Pros
There used to be pros. If it weren't for the pandemic, work-from-home would be a pro, but everyone knows HMSA wouldn't offer that flexibility to its staff otherwise. Good management has been driven out because they don't align with the heartless decisions upper-level executives are making.
Cons
Mark Mugiishi, the CEO, is overtly one-sided in his newsletters; he allows his own politics/views/agenda to bleed in. For example, his mood was very celebratory in reporting on the conviction of Derek Chauvin, but he was completely silent during the debacle in Afghanistan where many American lives were in jeopardy. Whether or not one agrees with his views, one would agree that it has no relevance in his official communications with the company. Regarding the company: Their Purpose: "Together, we improve the lives of our members and the health of Hawaii. Caring for our friends, families, and neighbors is our privilege," yet they lay off around 300 Hawaii-based staff to outsource those jobs. They may want to "improve the lives of [their] members" by supposedly cutting cost, but it's obvious that they do not care about their staff in the same way. At the start of the pandemic, HMSA discontinued or reduced benefits to employees while continuing to pay their managers' bonuses, and at 17% (7% higher than usual). The benefits affected include pension and vacation hours bank. Pensions were affected by stopping payments into them by 2024. Vacation hours bank stood at 600 and was reduced to 400 with no cash-out option for any excess at the time of reduction. Hard-working staff were oftentimes forced to lose vacation hours that would have continued to accumulate. All in all, the company and its executives poorly handled the reverberations of the pandemic as evidenced by their reducing benefits while paying upper-level staffs' bonuses higher than years prior.
