As a relatively newer hire who was given the company line on talent hiring, I am not understanding our love affair with consultants. If we have been so focused on talent hiring as a philosophy, why do we continue to need consultant engagement after consultant engagement to tell us talented people how to tie our shoes? Many of these projects conflicting in desired outcomes and some of the consultants having to work with other consultants cutting the actual employees out of the work. Our ELT is infatuated with certain companies when they have failed to deliver over years from what some of the longer tenured colleagues have shared. Do we get a tax break on the fees?
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Yeah, it's incredibly different to when I was a new hire about 10 years ago. Cigna actually did really invest in new talent and developing that talent at the time. I noticed things starting to change around 2018ish (might have started sooner, but I wasn't exposed to it).
Now, it's completely different. I'm actually seeing a decrease in consultants. They are being systematically replaced by HIH hires, which are like pseudo-consultants that are technically actual employees. Cigna is doing this to get the bargain-bin prices they love without certain problems that come with using the consulting company middlemen (things like no money lost to the middlemen, no bait and switch shenanigans where one person interviews and a different one actually shows up).
It's really sad, I continue to be more and more dissapointed in the direction that cigna is going in. I'm sure they'll always talk about how much they invest in developing new talent, but their actions tell the real story.
$$ is the bottom line. Consultants are cheaper for the company than American employees are. Talent hiring is not a Cigna philosophy. Look at all the SME's that have been laid off in recent months. Cigna/Evernorth doesn't care about the years of knowledge and expertise it is throwing away.
Welcome to reality.
You can follow the money to figure out. How much paid out to the consulting companies and how much the consultants earned, and the profits and kickbacks
They’re usually brought in only for specific projects where business knowledge isn’t a necessity.
They’re all how and no why.