On the other hand, the caseloads, expectations, and virtual coaching environment in general make it an undesirable long-term career option. You’re at a computer for several hours on end reading messages from hundreds of users each week. More often than not, workdays are either slow and boring or jam-packed and stressful. There’s rarely an in-between.
Unless it’s “slow season” you really don’t have much of an opportunity to dig deeper with users, strengthen rapport, and offer higher quality coaching. You’re too busy trying to meet daily metrics (which can be unrealistic), troubleshooting tech issues with users (there’s constantly issues with the app), attending lengthy company-wide meetings (half of which don’t even remotely impact your job). Caseloads can be as high as around 250 -300 users. Coverage for your caseload can sometimes be a joke if you need to take sick time or even if you’ve had a vacation planned for weeks, so people can be discouraged to take time off to avoid being slammed with several days-worth of work when they return.
The salary is somewhat of an insult. Between the workload for much of the year, the fact that you often have to serve as both a coach and tech support (even though you’re not paid to be tech support), and you regularly have to navigate extremely triggering and difficult messages from users struggling with mental illness or disordered eating which is outside of a coach’s scope, making under $40,000/year doesn’t cut it even if you are working from home. And no amount of company swag, professional development days, or cutesy wellness contests can compensate for that. Aside from the measly annual cost-of-living raise, to get any other pay increase you first have to volunteer to take on additional responsibilities within your team or devote a number of hours each week in a different department or “lab” that you’re interested in ALL WHILE maintaining your same caseload and meeting the same metrics! It’s free labor for them and there’s never a guarantee you’ll actually get the promotion you want.
There honestly needs to be a character limit on how much a user can send their coach in a single message. You often get stuck sifting through novels from users and trying to figure out how to move the coaching conversation along. This severely impacts productivity and can be a mental and emotional drain. Users will treat the message platform like a dumping ground for all their complaints, personal problems, and neuroses. Noom offers access to Betterhelp for its employees at no cost…you’ll need it to process all the heavy messages you’ll receive, trust me. Burnout among coaches is not uncommon. From my experience, supervisors are genuinely empathetic toward your concerns and struggles but are also in a tough position with how to effectively address this. Coach turnover is apparently high; I noticed SO MANY coaches are only within their first year or so with the company and yet Noom has been around for several years. Hmm…
Half or more of your caseload is comprised of entitled people with disposable income and first-world problems who have superficial, empty goals that will make you roll your eyes. They’re quick to blame Noom or you for their lack of progress when they have made zero effort on their part and often expect that “quick fix” to weight loss. Many either completely lack the very basic fundamentals of healthy living or expect you to hold their hand so they don’t eat everything in their house. There’s only so much empathy, affirmation, or redirection you can give to these people. It doesn’t make for very gratifying work in the end.
