Thread regarding CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield layoffs

I love how BP always said we were going to have conversations about for instance, the office after Covid. After months of working remotely, and with no input or very little input from those affected, he announces his edict, no more office for you. He loved to use the current overused term conversation but there weren’t any . By the way, the IT direction is following the cookie cutter method of other companies that will fail to deliver an excellent working application. The Outsourcing to Ensono is a sure sign of lack of understanding how outsources work or should I say don’t work.

Very uncalled for dialogue on that ceo call today

How about the Build Back Better roughly $5T cost? Good for who? CF? Not good for the taxes on the population for generations to come or the people and communities we serve.

How about the political convo today. With upcoming midterms, red will be undoing everything blue put in place

CareFirst was always given the merit increase as a lump sum payout that does not increase the salary when the associates pay is over 120% of MRP and even getting that was at the managers judgement.

Has the qualifier about 120% of MRP changed to just over MRP?

I'm not a manager any more thank the heavens.

"...bet ELT is feeding him some well crafted BS"

This is so true! CFO and HR EVP are the relatively newer ELT members who probably influence BDP more than any others. Especially when it comes to saving money for CF through layoffs and scaling back on merit increases and incentive plans for associates. Just like DK before them, they have assigned goals so they can make huge bucks themselves when they meet them. What's the big deal to them if a couple thousand employees are significantly impacted? As long as they get their own money

Not exactly true. If you are above the MRP, you get your 2% merit raise as a one time bonus rather than an increase to salary. This prevents folks for racking up huge salaries for entry level jobs just by sticking around for a few decades. That said, no one will rack up a huge salary 2% at a time.

The CEO update meetings are great opportunity to get some laundry done or mow the lawn while listening via headphones. They may not be great for CareFirst productivity, but they help make time for chores around the house!

I think we need to hear less from BDP, and he needs to hear more from us. I bet ELT is feeding him some well crafted BS and he has no idea how bad it is in the trenches.

Wait, there’s more! Merit increases are scaled to where you are in your pay grade. If you are a non-management associate and you are even 1% over the job’s “market reference point” as benchmarked by HR, you don’t get the 2% increase, you only get 1% and only if you are meeting your target goals. Near target gets nada. Likewise, if your pay is 10% or more above the market reference point, you are considered being paid enough despite inflation. You too get no merit increase!

How will any decent talent be attracted to an incentive structure where you can succeed in meeting your goals, but get nothing?

Inflation is 6.5%++ so if your merit is 2% you’re having money taken away. RUN FAR AWAY!

We haven’t had real targets to measure against for a few years now. We entered the care & caid markets, but what were our actual targets for them? Rose held a quarterly meeting and said we are above target on the PMO goal because we’ve hired PMs, no real measurable goal about the overall delivery performance? Not to mention as soon as one PM is hired 5 more leave because of the leadership. We stood up closeknit, great. What’s our target for that? I could already get virtual care through 10 different channels.

We are bleeding money with no vision or strategy for what’s next. Except, like someone else pointed out, BP getting ready to sell.

Good luck. The last few years especially has seen some confusing decisions being made at the top which has pushed out a lot of good people. CF has become a place to survive rather than thrive. IT could sure use the help.

I've never worked at a company where the CEO had the bandwidth to conduct multi-hour, long biweekly all employee calls. Not that they should be unseen or unheard but they are typically too busy doing their actual jobs to hold court like BP does. And that is indeed what it is, holding court, pontification and listening to himself talk. And consistently going over time. When the rest of us actually have jobs, meetings and other things to get to.

I've also never worked at a company where financial performance was not shown via charts, graphs, YoY performance numbers, and here is it done all verbally and there was only one mention at a CEO meeting in May before Wanda (my division) mentioned it in a meeting and that the company was tracking at around 80% and that COLA/Merit would be 2%.

These CEO calls are a joke. I dial in because I think they may be taking role and then I pretty much tune out as Brian goes on and on and on.

He is setting the company up to sell. Get out when you can like I am over the week or so. Was there for 10 plus years in IT and it’s a sh-t show now. So sad once was a great place and was very proud to work at.