Pros
After other employers, Anthem is a breath of fresh air. I never realized the value of my time until I started here. Obviously, with 58,000 employees, we're not all going to have the same work/life balance available to us, and prospective and current employees need to keep that in mind. If you work in one of the call centers, you have may stricter scheduling, but that's the case with most call centers. In my role, I have the option to do a flex schedule, either a 4 and half day work week or 4 day work week, I can choose to come in between 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. so long as I put in the necessary amount of time. Some might find the health insurance to be a higher deductible, however, take into account they are a health insurance company, it is their responsibility to assess risk and implement what is necessary to reduce risk, a higher deductible allows Anthem to keep premiums down for employees, and it's still pretty competitive, it's a $1,200 deductible, but Anthem provides a $700 HRA, so your deductible is really $500. By doing so, Anthem can still provide a low deductible to those who meet it because not everyone will, so not everyone will need the HRA money, whereas a lower deductible on the front end requires hire costs, and those that don't use it will still be paying for a lower deductible. Dental insurance is much broader than what you'll find from most employers, the only caveat I've run into is that the vision insurance could be better as far as providers that accept it. I can't use my optician since they're not in-network. The opportunities to advance are immeasurable compared to other employees, they want to promote from within and if you work hard, they will notice and reward you. If you employees perform poorly, don't expect to keep your job, that's how it should be anywhere you go, while they'll accommodate employees who have special needs, if you continue to not meet expectations, don't expect Anthem to keep you employed, but if you're going through a rough patch, they'll work with you to help you achieve your goals and work through your issues. They're a huge proponent in hiring disabled individuals, which is admirable. One of the most impressive benefits that was recently added was Critical Caregiving Leave and Paid Parental Leave. Critical Caregiving Leave is essentially short term disability, but it's to care for a family member or dependent, which is already protected under FMLA once you reach the FMLA requirements, but FMLA is unpaid, Anthem is going above and beyond by providing 66% of your wages for up to 6 weeks while you care for a family member. This is huge for someone like myself, whose daughter has cancer, as I'm a single parent and have could have used this when my daughter went through her first round of treatment and surgery. Paid Parental Leave gives parents 100% paid leave for 4 weeks to be completed within the first 12 weeks after a child is born, this is in addition to maternity leave, which pays the standard short term disability benefit of 66%, so a mother can take off for 10 weeks after the birth of her child while still getting paid. Way to go Anthem on valuing your employees!
Cons
The environment where I work is kind of cliquey, which you run into at a lot of places, but some employees just give a weird vibe because they're like this i.e. trying to stare at you to make you uncomfortable, won't greet you or smile at you unless you're in their inner circle, some people focus too much on what others are doing instead of their own work and oftentimes, for hypocritical things such as another employee using their cellphone, but the person reporting the employee using their cellphone is frequently using theirs(I haven't run into this myself, but I've witnessed it several times) among other employees, (side note nobody should be on their cellphone when they have work that needs to be completed as well as you shouldn't be taking pictures, videos or phone calls when you work somewhere with confidential health information, but Anthem is about the results and run metrics enough to know if employees are being productive or not, so if you're on your phone all the time and your numbers are low, they'll be able to see that, but if you use your cellphone or chat with co-workers in moderation and your productivity is high when they evaluate their metrics, it's not a concern of theirs, they pay for performance and results drive their decisions. After you work at a few employers and notice there are things that could be done more efficiently, they stick out to you, which is not to say that Anthem is behind the times, but technology could probably be more streamlined, and of course I'm happy to hear we're migrating our claims systems to reduce the number of applications we use to review claims.