Vision Service Plan – “Lower than market value pay, but has good benefits and nice coworkers”

Pros

VSP boasts their benefits program, primarily their 15% 401K contribution (5% matching, additional 10% based on company performance). Currently the vesting time is 6 years. The managers show a decent amount of care about your professional development. The coworkers are very nice for the most part, and the close teamwork is very apparent within the IT teams. A good relationship can be created within the team and with the manager, where you can speak your mind and not worry about negative repercussions. It seems that many people who only have high school degrees and go into a position like Customer Service tend to like VSP for the many job opportunities during their career.

Cons

It seems to be known across the entire area that VSP consistently pays less than market value (unless you get a high-paying position depending on who you know or are a relative of someone in a high position). However, Human Resources and most managers insist that they pay competitively, and with that with their "total compensation" package (stressing their 401K contribution), that they pay better other places in the area.

Overall there's an arrogant attitude about VSP being the best place to work due to their benefits. Their medical benefits used to be excellent, but is constantly getting more expensive for employees each year. VSP claims it's due to rising health costs, but the amount that it increases is HUGE, even greater than other companies. It may be due to many unhealthy people at VSP, because if you're decently healthy, you can usually find decently priced healthcare outside and doesn't cost that insane amount that VSP claims they have to pay for each employee.

As for other bonuses such as their 401K contribution, VSP always includes this as your "total compensation" even though 10% of that 15% is not guaranteed (although they have kept it up so far), and it takes 6 years to vest. They never mention this part, and if brought up, HR and some managers act shocked as to why anyone would want to leave this "great company" within 6 years anyway, but never consider all the other factors (lower pay, changing managers, changing policies, etc).

So along with the lower pay, VSP also claims they have a "pay-for-performance" program, where yearly increases are due to an employee's performance. Management talks about it all the time, but this is seriously limited due to all the bureaucracy that they have to go through with Human Resources just to get anything to happen. By that time, their top performing employees get frustrated and leave the company. Of course, this only affects the employees that go into the company with a lower pay, as those who are hired into the company with many years of experience already and with a large salary tend to stay. But it just means it's too hard for the newer employees to show their true potential. Salary increases definitely motivate. But when an annual increase is just 2% after the company overall has a great year, and that average 2% has to be spread out across an entire team, how does that motivate the top performing employees to continue working so hard?

And when a manager cannot give a higher increase, they will just list more areas that the employee must work on. It's like a dangling fishing line that will keep pulling away while the employee chases it. The only time that the employee will finally get something that will appease him or her is when he or she threatens to leave that team or that company, and even then it may not happen.

This review is based on the IT department, primarily the Application Developer area. Employees in other departments often have different opinions.

Advice to Senior Management

Remove all that bureaucracy that it takes to seriously give employees a "pay-for-performance" program. There are so many levels that one has to go through in order to get anything done. VSP will continue to lose high performers in IT until this is done.