Pros
The company employed many high-quality, dependable licensed advisors and benefits assistants. I cannot say enough positive things about our teammates and our local manager. During a hectic AEP that had a very rocky start due to ill preparation, things began to gel with the team in our market, and we rolled along well. We had each other's backs and acted in one another's best interests. Our manager made himself available to us for assistance when we needed it. During the COVID-19 4-month layoff, the company continued to pay its portion of employee health insurance premiums, which was helpful. Keep in mind that the employee continued to pay their portion -- thankfully, we had pandemic Unemployment assistance to help cover that cost. We all would have been left without healthcare coverage without that pandemic assistance and employer help.
Cons
Field agents and local managers are disempowered. Poor market implementation by a despotic, immature, and inexperienced interim manager. I mean zero project management and less than zero personal skills. Said manager's priorities were labeling boxes, micromanaging lunch breaks, and belittling agents in some attempt to gain control. Whoever made decisions for field markets at the time had little clue about how to prepare for an annual enrollment period. This was proven by a chaotic, misguided start to the AEP season. Some HR rules were severely out of date. Thankfully, the market manager (hired too late) had great people skills and was eager to learn about field sales and Medicare as much as he could. Furthermore, there was a sales director who engaged in somewhat sleazy sales practices, which led to some employee insecurity, COVID-19 lockdowns happened in March 2020, which resulted in massive layoffs, which were completely reasonable due to the nature of our work (face-to-face consultations with an aging population). Agents were brought back about 4 months later with a plan to transition most field agents to call center work in a remote capacity. Granted, the remote positions were helpful in an employment status way. However, implementing call center technology and training was chaotic and poorly planned if it was planned. After 1 month of that chaos, most field agents were let go or moved to temporary, hourly positions. The kicker there is that they kept a couple of the least experienced (one had never sold a plan and hadn't been through an AEP) as full-time salaried employees. The company continues to be in constant transition; there is little trust in job security and leadership. Local managers are disempowered and left out of the loop on company changes and decisions made on a local level.
