If you were the CEO, what would be two top things you'd change here?
16 replies (most recent on top)
If I were UnitedHealth Group CEO, I would fire the UHG CEO for lack of good judgement and unethically dodging the WARN Act.
Freeze C suite salaries and bonuses for 2 years.
Institute a minimum headcount for a GL 29 and above title.
Freeze salary + bonus for GL 28 and above for anyone who is higher than the midpoint.
Give those merit % and bonus to the frontline team members doing the work.
Offer voluntary separation agreements after announcing those changes.
These cuts have been painful but we’re still too bloated at the top. How the heck are we paying out bonuses while thousands lost their jobs!?!! Get it together UHG.
1000x This!! "Innovation requires a different focus." Stop trying to run the org like a belted six sigma project. This is not GE or Ford.
I'd put an "offboarding" procedure in place immediately that mitigates the negative impact of layoffs and letting go of contract workers when they are let go. I would include in that process demonstration of empathy, reassurance that the layoff is not a reflection of their performance, an explanation of how to get a reference (or employment confirmation) and explanation of the hiring process for positions listed as open online. The confusion her clearly demonstrates this need. I would also meet with remaining employees and convey to them that the company will support the laid off employees efforts to find new jobs either within the company or outside of it so they aren't left with survivors guilt. These layoffs are a part of life with a data and client contract driven corporation. Its how they are mishandling them that is causing problems across the board.
How to destroy a company from within.
#1 mistake of 2019 and now into 2020.
Layoffing off your talent not your excess.
Who is driving this ship?
When your too big you do not feel the immediate costs that come with tradeoffs. We are like the lobsters in the pot of water, the threat is diluted, but still going to occur in time.
Laying off workers, not managers but the worker bees who have been with a company for more than 10 years means you lose knowledge. Did we make the correct choices when we did it based off cost?
It isn't change people are complaining about, It is the choices made that leaves people wondering what Fool is running the ship. Iceberg ahead!!!
Relationships within teams. When you want people to accept the global vision, gutting teams and leaving them with no counterpart on the offshore team to work with, that costs productivity.
If the managers do not know what people do on a team, who does what function, their value beyond the cost on paper, fire the manager. Lots of ineffective fat to trim there.
We do not have 2 years to wait until global learns.How many American workers with Masters degrees in computer science work for united and what do they do? That should be a clue on what that type of degree means in india. You don't build an entire department in a different timezone, whose command of the language and subject matter knowledge does not provide enough coverage for the business to continue to run and not take a hit to productivity. That will have a cost. The impact could have been much less if it was done on a smaller scale.
Relationships with our providers.
When you try to automate and create complicated barriers for the businesses you contract with to provide your services, your destroy trust and brand. Automation should improve the experience not complicate it. Not taking the time to test and get a product that is error free before deployment does not work. We are not Microsoft. We cannot control-alt-delete to fix issues. Optum loves to build new tools for united to use with cheap offshore developers. Give the remote teams some work, but product sponsors mismanagement causes requirements to be missing when they are forced to release without the necessary testing or even a real testing plan. Why do we have teams of people creating products and ZERO experience with actual software development, testing and deployment being included? Cutting costs creates mistakes that rarely justify the exposure.
Keeping people who sour our brand and represent us while eliminating the relationship builders and keepers. Providers are in a relationship with us. The happier they are, the more willing they are to work with us in famine as well as feast. Our goal should be provide a quality service that benefits both parties. That's what a contract is about. Mutual gain. The current relationship is heavily skewed and too "buggy".
Relationships with our customers are being destroyed. When you layoff our front line, the people who build the relationships and our work force does not have the knowledge due to the choices that were made, our frontline is the most important. When you replace a talented worker on the backend and think that you can get more productivity by hiring 2 at a cheaper rate you are guided by a fallacy. The 2 cheaper resources must possess the same skill, aptitude and value. Most importantly you miss the fact that you have a worker who did have that and the aptitude to learn even more. Leading to more innovative thinking
The result is Business leave when they do not feel they are getting value for their investment, customers rate us based on experiences they have with us.
Why did we lose so many contracts?
When this was said. Focus on 1 customer at a time. I knew we were lost. Our leadership is embracing a mentality of people whose culture, training and education is perfect for that type of work. Piece work, queue work, productivity metrics, time trackers, checklists, same bowl of cornflakes. A model built on limited focus.
Innovation requires a different focus.
We do not have time to focus on 1 customer at a time. We are not a drive thru. We do not follow a checklist. We are not an assembly line.
We are the bigger picture. We need to focus on the choices we make that impact the things we need to be a successful company. TALENT within drives satisfaction for every point of contact we have. Cost cannot be reason why you shrink the work force, it needs to be function and tradeoff. If you eliminate this person or team, how important is this to our relationships we have both internal and external.
If this was done, actual thought went into the choices that have been made then whomever did the analysis should be fired. You lost so much talent. There will be consequences.
Seriously, what kind of question is this to ask on this forum?!
Keeping jobs in America. More than 70 percent of the errors and rework we have are by offshore employees. Providers and members don't want to deal with offshore employees.
If I were CEO I would cut my salary and every top executives, no one needs that much money!!
Bring back profit sharing payouts. Mandatory cost if living increases on 01/01.
When bottom end of payscale increases (it does every year) make that small increase automatic to all in the pay range.
I could go on an on about fixes needed as I have worked in every area of UHC as I wanted to become versitle. However over the years all I realized is how messed up and terrible UHC is. I'm all about members, employer groups, and providers. I never let UHC take anyone that I worked close with for a ride. I made sure if we didn't cover it and it was our error that the member, employer group or provider had everything they needed to file their DOI complaint. It never got to that though as once they knew I was going to legal they paid.
Transition laid off employees into one of the HUNDREDS of jobs on the website. Why have them reapply etc TRANSITION THEMZ
Pay me the UHG CEO’s salary and I’ll tell you.
The leadership in Upstate NY Medicare needs to change. There is no cultural diversity amongst management. They enter Hispanic and Black communities to sell a special needs product but the VP of NY does not have any person of color. The VP also rid a person of color who was a vitale director of Virginia. Sad day for Medicare and Retirement NorthEast. I sure hope Linda and Mark are aware of his fictitious acts of diversity/ inclusion.
- How can I fire more people to raise stock prices?
- How do I get rid of the rest of my conscience?
United Health Group should keep American insurance in America. My neighbor has UHC last year and EVERY time she called in, she got not answers, never got a call back, she did not understand the people half the time. She was sent to the eye place and dentist that where suggested....and not covered because they where not in network- she didn’t pick those places from a hat. The UHC rep told her to go ....and now she has a bill for over $1000. As soon as she was able to pick another insurance, she jumped off the UHC bandwagon- she stated no one knows what another person was doing, saying, no help at all. They transferred her 3-6 times for someone else who might have an answer for her, I felt so bad - she is on disability Medicare and did not have to spend hours on the phone. She was told to appeal.....but then when she did it was over the allowed time. That was total bullsh$t.
I agree. American company, American jobs for the most part. I now avoid giving my business (if possible) to those who transfer me offshore when I have an issue.
Tone down the greed and the income disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom.
I would give a recent employee who quit, rather than wait to be laid off, ten (10) shares of UHN 😁. I worked my arse off, many late nights, and I never called out sick. I loved my job in the beginning. My 3rd year would be Sept. I worked w/ many long time staff & felt mostly dumped on. Very cliquish, & my manager did not back me or support me in regard to my peers. I observed however other managers being quite the opposite toward their employees. When it came to my managers life events including deaths, birthdays and anniversaries? She was never overlooked or forgotten. When my birthday and anniversary rolled around, she forgot both. I asked my co- worker to send me an email re: my work anniversary just to remind her! Then there was the case load and the grinding out of cases non stop. Then Back office came out and my manager accidentally showed me two days of my co-worker’s day and he literally had black screen - maybe 40%. Business time??? I was shocked. So my anger and frustration continued to grow over the 2 years ... then our teams were shuffled around, now this guy is now allowed to do even less!!!! Why is he being protected? I could go on... but like my manager, you probably don’t want to hear it either ... she sure didn’t.
1) American company ->American market-> American money - Keep majority of jobs in each area in America
2) This company is huge and has clout -> You want to have growth then get out there and work with whoever you need to for healthcare/dental/pharmacy/d–g costs to be within reason
additionally
3) Prior to these layoffs, the company had huge issues with minority promotions the last townhall said women had an increase of 3% promos - so 100 women promoted of 300000 workforce=103
4) Do something about toxicity that's reported instead of having HR try to shut all complaints down
Be a contributing factor to improve society. This company is old and stale - still running with 1960s mgmt. strategies
Here, on this website?