CareFirst Reviews

Pros

Nice Benefit and growth in this company

Cons

Stressfull lot of people without technical skills

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

- supports good quality of life balance (no long hours)
- supports ongoing education - tons of course offered, from technical to 'soft skills'
- embraces change and innovation ... but on a very slow roll
- decent 'amenities' on site

Cons

- hierarchical
- closed culture
- slow roll for change and innovation; some portions of the company are very set in their ways
- tactical, not strategic

Advice to Senior Management

Things need to happen more quickly; experience and opinions do matter

Pros

Flexible Schedules
Great Benefits
Generous time off

Cons

Communication from Mgmt is non existent

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your employees
Allow them to make more decisions

Pros

They offer help with tuition.

Cons

It is hard to advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Managment did their best. No words.

Pros

* The job is really easy and flexible
* Management treated employee with flexible and respect
* The job was stable in terms of personal situations. Many people had the option to work from home
* Overall, there are some bright people in the organization

Cons

* No one is really accountable for anything because of the organization's bureaucratic structure. There are alot of "freeloaders"
* Some managers have a pretty bad attitude. Very hierarchical. Many directors' brilliance is shadowed my their arrogance.
* No one is really responsible for their fault. It's easy to blame job to someone else.

Advice to Senior Management

Some humility will motivate your employee to work harder! Also be accountable for your mistakes!

Pros

flexible schedule and decent work-life balance. not a lot of micro managing, which is nice. good team members surrounding me.

Cons

the job family does not appear to have a lot of growth. limited support for education. health insurance, ironically, not that great.

Advice to Senior Management

i don't have any advice at this time. i don't have any advice at this time. i don't have any advice at this time.

Pros

Vacation - excellent time off benefits

Cons

Too much disorganized change keeping associates from achieving goals

Advice to Senior Management

No more change for the sake of change
Too many associates unsure of who they work for and what they should be working on

Pros

People on the whole were good folks, easygoing atmosphere. They let people who are so inclined take the lead and drive innovation.

Cons

The technology, like much of the health insurance industry, is old. Mainframe/COBOL are the technologies that drive the organization. Newer technologies are only slowly being adpoted.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep modernizing your tech, and get those COBOL folks up to speed on new technologies, they are smart people and know the busuness.

Pros

PTO, advancement opportunites, locations, ability to work from home. Many long time employees with ten to twenty plus years tells you that they are satisfied.

Cons

They need to pay more for the amount of training you have to go through and for all the knowledge you have to contain.

Advice to Senior Management

Training needs to be more organized, new systems need to become available to be able to use one system to perform job more effectively. Supervisors need to be available.

Pros

Lots of opportunities to develop new skills because there is always more work than people. Some areas of the company are upbeat, positive and really care about people. The perks are good: the standard Fortune 500 package. The annual bonus is great.

Cons

In the scramble to remain competitive in a market in which the company is constantly losing marketshare, there are many quick decisions made with the expectation of quick implementation and poor leadership to make that happen. It is hard to be a part of an organization you see wasting thousands of dollars on initiatives manned by costly consultants/contractors who are friends and family of executives but are incompetent (one $200/hr contractor could NOT put together a workplan- not even just bullets!!) when you know that there are families scraping together money to pay their exorbitant monthly premiums. There are many initiatives started and not completed due to inadequate time permitted to plan.

In addition, promotions were awarded to "friends" of the CIO instead of the competency of internal staff. Especially difficult for minorities and women in IT.

Advice to Senior Management

Ask yourselves: Why is it that every person who was trying to implement positive change in the organization either left on their on volition or was let go? Change is coming to the healthcare industry. How you approach it can make the difference in success or failure. "You can't solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created the problem in the first place." - Albert Einstein