Pros
The paycheck is deposited on time and in full. That's the only pro of working at Anthem.
Cons
Where to begin? The company hired many staff in the last few years under the assumption, job description, and HR interview confirmation that it was a telecommute role (and why many accepted the job in the first place), and then performed a pretty nasty bait and switch as many have indicated here in their reviews where the policy is now to rescind the work from home option and force employees into offices at "core locations" under the external propaganda buzzword bingo technique of "fostering collaboration." Some of these people impacted had only been at the company a month or two when Anthem pulled this stunt. People have families. People planned around the work from home option and accepted the job under these terms. Now the expectation you must relocate to a "core hub" or commute hours every day round trip for many is insane and stupid. The reality here is in many instances employees are discovering their immediate coworkers are not even in the same geographic "core location", and you have to use email, phone, and video apps to work together anyway, because that makes sense. Forced to commute and go into an office to "collaborate" with people in cubes that aren't even in the same division of the company as you, because all your teammates you actually work with are elsewhere, and probably in entirely different states. Brilliant. They even had "welcome parties" for this return to the office nonsense, I kid you not. As one prior poster also commented, rumors abound of senior leadership running "badge swipe reports" to monitor who is coming into the office and who is not, and installing sensors to track movement at desks. This has been communicated throughout the company. How Orwellian Big Brother we have become. It's pretty disgusting, and should alarm people. The harsh reality is the senior leadership at Anthem (new CEO Gail Boudreaux joined in 2018, and is implementing sweeping changes across the enterprise), and she is old-school and thus her and now Anthem's policies are antiquated and painfully regressive. Many of the worker bees in the trenches are tired of the endless "town halls" and "all-hands meetings" that are only self-aggrandizing rally sessions intended to make executives feel better about themselves and high-five each other while feeding lies to all listening about how great this place is or how well everything is performing. Anything to bolster the stock price. Under the hood, there are some serious problems brewing, but because Anthem is almost too big to fail, it can often be obfuscated for quite some time before being forced to the surface and then someone has to deal with it. It becomes exhausting when you know better. You can only listen to it so long. People are overworked, stressed out to the max, and the expectations are unrealistic and often people are set up for failure in their roles. The bureaucratic red tape and administrative headache is such a problem that middle management knows this and people nervously laugh and joke about it in small meetings when given the opportunity to vent. I've seen it. In my own experience, I've been lied to on several occasions by executives on a variety of topics, and this is the only job in my entire, quite long career where I was literally yelled, nay, screamed at by my supervisor and had my job threatened verbally on more than one occasion just because someone didn't like what they heard in a meeting. Most of the VP and above crowd are extremely cliquish, and some are woefully unqualified for their job, but got in due to the buddy system or years of tenure. Shocked me to my core to see how some leadership can behave, and can make you lose all respect for them as "leaders" and, unfortunately, even as people. This place can certainly border on an abusive environment. Expecting front-line workers to put in 60-70 hour weeks is the norm. Expecting you to put in Friday nights, and Saturdays, and Sundays is the norm. Do not come to Anthem, you will regret that decision deeply. I and many others are looking for work elsewhere.
