Working at Centene is like working in a mental institution where the patients are in charge of running the place (no offense to the mentally ill). Or if you are familiar with the show, Stranger Things, it’s like being trapped in the Upside Down. My coworkers and I would joke that any minute Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out from a corner and tell us that we’ve been punked. It’s, by far, the most dysfunctional and dreadful place I have ever worked.
Centene’s biggest issue is management/leadership. Ninety-five percent of management is completely inept. It’s true of the entire company; not just the department I was in. The majority of management is grossly under qualified for their positions, have no management skills, bully their employees, thrive on gossip, and are disrespectful to basically anyone they encounter. I don’t see the cycle of bad management ending anytime soon. Current management does not promote smart, capable people to management positions. Instead, they either hire someone from the outside who has zero experience in the healthcare industry or they promote someone from within who doesn’t qualify, can’t do the job, and/or has been a poor performer. My guess is that they do this because they are either too dumb to know better or they don’t want any competition at the top.
Rampant poor management leads to other issues like a toxic culture, low morale, and overall employee dissatisfaction. You are not viewed as a human being once you step foot in the door. You’re expected to work an obscene amount of overtime. Every day is spent putting out fires that are lit by management’s inability to do its job. Also, every person is expected to do the work of 3-4 people. So forget work/life balance. Company policy is no work from home and no remote employees. You’ll see exceptions being made here and there, but don’t expect it if you are a hard worker. The exceptions are usually made for those with poor performance. It made no sense. Oh, and while you are working your life away your manager will likely be shopping online or kicked back with his/her feet up on the desk browsing through social media on their phone.
Don’t expect any help from HR. They have no power…or balls. They are there to cover and protect management. Complaints in my dept were repeatedly made to HR and nothing was ever done. They just talk in circles like they are doing something, but they aren’t. Every year they send out an employee satisfaction survey, and every year they act like the results came back just fine and refuse to take action on anything. I questioned a VP in my dept about HR's lack of action on the survey results. He literally told me the company, as a whole, has no plans to do anything about it. As long as the company is climbing the Fortune 500 list they don’t care about anything else. You may see articles in the news about how much Centene is growing and all the new jobs they are hiring for. Don’t let them fool you. Sure, it’s growing (for the moment) but the current workforce is flying out the doors as quickly as it can. It does not take long for a new employee to figure out there is something seriously wrong with that place. Most of their hiring is just to refill positions that left.
Security there is over-the-top. Cameras and security guards are everywhere. You have to swipe your badge so many places just to get in and out. I had to swipe my badge 9 times just to get to my desk every morning. Sure, you do feel safe that nothing too crazy will happen there, but I would still feel safe with much less security. You feel like you are in a police state. Some individual guards were very nice but, like the rest of the management, the management in security are bullies. I know several coworkers who got a 3-4 page scathing email from security just for parking in the wrong spot! It’s insane.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. You have been warned. It's worth being unemployed a little longer to find a company that is not ran by ignorant lunatics.
