Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Diversity And Inclusion FAQ

Pros

Individual contributors were great, plenty of teamwork. Steady pay

Cons

Company values diversity over expertise. No formalized training. Promotions based on diversity and cronyism, not expertise/talent. Epidemic level silos.

Pros

Family oriented, with a work-life balance and flexibility with a focus on diversity, human rights (women, LGBTQ, BIPOC) and learning. Great environment for intellectually curious, self-learners.

Cons

You have to be comfortable with change. There is constant change, but that is in most IT and healthcare related corporate jobs.

Advice to Management

There are projects where Agile frameworks such as Scrum (example: just in time planning) and Kanban would work well. Also, improvement is needed in holding teams accountable for scope and deadlines. Agile may help with this as far as empowering developers and teams to decide when something is done and to commit to focused timeboxing, so at least something is delivered, rather than nothing.

Pros

Good benefits, work from home capability, and adequate vacation time.

Cons

Upward mobility can be difficult, more diversity and diverse leadership needed, high volume of work which can be stressful.

Advice to Management

Invest more into diverse employees

Pros

* Engaging work * Kind co-workers at the team/department level * On-site Cafeteria * Plenty of on-site parking * A beautiful campus with walking trails

Cons

* Contractors literally wear a scarlet badge and are reminded of their contractor status frequently. * You will spend time attending "employee" information sessions to learn about all the benefits that you don't get, because you're a contractor, such as, to name a few: use of the on-site gym, information about yearly bonuses, on-site child care, an on site physician, and bonuses you can earn to your HSA. These are required in case you "make the transition to permanent employee", but are demoralizing and for the most part remind you that you are a "have not". * A draconian attendance policy - As a contractor you receive no PTO, no sick time, and if you have three unplanned absences in six months your contract will be terminated, no exceptions. You are informed of this the first day of training. * Under-staffing is rampant across all lines of business except those that service members * Inconsistency of low level management * You are encouraged to aim for a metric as opposed to helping your caller, who will always just call back if you don't actually solve their issue, causing repeat work for your team. * Disjointed guides and training materials - Some assistance materials have not been updated in over two years and are either incorrect or functionally outdated. Some departments have to use other departments procedures and piece together what applies to them because there has been no care to make specific material for each separate department that is current and accurate. Additionally "more information" links often link to items that no longer exist. You will leave training told to utilize these resources as your primary source of information. * Asking for assistance with your duties (such as help with a call) in public ways is presented as a negative because "it is tracked". This directly ties in with the above point. * The only diversity present is that certain departments are one ethnic background and others are another. I guess in the grand scheme this must balance out. My hire group was thirteen members of identical ethnicity and gender, and myself. * A complaint to human resources of my vendor regarding discrimination concerns after several months of employment was ignored by both parties.

Advice to Management

There are many process improvements that need to occur from the top down. It should not take >30 days to take care of simple issues for your callers because you have to send things to other departments. It's unacceptable to be "running behind" for six months or more. Whether this is chronic under-staffing or willful choice, it creates unnecessary tension between your CSPs and their callers, consistently. If ancillary processes functioned as they should, you would achieve the goal of reducing call volume and handle time. Another process improvement that is sorely needed is call QA. The definitions for "core competencies" are inconsistently applied and left open to the interpretation of the auditor. You can functionally have the same call in three different audits and get three wildly different adjudications. An impartial auditor should, within reason, come to the same conclusion as any other auditor, and any quality department should have calibration exercises to ensure there is minimal variance.

Pros

Fair, advancement opportunities, good diversity

Cons

None. Fair employer. Good benefits.