This used to be a great place to work. Since Change took over, there has been a steady and substantial decline in employee conditions. Upper management was clever. They were careful not to make too many changes at once. There’s that old cliché about boiling a frog; turn the water all the way up at once and he will jump out, but slowly increase the temperature and the frog will be dead before he realizes it. And that is exactly what management did. In the few years since they have taken over, they have slowly but steadily chipped away at benefits in slow, incremental steps.
Why does that matter to you, as a possible future employee? After all, those benefits are already gone anyway. Well, it matters because past performance is indicative of future trends, and the downward spiral of this company does not seem to be slowing down.
One especially clever trick was when they cut our 401k reimbursement. They didn’t call it that, of course. Instead, what they did was make the structure more complicated so that it was not immediately evident that cuts had been made at all. Only people who took time to do some actual math figured it out. Let’s give the devil his due – management are masters of misdirection and obfuscation. Education reimbursement was curtailed, prices went up on our health plans (which are already high deductible plans), and the wellness plan was made more complicated and restrictive. If you are going to come to work for Change Healthcare, you better not get sick, and don’t have any accidents!
Merit increases, which for the past few years have already been puny, were delayed an extra quarter this year. Did the company make it up to us? Of course not. We got the same lousy increases as last year. No one at the company received more than a 2% increase, and most didn’t get that. Do not expect to be rewarded for good performance here. In fact – you might not even expect to be paid at all! Let’s talk about the ongoing payroll problems.
There are company-wide, systemic problems with payroll. Incorrect deductions, taxes, missing straight pay, overtime pay, etc. These are not isolated events, and not just confined to my office; they are discussed company-wide on the company’s social media platforms. Almost everyone I know that works here has had problems, some for months. There are similar issues ongoing with FMLA approvals, disability, and severance pay. In fact, about any problem you run into here is likely to take a long time to fix and entail much frustration. I’m not exaggerating. Let me explain why.
You see, management LOVES outsourcing. The executives of this company would outsource their own mothers if they thought it would save a dollar. So, what did they do? They basically outsourced our entire Human Resources department and sent it overseas. Once again, management used clever misdirection by announcing that Human Resources was being renamed the “People Connection.” It was being touted as a positive change – management was pretending to care about us by changing “Human Resources” to a silly, politically correct name. But it was much more than a name change. The result is that now, for just about any problem you have here, you will be calling and speaking to someone overseas in India or the Philippines, who cannot understand you, and cannot be understood. Whatever problem you have, they will open a “ticket.” They won’t DO anything about the problem; they’ll just open a ticket – which usually will be summarily closed without resolution. Change Healthcare thinks so little of their employees that we aren’t even provided with a real human resources department.
This company is preparing for an IPO and that is all that matters to them, so they are cutting everything to the bone to look good for potential investors. Of course, it’s going to largely be an illusion; these cuts are not sustainable in the long term, because employees don’t have to put up with it in this economy, and much of the hot talent has already left or is leaving.
