What is the likely expectation for existing WFH Cigna employees coming over as part of the Medicare sale? Will they remain WFH? Forced to move or be eliminated? Many Medicare employees are WFH, or, even if hybrid in offices all over the country. Seems like HCSC is mainly Chicago based?
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In which states does HCSC currently have offices?
Our President of Medicare recently addressed this question to Cigna Medicare employees this week:
Will HCSC require employees to relocate?
Another common question we've received is whether all employees will have to relocate to a city with an HCSC office after close and the answer is no. Once the deal is complete, HCSC anticipates strong employee retention to continue in order to serve members across diverse geographies. Specific details about how HCSC will intergrade and move forward will be addressed after the close of the transaction.
I worked at HCSC for over 5 years, and I left because of RTO in 2021. I had a 3-hour round trip commute, and half my team was in another state so I bounced. It made no sense for me, and the money elsewhere is WAY WAY WAY better.
In my tenure there, Leadership would change their mind on a dime effective yesterday. They see one person doing something they don’t like, and overnight a huge benefit is gone. This happened with WFH days several times, and even the casual dress code…. All for absolutely no legitimate reason.
Many contractors still WFH, from what I understand. And the FTEs I still know hate the RTO and do the bare minimum to meet the requirements.
That’s a lot of info, but the point is you simply can’t predict HCSC management. They’re consistently inconsistent when it comes to work-life balance.
More HCSC workspaces are moving to hoteling, so we don't need a desk per employee with them vacant 40% of the time. Creates plenty more space.
Richardson can really potentially accommodate a thousand plus employees? Cigna Medicare total is around 3k+ employees. Assuming not all fill Richardson that’s still a lot
Yes, there is enough room in the Richardson office for the Cigna employees. Most of the people required to come into the office several days a week just badge in, do light work or visit for a few hours, then leave and go home. As long as the badge is swiped in 3 days a week that is all that is being checked. We do not badge swipe to leave the office so they don't know how long we stay. They aren't pulling the VPN/VDI usage vs. "in-office" network login/usage yet. so people have been getting away with this for literally years since we returned to office from the pandemic WFH era.
Does anyone know if there is enough space in the HCSC Richardson office to accommodate the incoming Cigna employees?
For clarity, "flex option" (98% of the non-CS people) = come to the office 3 days a week or go work somewhere else. Very flexible.
CIGNA employees, don't look to this thread to be a reliable source of truth regarding HCSC and it's WFH intentions. HCSC does have WFH employees as well as those with a flex option. What you are seeing in this thread is a lot of folks who were in office before 2020 when the pandemic hit, they got to experience WFH during the pandemic but have since had to return to work. There is most likely valid or performance reasons why they haven't not been selected to WFH on a perm basis.
It's sad that the someone is spreading lies about what HCSC will do after the acquisition. The truth is CMS will not allow services to be offshored. All contracts with vendors who support Medicare Advantage require on shore resources. For CMS, this has always been the way. As you can tell from the poster below who doesn't know that.
It's sad that the Cigna folks are being fed lies about their continued ability to work remote after the acquisition. The truth is, they will be around long enough for knowledge transfer and then the HCSC Leadership will decide to "centralize" support for the new LOB to one of the massive call centers in IL or TX as they always do. Possibly even to our outsourced call centers in Mexico, India or the Philippines. It's unfair to you Cigna folks, but I wanted to share the truth of historical precedent with you so you can prepare. For HCSC, this is the way.
It's clearly obvious that there is a negative nancy prowling these boards butt hurt that other future employees get to be remote while they have to be in the office. So they resort to spreading false information.
The reality is that HCSC will try to hire locally to replace those unwilling to move and get lower salaried, younger people to fill the roles.
Some of the comments here remind me of when they outsourced/offshored large chunks of IT. Sure, they knew the people in India would not do as good a job. They didn't care though. The layoffs and outsourcing got savings... which got the executives big bonuses. That is the main mission of HCSC...maximize bonuses for upper management and lavish pay for the board of directors. Everything else is secondary.
"...Isn't the reason Cigna sold off
this line of business because they were doing poorly? I am thinking it would be
to HCSC's advantage to let a lot of the Cigna employees go who weren't doing a
great job."
Doing poorly vs Managed poorly are two different
things! Cigna Medicare employees are rockstars and held this business afloat
creating profit for this business. We had poor leaders who promised unrealistic
growth to shareholders that didn’t pan out. That’s why they sold us off. Not because
we “were doing poorly”. It’s because our last leader under the pressure of the
CEO promised crazy growth to our shareholders and didn’t deliver causing stocks
to level out. We did still grow, but not to the unrealistic levels set.
“I am thinking it would be to HCSC's
advantage to let a lot of the Cigna employees go”
Do your job at HCSC and stop thinking, you clearly out of
your league here
Compliance isn't rocket science. HCSC has several people capable of reading rules.
"...Isn't the reason Cigna sold off this line of business because they were doing poorly? I am thinking it would be to HCSC's advantage to let a lot of the Cigna employees go who weren't doing a great job."
Cigna already beat HCSC to the punch, 2023 Cigna laid off many Medicare employees. HCSC will be inheriting several teams that are already running skeleton crews. The people who ran Medicare are mostly gone too. Multi-state Medicare is a different ballgame.
Re: "If HCSC thinks they retain staff that has the knowledge, expertise, and experience to manage Medicare business in multiple states by forcing them to move... they will soon find themselves in trouble maintaining compliance and becoming sanction by CMS for being out of compliance."
...Isn't the reason Cigna sold off this line of business because they were doing poorly? I am thinking it would be to HCSC's advantage to let a lot of the Cigna employees go who weren't doing a great job.
"We were told in a meeting today that Cigna employees will eventually move to Richardson or Chicago mostly. It will be in 2025 for the transition to happen though."
Wow! Not many Cigna Medicare employees live near in Chicago or Richardson today. If this is true, I am very interested to see how this major change will happen. Would they comp employees to move, provide severance for employees who won't/can't move? I would imagine like 70% of more of current Cigna Medicare employees won't be able to make this move. I'm sorry, but I just don't think this is true as it's very unrealistic.
If HCSC thinks they retain staff that has the knowledge, expertise, and experience to manage Medicare business in multiple states by forcing them to move... they will soon find themselves in trouble maintaining compliance and becoming sanction by CMS for being out of compliance.
We were told in a meeting today that Cigna employees will eventually move to Richardson or Chicago mostly. It will be in 2025 for the transition to happen though.
Cigna currently has a return to work policy in place what we call [FOW] Future of Work that started in September 2023 going in waves (next is March 24). Most employees within 50 miles of a Cigna office are required to come in the office at least 50% of their time. Some Cigna Medicare employees are assigned to an office, but interim WFH due to limited space openings, other Cigna Medicare employees are already working from the office, while a select few remain remote due to position, skills, and/or distance from any Cigna / Express Scripts office. Not many employees where adhering to working in the office so Management and HR started tracking badge swipes at Cigna Locations.
Cigna has a much larger footprint than HCSC with employees and offices spread-out nationwide. I would think HCSC may inherit some Cigna Medicare office that has a high concentration of Cigna Medicare employees. Meanwhile I can only speculate what would happen to everyone else not near any HCSC office. As far as career advancements being limited for Cigna Medicare employees when moving to HCSC due to being remote... that's nothing new for Cigna employees. Our career advancement is currently limited as it's based on who you know, so we are already used to it.
You will remain WFH for a while but there would be employee mutiny if you all got to keep WFH long-term. You will eventually be flex like most HCSC employees and will be expected in office three days per week.
Assume nothing. Take care of your own best interests, and the company will take care of theirs.
If they do force Cigna ex-employees into an HCSC office would they initially give some time to remain wfh during the transition ??Assuming they’ll want to try and keep most employees at least in the beginning
Most likely they will be allowed to continue in their current arrangement. But they should be aware that advancement opportunities would likely be extremely limited.
You would think.
Cigna employee here: So what I understand is that where there is a concentration of Cigna Medicare employees, "y'all" are looking for office spaces (makes sense as thats what Cigna is currently doing). What about others far away from any current of future office? Any chances of remote exceptions?
Reading though older post, looks like HCSC does still have some remote employees. Cigna Medicare is spread-out to many more states across the US. Many of our current membership are duel eligible members (Medicare and Medicaid). For most of these populations, we not only need to adhere to federal CMS rules, but many states have rules in place specific to Medicare/Medicaid members that we must follow. In the Medicare world, there are some jobs that are compliance, legal, SME specific positions that fulfill these requirements. Many of these positions were difficult for Cigna to originally fill, hence how I got hired into my remote position in the 1st place. Cigna has already laid off many "back-end" employees so HCSC will be inheriting a skeleton crew in some essential departments. I would think HCSC might have sine sort of remote exemptions?
Don't count on working from home next year. If that's a deal breaker for you, start looking elsewhere now before thousands of your coworkers are applying for the same jobs.
What about existing employees who aren’t / wouldn’t be near a new office space
We're looking at where y'all are concentrated and getting some new office spaces. 3 days in office.