This humongous employer wants us to exhibit Compassion, Relationships, Integrity, Innovation and Performance. Yet, this same employer seems incapable of putting value on those traits when dealing within its corporate structure.
For instance, a skip level manager above me invited me to have a 1-on-1 with her a month from now, two weeks after the last working day at the site before the doors are locked. I declined her calendar invite. Within a few hours she emailed me back and asked what a better date would be for our meeting. I told her the best time would be the Monday or Tuesday before the site closed.
Now United Health Care/Optum is really big on a couple of things, one being empathy, the other being compassion. Given this push, you would think management would personify the demands they are making of their agents and others, such as the quality assurance team, by embodying that which they say they desire.
Nope. I did not hear back from my skip manager. Not an apology, not an, "Oh, I forgot, I'm sorry."
What do they care about relationships? This past year one of the top tier at United Health Care/Optum paid the site a visit. He did not meet the people working the floor. He did not chat with quality about our thoughts for improving performance (even though that is another of the Optum core values). He breezed in and then breezed out only chatting with on-site management. Really, with these stated values, would it have been too much to walk the floor and shake a few hands?
Well, all this nonsense is really getting to the few left behind to try to pick up the pieces. A few of us are in an "okay" situation. We'll manage. Our kids are grown, we don't have any major purchases to pay for outside our mortgages.
Others are still trying to make sense of it all. Two have children, young children, they are responsible for.
Motivation is a thing of the past. Why bother when you are so obviously not wanted.
And it is not wanted. A few, precious few, were offered the opportunity to work from home. For some reason, unbeknown to the quality department, that was not offered to us. It didn't matter how well we performed our jobs. It didn't matter that our work was done in a timely manner and that we assisted other team members. It didn't matter the number of disputes we didn't have, or the accuracy of our work.
There was no integrity in the selection process for those folks. Some were chosen, some weren't. Bad managers, bad coaches selected than the ones that outperformed their peers. There were no metrics announced or individually explained to anyone.
We've tried. God knows we have tried to keep the quality of our work superior, so that on the last day, the tiny little bit of work we've been graced with will shine.
But when management can't even remember that your site closed; when you get invited to events that will occur after you're gone; when the training you've requested for over a year is available to someone else; when you are training your replacement and the replacements for the other agents at your site, it just all gets to be a little much.
Ya, motivation is in the tank. Not only that, but depression is rising. We had a meltdown in our ranks this morning. Why should we even care when management doesn't? Why should I be forced to use a new system, to learn it for a sum total of three days?
The why questions don't have many answers and the few go back to a company proud of all the earnings it had for 2016, proud of how much the business grew.
That's cruel and unusual punishment folks. If you don't believe me, come and visit sometime. Just remember, you only have two and a half more weeks.