with new projects. The correct department expert are never brought into initial discussions for scope and sizing. By the time the expert are brought in, the sizing has already been determined so the project scope is greatly reduced or the project is eliminated. And since new projects always bring in new people from the outside to work on the project, it always takes two to three times longer to implement the project due to the lack of knowledge and misses. Multiple attempts to get it right. There is no real direction from corporate on where the company is going in the next five to ten years.