Pros
Many things once considered positive have been removed, reduced, or restricted. For example, full-time, remote work used to be a benefit. Not anymore. In Cigna’s Future of Work policy, most employees are forced to work in a Cigna office 50% of the time, including remote employees before COVID-19. What’s the reason for this change? Collaboration. Cigna also used to have a generous educational reimbursement program. However, after the acquisition of Express Scripts, Cigna cut the annual reimbursement amount nearly in half. Similarly, Cigna used to have an occurrence program for unplanned absences. The occurrence program provided employees with up to five occurrences per year with up to five days per occurrence. After acquiring Express Scripts, Cigna removed this policy and stated that PTO and sick time were now combined—no increase in PTO either. In short, most pros that were a differentiator for Cigna as an employer are now comparable to other employers or worse.
Cons
Where to start? How about rolling layoffs? That’s right, Cigna is expected to lay off ~ 10% of its workforce. Instead of being transparent about the “need” to reduce its workforce, Cigna has decided to be mum’s the word. This has left the Cigna workforce in a state of constant anxiety and fear. If rolling layoffs weren’t enough, Reuters reports that Cigna is seeking to sell off its Medicare business. Some speculate this is why Cigna agreed to pay $172 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act. The suit alleges that Cigna submitted and failed to withdraw inaccurate and untruthful diagnosis codes for its Medicare Advantage Plan enrollees. In addition, Cigna has agreed to pay a $37 million settlement for Medicare fraud. Let’s not forget the class-action lawsuit against Cigna for violating California’s state law requiring insurers to conduct a thorough, fair, and objective investigation of patient claims. Instead, Cigna used a PXDX algorithm to deny claims in large batches. What about health insurance? Not great. Unfortunately, Cigna treats its employee health plans as another revenue source. Cigna provides high deductible plans that are much worse than its commercial plans. The culture, or lack thereof, is abysmal. As previously mentioned, Cigna is not transparent, and communication is poor. Instead of being honest, Cigna leaders fabricate reasons for change and expect employees to accept their manufactured rationale unquestioningly. This only sows distrust among the company. Cigna is also constantly reorganizing. This creates confusion for managers and employees, especially when roles and responsibilities are unclear, resulting in workplace dysfunction. As such, unnecessary conflict arises among colleagues, breeding negativity and divisiveness. Lastly, I find Cigna’s strategy ambiguous. Strategy from the Enterprise and Senior Leadership Team is usually enigmatic. For example, when Cigna launched its Drive to 2025 initiative, they provided three pillars with a descriptive sentence for each: Grow, expand, strengthen. Clear, right? It’s almost as if Cigna opened a thesaurus and said, “These words will do. Now go forth and figure out how to implement.”
