United Healthcare Insurance Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

Excellent pay, fairly good benefits, nice office atmosphere, excellent parking facilities

Cons

Onerous and difficult computer system

Advice to Senior Management

Take more time in guiding new staff for the complicated computer systems

Pros

Great for your resume, very stable organization, company name recognition, pay is great, innovation is encouraged and rewarded, there are a lot of opportunities

Cons

Perhaps too big, hard to get anything done, politics, data is vast but disjointed and difficult to analyze, you're just a number, medical benefits are very poor (surprising), technology is lacking

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize and reward successes in your employees, get to know them as a person, be visible in the office, relate how their work is helping drive the company

Pros

Flex schedule, good management, good pay, nice people

Cons

Productivity levels have to be maintained

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work

Pros

UHC has flexible schedules for my job position. There are opportunities to progress through a number of job positions. Potentially good opportunities for international workers or those interested in transferring to other locations because UHC has a number of locations across the United States. It could be easy to stay under the radar of some management and get by with doing little work, depending on position. Many meetings are held over the phone and/or Internet, so working from home is an option for some positions. If you just want a paycheck, UHC may not be a bad place to work.

Cons

Poor communication within and between teams at UHC. Information is hard to find. There is little face to face interaction since most meetings are held over the phone, including meetings between teams in the same physical location. There are many little messages that people are not valued at UHC. The primary focus appears to be performance as a company. Although there are efforts to change the culture of UHC, it will take years for this to be effective. Health insurance for employees is more complicated and includes less coverage for employees. Do not expect a warm atmosphere or any team building activities.

Advice to Senior Management

Emphasize the importance of your employees; they are your first customers. Make them more than satisfied

Pros

Management has an attitude of service to both the stockholders and member customers. They understand that health care simply costs to much and is becoming more unaffordable to a growing number of people. Still, the medical industry will continue to be under tremendous pricing pressure due to increased costs of providing service while affordability is pressing on the other end.

Cons

Growth thru acquisition leads to poorly integrated systems and inefficiencies. These disconnected systems make it extremely difficult to deliver to the mission statement of healing health care. This along with employee attrition leads to a limited knowledgebase of a very poorly organized infrastructure.

Advice to Senior Management

Fast-track the integration of competing computer platform systems

Pros

Career Advancement an looking to step to the next level

Cons

Too much management and things move too slow

Advice to Senior Management

Cut back on the number of VP's

Pros

United Healthcare offers a lot of internal mobility, and the chance to take on new and challenging roles. Because of it's rapid growth, and expansion into all types of personal insurance there are a wide variety of roles opening up all the time. In addition, the integration of those products, and attendant software platforms, offers employees the chance shine, and become acquainted with other facets of the business, giving them a greater understanding of the business as a whole.

Cons

Although United offers a great deal of internal mobility, their pay scale seems incomprehensibly rigid. Most of the people I know that have been there for any length of time have left at one time or another and come back. Once you've worked someplace else for a few months, the company seems to have no problem with hiring you back at a 25% premium to your previous salary, but once you're in it's almost inevitably 3-5% regardless of how your skill set has evolved. The other major failing I see is common to most insurance companies, abysmal customer service. Management constantly pays lip service to the idea of good customer service, but I have never seen it as anything more than lip service. Because of the size of the company, there is endless transfering of people from one place to another, and customer service positions seem to be chronically understaffed and/or trained.

Advice to Senior Management

For many years United Healthcare was a fast growing company. It's now one of the 5 largest health insurers in the country. The fast growing days are over. Recognize the company for what it is, or what it should be, and staff accordingly. I've seen an enormous influx of sales people into our division over the past 8-12 months. Most of them end up only 1/2 trained on our insurance products, and constantly fall back on the knowledge of the back office people. Meanwhile, the back office has received almost no increase in staffing, but is doing twice as much work because they have to fill in the gaps left by the poorly trained sales force. The company should be run as a cash cow. The focus should be on retention of customers, which means good pricing and good customer service. Despite all the new sales and new sales people, growth in my division seems to have flatlined, because the back end service is poor and customer retention seems to be in a downward spiral. Selling product is great, but the profit doesn't come in the first year, it comes in the 2nd and 3rd and 4th, if the clients switch after the 1st year, or even after the 2nd, we're killing our profits, and likely hurting ourselves in the "word of mouth" arena as well.