Administrative staff are expendable to management
Pros
3 weeks of combined PTO/sick leave, great benefits, snacks, no copay for visits with your doctor. Before COVID, company parties were often and fun. You form a close bond with those you work with the most. Use of emojis is encouraged in daily communications, which helps deal with the heavy weight of the job. You learn a lot about the US healthcare system, and the extent to which money rules everything in healthcare.
Cons
A summary: Treatment of admins wasn't great prior to COVID, and it declined at a sharp rate after COVID hit. Upper management preaches a "feedback culture", but our feedback is not listened to. There is an unspoken air of superiority between clinicians and the administrative staff. Everything you learn, you learn by making a mistake and having someone correct you later. The product and operations team make abrupt changes that impact our jobs, with no communication ahead of time. Going from taking calls from the patients in your city, to suddenly taking calls from the entire country. Struggling to give directions or book appointments for patients in a city you've never been to. One day being able to access a web page, the next day it's gone and you're struggling to do your job without it. This is a common experience, meaning nobody gets comfortable with their jobs. When coronavirus entered the US, it didn't get better. Working at the front desk of a medical office, we were not permitted to wear PPE until months into the pandemic. Even then, it was minimal, with little education on how to be safe interacting with patients during a global pandemic. If we were exposed to COVID on the job and used up your sick leave already, we were told to take unpaid time off to quarantine. Admins, who often have no clinical background, were required to work at mobile COVID testing sites once per week. Working in tents, on our feet 8 hours a day with lunch as your only break, often in horrid weather conditions. Over 100 employees signed an open letter demanding hazard pay for this work, and in response upper management demeaned us and said we should be grateful we still had jobs. We persisted, and weeks later they relented with a $2/hr raise for admins working at the testing sites. Afterwards, it reverted back to sunshine and rose pedals, with no acknowledgement of the ongoing unhappiness and low morale of their employees.
