Premera Blue Cross reviews

Management listens, but doesn't hear you. They just pay us lip service. Keep promising that things will get better and year after year it just keeps getting worse. Used to actually work with my customers. Now we're just monkeys turning wrenches. We started doing "agile," and it has made delivering even the smallest tasks next to impossible. Countless hours wasted talking/arguing about 20 minutes of work. And then mountains of paperwork follow to accomplish the work. Premera has made a shift from political neutrality and is pushing further and further left as an organization, attempting to indoctrinate employees. The only "workplace violence prevention" training that was offered was actually active shooter training, a decidedly uncommon event in the world. No training on how to deal with difficult personalities in the conference room, or what happens if someone gets angry and bops someone in the nose. There are new SJW articles on the intranet all the time, often misrepresenting the facts of events. There's no opportunity for getting a promotion, pay raises don't exist other than "cost of living" no matter what your performance is like. We had a random RIF recently and almost immediately re-staffed, but left the teams that were impacted hurting, the jobs were added elsewhere in the organization. Good people are leaving in droves, and with good reason. There's zero confidence in leadership. Annual OKRs/goals came out with literally unachievable objectives. Not lofty, unachievable. They're setting us up to fail.

Leadership is divided and territorial. Vision, purpose and direction of company outside of "making money" is very unclear. Current purpose to "make healthcare work better" is undefined as to how each employee contributes to that purpose in their work. Answers to very basic questions such as "how are we defining health and healthcare" leave executives with a deer in the headlights look. Consultants and project managers are put in the middle of executives that can't agree and don't hold their teams accountable or acknowledge when they have dropped the ball. Premera used to focus on service and supporting their service teams, but they have since shifted to a "bottom line" mentality where service agents are thrown on the phones with little training or support. Many employees are afraid of their leadership and do not speak up for fear of reprisal, despite leadership lipservice about "psychological safety". The pay and benefits were pretty good, but I'm much happier, and have had more development opportunities since leaving Premera. I would advise potential candidates to pass on Premera and look for another employer with a more clearly defined vision and purpose.