Anyone negatively impacted by office closures? What is your management saying? Feel like they are preparing for something with all of this unprompted change
9 replies (most recent on top)
@15e Because they are being FORCED out of the offices? They could quit and file for unemployment based on change in work status - same as remote workers who were told to RTO.
@dx Must work in a location not being effected by going WFH. People are quitting in droves, and a sup told us to work remotely as a new hire you have to go to a traing center for 6 weeks in your state.
Why would they give you severance because you are deciding to quit
I don't want to be WFH after being anchor all these years. They are closing our building but not giving people any option for severance if you quit.
I agree with the first reply. The change was needed due to past decisions and reduce cost of leases. I also knew the change will be painful when Greg Brown was let go. If the company was to reduce headcount, guess which division has the largest footprint.
@ey well said. It shows this leadership team believes in something until all of a sudden it doesn’t. Which is not leadership and shows they don’t really believe in anything.
@dx it hardly has anything to do with drama. Before covid, they wouldnt send people WFH unless the department was under the wfh ‘threshold’. Covid comes, everyone forced wfh. They say that work from home is working well and people are proving to be more productive. Couple years later, majority needs to come back in either permanently on flex because it turns out people are NOT more productive at home, AND they need to collaborate with peers. If you DONT come in the office… corrective action. Start pulling badge swipes and IP addresses to show physical location. Now, multiple offices are closing all together. This is over the last 7 or 8 years. The corrective action was earlier this year. So why would they threaten to fire people, when preparing to force them to go home? The impacted offices have no options but to comply… no graduated moves.. or flexibility in working environment. When dealing with the size of our workforce and the narrative pitched by management, I’m just skeptical I guess. It seems like there is some level of attrition that is either required or expected. While I know most are happy to go home, these changes are not ideal for everyone. Nor is it in line with past communications.
What they’ve been preparing for are the office closures, so it wasn’t unprompted. This whole site has become a cesspool of people looking to create drama where none exists.
I really don't think they're preparing for anything - it's just office footprint cutbacks I believe to cut back on costs. They paid a lot of money to absorb Cigna Medicare and CareAllies then the 2025 numbers revealed the big loss. But interestingly they spun the 2025 year as a generally quite positive/lukewarm on certain metrics.
They're renting more space out in the big Chicago HQ building. They're just changing plans to cut a lot of small offices. I know of a small Chicago area company that got rid of their HQ and my former company with HQ in the Chicagoland area (about 15k employees) got rid of their big HQ which they just renovated and moved into just 5 years prior.
Folks have been clamoring for a more remote work culture - it came up a lot in Yammer/Viva Engage at the time when HCSC changed the PTO/Wellness policy. Customer Service/Advocates were complaining about the pay and money spent on the commute having to come into the office. One person complained about having to drive 45 min to a suburban office - 1 hr some winter weather conditions. If they went remote then good for them.
But here's the thing - Cigna Medicare that we acquired was predominately a Remote work culture. I heard there was some culture friction and even a few workers let go because they weren't meeting minimum in-office days standards. So an interesting 180 degree turnabout with HCSC.
But mind you the companies I worked at before joining HCSC and also companies I interviewed with before joining HCSC had a predominately WFH culture. Let's see what happens the rest of the year.
I've been moved remote last month but will still come in occasionally, maybe couple of times per quarter for a large meeting. What's interesting is that it requires Director and higher level approval before being able to access an office.