Kaiser Permanente reviews

3.8

69% would recommend to a friend

(14,807 total reviews)
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Gregory Adams

53% approve of CEO

62% positive business outlook

Kaiser Permanente has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 14,807 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Kaiser Permanente employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

15K reviews
1.0
Sep 26, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunities to "make a difference" working to advance public health research, most of which is funded by NIH (National Institutes of Health) and other government grants and private foundations.

Cons

Research Associates and Assistants work very hard to make the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research successful by doing the day to day tasks required to keep mostly NIH funded public health research projects going strong. Without these workers' contributions, no data would be collected, analyzed, reported, or published in medical journals. The vast majority of these workers are not represented by Labor Unions and are paid low salaries. Many of these research projects are high profile studies that receive attention from the media and other groups within the organization. Upper management - both within the department and outside the department - likes to tout these high profile projects as great successes - feathers in their caps - achievements like no others in public heath research. This year a lavish party was thrown to celebrate fifty years of achievement in public health research and no expenses were spared. Simultaneously, thirty lower level workers were handed sixty day layoff notices without any severance pay or rehiring support, despite years of loyal service and excellent performance reviews. Upper management has created a class divide between the six figure salaries paid to administrative employees and the hard-working underpaid Research Assistants and Associates. Several administrative level employees in supervisory roles are incompetent, lack basic management skills, and have disdain for lower level workers. Bullying and defamation from people in positions of power toward lower paid workers are common experiences that have been occurring for years. Power-hungry narcissists are allowed to continue inappropriate behavior without any consequences or correction from the top.

1.0
Sep 11, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most hourly positions (non-managerial) are covered under a union contract and provide decent wages and great healthcare benefits.

Cons

Incompetent management 'thrives' at Kaiser Permanente. Inefficiencies administrated by management plague many day-to-day operations who reward themselves with multi-million dollar per year salaries and numerous pension plans for themselves while simultaneously raising member's premiums significantly and working to eliminate the one employee pension plan and limiting annual raises of workers to less than yearly inflation. Administration began a yearly program in which they waste millions of dollars by sending EVERY EMPLOYEE (every year) to a 'service forum' with the stated purpose of encouraging better service to healthcare members while simultaneously short-staffing every department for several days which increases patient wait times and reduces services and/or requires departments to cancel members appointments. Following the service form, management issues corrective actions against workers for attempting to provide better service per the recommended service forum recommendations (i.e. walking patients to their scheduled appointments, conversing with patients in order to provide a more friendly healthcare environment, etc.) because this sometimes takes away time from the workers' other duties causing them to not finish work and/or work overtime. Basically, administrations SAYS they promote a positive, rewarding environment but they DO nothing to back their words up. But, it's not all management's fault; many employees have worked for this company for a lengthy period of time because of the decent wage and benefits, but morale is poor (in part due to management's attacks on meaningful wage increases and efforts to eliminate pensions, etc) but also because these workers are simply bored. These are repetitive jobs which many have performed for many years but because they are comfortable with the pay, many do not continue with school or other, constructive activities. Instead, employee-on-employee fighting is frequent (i.e. workers creating a poor work environment for each other by trying to get each other 'in trouble'). I worked at Kaiser Permanente for over 15 years but decided that was enough. If you're searching for somewhere to work that truly fosters a team/family environment, this isn't it.

1.0
Feb 23, 2012

Awful Management

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

good benefits and good pay

Cons

Awful management; they get paid way too much to play politics all day; lots of favoritism and unequal treatment. Get rid of the 6 figure management and past the savings to the people that matter = the patients!

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