A Rudderless Ship, Floundering on the Open Sea of Dispair - Laborer HMSA Employee Review

This is a company without an identity, searching to be something its not and never will be. With only the very rare and occasional exception, HMSA attracts average, marginally productive staff with rather unremarkable previous experiences and skills. This is true at the very top SVP/CEO to the entry level Analyst/Examiner. We tried to be Agile and "Cool" like Twitter and Instagram in 2014 .... Insta-Fail... we're not that smart, and our culture is more top down, ask for permission, and slow like a sloth - think State Government. But that's ok, we could have been a great company despite that. The staff here used to always surprise/impress you with their hard work, dedication to the company, good cheer and willingness to work weekends for free. The job always got done, even though it was not sexy. We celebrated our wins together and consoled each other when we failed. We reflected, dusted ourselves off and got back to work again. Our Culture could have been the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team....The Underdogs that Won, the Bad News Bears, the guys who nobody wanted, but we showed them all. We could have embraced that. Recruited for that. Promoted and Compensated for that. I tried to explain this to a former executive who has long since left Hawaii. But no. We tried to be a Mainland NFL team , but with only 10th round draft picks on our roster. The first sign of trouble came when our stern struck the reef in July 2020 when the company decided to terminate employee pension effective 12/2024 and also reduced our vacation hours to 400 (from 600). This was the primary reason for accepting decades of lower than market rate salary at HMSA. Listing and now taking on water, most employees stayed on board to steady the ship. I guess we wanted to help. The second sign of trouble came when our main sail tore and the staff received no pay raise in 2020 and it was blamed on Covid, which NO ONE believed, but like a good CCP dictator, maintained the bold face lie to us anyway and thus, lost more respect from the rank-and-file. Jaded, and still a bit numb, most employees stayed around even after this. Heck, we average 2% pay raise for decades and virtually no promotions at HMSA to speak of anyway. We are very accustomed to this type of treatment. This sucks, but we can take it. What was the fatal blow however was to come 4 months later. A blow that not even the most jaded and dedicated HMSA employee could put up with. In October 2021. We ran around off the coast of India while the captain was drunk on cheap wine from Sri Lanka. We think during late night party with other SVP's celebrating the fat bonus they granted themselves for the work we did for them. The alarm sounded when huge gash along the port bow that made the Titanic Iceberg Crash look like nothing more than a cosmetic scratch. The decision was made that we are no longer a "Non Profit" Local Health Insurance Company. We are more like JP Morgan, or CitiBank - Full, For-Profit, And buddy, we take no prisoners'. We contracted with an Indian Outsource Company and HR started firing people. Good , hardworking people who had burned the midnight oil and did the work while taking the abuse and the lickings during the entire voyage. Who were the same folks who as recently as 2020 and 2021 saved the company a great deal of money by moving us off of legacy systems and getting us into better, more favorable, advanced IT configurations, lost their teammates and friends. Curiously, some of the best were inexplicably tossed overboard themselves. Keep in mind, none of the got more than a 2% annual pay raise their entire career here! As the ship is listing severely, and taking on water at an alarming rate - the crew are heading for the lifeboats. Good people. One and all. This secondary effect of mutiny and all hands abandoning ship as a result of watching your shipmates being tossed overboard like so much flotsam and jetsam is all seemingly unexpected and surprising to the 11th floor. Well, shipmates are jumping. Good folks have woken up and are leaving and getting jobs that appreciate them, with proper companies which correctly compensate valued employees, provide challenging and engaging work, and actual career possibilities and with managers who inspire, lead and bring out the best of them. To you shipmates, I wish you the very best and the brightest future one can have. If one day you see me from your magnificent vantage point later in life, I hope you'll remember the battles we fought and say "ahoy!".