Cerner Reviews

Pros

Cerner is one of the best place to work because of the work environment what it provides for its employees. Being a health care giant Cerner provides different kind of benefits for its employees including attractive insurance packages to the employees and their families. It provides a very flexible work timings to the Employees. The Cerner management hierarchy was built very well.
People on the top are very much approachable.

Cons

Cerner attracts the young talent from different colleges with much higher packages compared to the market standards. But they have high competition from other companies while hiring the senior or experienced resources from the market.

Advice to Senior Management

One of the main concern what i have about Cerner is about its branding. Cerner India is not very well known in the market except to those who people who come from a health care background. Cerner has very well built hierarchy in the top management. Have to take some efforts to attract the young talent from the market which is highly competitive.

Pros

Exciting work, responsible for care transformation
Nice headquarters and facilities
Young, energetic environment
Casual working environment
Centrally located within KC

Cons

Limited communication at times
Don't always realize an associate's value until they leave the company
Overworked for many years
Underpaid based on role, responsibilities and compared to outside organizations

Advice to Senior Management

Try to retain your valuable associates in order to drive your quality measures higher. Consulting associates are now worth more than ever. Ensure comp plan updates are made available to associates through review cycle, opposed to finding out via paycheck -- common sense.

Pros

Cerner is a great place to start right out of college since they invest a lot of effort in training each associate. They provide a very comprehensive benefits package that rewards healthy choices and encourages you to take control of your health. There are loads of teams doing all kinds of different things, so if you don't like what you're doing at first, you can bet some other team has something you'd be interested in.

Cons

One of Cerner's mantras (and they have MANY) is "Word Hard, Play Hard". They certainly have the work portion down. Sadly, the playing doesn't happen very often. Don't plan to work a standard 8-5 workweek and advance very quickly. Cerner mainly rewards those that pour their entire life into working. On that same note, each team has a wide range of career velocities, some promote very quickly (usually the ones with high turnover) and others very slowly.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more rewards for meeting deadlines. Find ways to prevent burnout. Consider letting people work from home or allow non-standard hours (e.g. 4-10s)

Pros

You will be given good work experience early in your career
Fast paced and sometimes fun environment/ people to work with
It's a job and it's a recession

Cons

Here's my honest advice and I speak more to those who are young in their careers: If you're just coming out of school there's not a lot of opportunity right now so it's not bad to take it if you can get it. Just expect to be replaceable, overlooked, overworked, underpaid. This sounds ok now, but after a year or two it becomes painful. It's a good place to learn consulting skills that will one day help you further along in your career. Just be warned that there will be a moment when you look around, realize how screwed you are, and then accept that they've already got you cornered and there's no way out. You WILL make bad money and you WILL have to do your job or get fired. This time comes for almost everyone and for the few who stick it out, great, but i still made 30k more the day i walked out the door so way to stick it out. What becomes most demoralizing is Cerner isn't a consulting company that works with their clients . . . they typically work against their clients. The client will request something easy, I can do it, but Cerner will block unless they fork over tens if not hundreds of thousands for the "work" that is already built and I could do in 2 hours. It's hard to keep up this attitude when I'd still view consulting as the client comes first so make them happy with the small stuff.

Cerner is essentially a bankrupt system, the turnover is so high and often that unfortunately you are replaceable. The implications of this are much more disconcerting. You are staffed indifferently and no consideration is given to previous work or accomplishments until you get a few years in. Until that point your manager's manager's manager will place you on assignments and not really know the workload involved because he only got the job because he was the oldest (seriously if you started at Cerner within the past 3 years you're now a manager although no notice of personality/experience/etc. are involved.) If you say, my 50k a year salary doesn't allow me to work 70+ hour weeks every week and i want a life, their response is essentially to go somewhere else. The healthe clinic is nice until you need any medications that aren't 10 years old and have come out as generic, then enjoy the $120 a month to pay for the meds you need, also goodluck in the winter because they're too cheap to hire more doctors, i've had to wait 3 days to get an apt when I knew i had bronchitis and just needed the meds . . . but hey there's a basketball court on campus right? (basically everyone gets caught up in the bells and whistles and completely forgets they're getting screwed if asthmatic, hypertension, diabetic, etc.) I assume based on the descriptions in the positive reviews they are from newbies who are still drunk off the company cool aid and haven't made it out of training yet. And that's ok, I wish I could say I felt as strongly about Cerner as I once did. But it's a system designed to ship you in, burn you out, then throw you away.

Advice to Senior Management

You have a billion dollars of excess capital but still underpay your associates significantly . . . lets take .2% of that and distribute it to your consulting org. Has anyone considered that happy employees up productivity significantly? Which might just help client satisfaction and referrals? Which might help Cerner get a slight leg up at competing with EPIC who is winning about 75% of the contracts on the market but has just as low of client satisfaction as Cerner? Maybe? A market niche? No seriously no one ever considered this did they? Crickets . . . yep sounds like Cerner.

Pros

Flexability with job role, and time off.
Great Atmosphere
Good Learning Opportunities
Everyoneone is wililng to help each other learn.
Amazing training programs.
Paid Hollidays and vacations.
Corporate Phone Paid (Some Roles)
Great Benefits (on site gym, health clinic)
Work from home
The atmosphere here at wold headquarters (and Oaks Campus) is fast and young!
Cerner hosts many annual events to keep both the community and employees involved and aware! From the First hand 15k to the Monthly socials at each of the campuses. Cerner provides a work hard play hard atmosphere.
The training program at Cernerworks is world rated (22nd best in the WORLD!) I definately learned a lot and enjoyed my time in velocity and my rotations!

Cons

Some Roles require overtime
Heath benefits change frequently

Pros

Fabulous Technology
Great Vision
Wealth of Experience
Fun Teams
Magnificent Clients
Dynamic Learning Environment

Cons

Lots of Travel/Long Hours
Average Pay relative to industry
Often deal with biased corrupt processes
Limited career potential unless you live in Kansas City, MO

Advice to Senior Management

Reconsider relocation requirements to KC.
Middle Management needs to communicate "up the chain" -- surprising how much information is held from top execs.
Focus on marketing our successes - we have much to be proud of! Our clients are SUCCESSFUL!

Pros

Impact other people in a positive way.

Cons

Low Pay, Bad Family to work ratio

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciation of employees who have put in the time needs to be increased.

Pros

very good for fresh graduates to learn a lot.

Cons

compensation and benefits are not on par..

Pros

Flexible work conditions if needed.

Cons

Pretty bad work/life balance. Time off is hard to obtain.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop playing favorites.

Pros

Location
Peers
Pay is not the best for what you do

Cons

The reviews written in July & August I am sure were written by upper management to keep staff from leaving.
No personal life, working long draining hours

Advice to Senior Management

Only stayed 6 months.
Lack of raises or bonus
The attitude of " we are the best" needs to be stopped.
Our customers need our help, not shoving software they do not need