UnitedHealth Group reviews

I should have read reviews before I started here, but I will do this one favor for any nurses aspiring to work for UHG. This is a large company but the worst I have worked at my whole career as a nurse. Dept. had me as salaried but I had to take PTO for anything not work related, even if it is for 30 min, but as a salaried employee, I had to take PTO in 4 hour increments. No flex time or comp time were ever offered to me nor anyone I spoke to, for MD appts. or anything not work-related. Even as a salaried employee, I had to make up time. If working over I was told to log out on time and continue my task. From my experience, my dept. see Impossible metrics, made the job more like an assembly line of calls. My job was a strict call-center environment. Meeting metrics meant you not reading charts or prepping for calls. I sat in dialer all day taking cold calls like a customer service representative, with breaks and lunches clocked to the minute, with Immediate IMs from running behind on a call, causing break to run late. I couldn’t leave my desk while in dialer, not even to sign for a delivery, unless I got permission. I didn’t work to manage cases, I existed to staff the dialer. Literally, I could not get anything done even when it wasn’t my day to be in dialer for the harassment to go into dialer. No work/life balance, manager expected me to do work related things on my personal time, like applying for licenses and reading CEUs for other states over the weekend. Doesn’t matter that my license is compact. Only 5-10% of nurses of entire program were let off for one day, which made it very hard to be off for urgent needs unless I called out. The micromanagement is a beast at this place. I needed permission to do anything other than opening or closing cases. Trust me, the money isn’t worth it. The health insurance is the worst. I am convinced this is where nurses go to be broken. I also planned to escape my dept. but found out the hard way that none of the jobs listed in job sites are actually eligible for internet transfer. The only jobs I saw open for internal transfer were the ones like mine, that no other nurses want. The turnover rate is so high here, you get constant case transfers from nurses quitting. Nurses are literally here one day and gone the next. This place also has an intense bully-type culture. The pay is a little above-average, which is the only plus. I used it as a bargaining tool for my salary at my next employer.

The work/life balance is terrible. They would add overtime the same day and then tell you, “this is a call center, you need to be able to be added to any shift at any time.” Which would be fine with some notice, but I can’t get to work and then notice I have to stay until 8pm and try to scramble to find a babysitter or reschedule things. In training we were told there was a department we could call to assist us when we couldn’t find an answer or needed help, once we were out of training we were told to not call them and that calls to them were tracked, which impacted performance. The day I got out of training, we were cross trained for only 3 hours to another department, then basically left to fail at that department. It was overwhelming and when we raised concerns that we were unprepared they said, “Just sound confident. This is a call center.” I just felt like it was more than a “call center” when your dealing with someone’s healthcare and insurance. It was frustrating to feel like my concerns were not addressed. Management didn’t care if we were drowning and unprepared, they only cared about how many calls we could take, whether we gave correct information or not. I was told to “just sound confident, so members don’t call back within the next two days to impact our numbers and stats.” It was frustrating to feel like I couldn’t help our members. Insurance was terrible, only high deductible plans offered. I just left this company feeling like they care more about profit and call stats, than MEMBERS and employee knowledge and confidence.