Benefitfocus Reviews

Where to begin? A company that has so much potential is slowly crumbling from the inside out. Poor process and documentation has always been a setback, but the "sell sell sell" mentality has caused frustration for all customers promised more than the software can deliver. Praise those who bring in money, regardless of customer health or happiness from the sales experience. Setup for failure from day 1. The company refuses to invest in those workers who are knowledgeable and worthy of being part of leadership. Instead, they are leaving to join other companies to be compensated for the value they provide. Benefitfocus pays based on position/role and current salary - not experience, talent, or education. Negotiate as a new hire or you will be lucky to increase 5k in 5 years. Promotions may get you there in 2-3 years. The only thing that matters right now is profitability, so sell sell sell anything you can and cut cut cut the spending. OE 2017 is going to be profitable, but the fallout will bring to light the poor business decisions made to sacrifice quality work for globalized cheap labor. Which brings me to the #1 reason Benefitfocus is destined for failure: Valuelabs. Globalization is a strategy to outsource regular jobs for lower cost. It makes sense, but you may not realize Benefitfocus has partnered with the most incompetent, incapable Indian company on the market. If I had to guess, they are cheaper or discounted in some way. The poor souls forced to babysit them (US workers) are responsible for cleaning up their awful work and held accountable if customers complain. I can't wait for the same Indian company that was chosen by BF to lead the "QCoE" or Quality Center of Excellence initiative responsible for improving software quality. To this day, their work has improved our quality of work in no way, shape, or form - similar to their colleagues taking jobs as regular associates and proving incapable to provide value. These workers are fired and recycled to another department to keep business for the India team and hope the new team can find some use or value from the "internal experienced" GR. Honestly, I am surprised they are able to get to work daily given their ability to follow instructions or use common sense. This false hope is being drilled into the minds of our customers, so BF will make sure it's a success - right? Let me inform you that this QCoE team yet to make a flow chart that correctly illustrates our current process workflow and have not been involved in the actual work or know how the work is done. Most intelligent Americans need a few months to a year to be proficient on the platform, yet the Indian workers can do it in less time, less training, less work experience, and no understanding of how healthcare or benefits work. These people are the experts to advise tenured workers on how we can do our jobs better? Anyone believing this idea is realistic is either an absolute moron or a member of the Benefitfocus Leadership committee. The BF marketing is positioned for providing a false identity to tell customers and suspects that we have a quality improvement initiative. As usual, this will prove to be no more than false hope for customers promised a better experience and more commonly delivered more issues than before. Anything that the Indian team is involved with will be an epic failure, and my hopes are they QCoE will finally bring this to light and show executives their true abilities - or lack thereof. My fear is that their work will be blamed on current employees to shift accountability and let more hard workers be let go to ensure the leadership and execs keep their inflated salaries and undeserving bonuses for being profitable - at the expense of destroying everything the company once represented.

Where to begin with cons? There are just so many! COO/President - I list him as the number 1 con for Benefitfocus because since he came in the world of Benefitfocus culture has went from being the number one place to work in South Carolina to an almost non-existent culture. Instead of coming into work because it was fun, you now come into work so you'll get a check on the 1st and 15th; and you work as hard as you can in fear of being let go, while you surf job boards for a new job just in case. Layoffs and Outsourcing - In the past month I have seen many good people that were outstanding at their jobs be let go due to restructuring of the company. A lot of these jobs have been moved to associates of Value Labs in India and others have become responsibilities of already overloaded associates in the office. Not to mention the work that comes out of the Value Labs office is pretty much crap and has to be fixed by someone in the office once it is here. Communication - There is a huge lack of communication from the HR, Management, and Executive levels to the associates. Everyone is in fear currently due to the layoffs (restructuring) we have witnessed this past month, but no one from HR or management has sent out an email to let everyone know what is going on and everyone fears that they may be next; causing a slide in moral, trust, and productivity. Reorganizations - Benefitfocus is the king when it comes to reorganizing. There was yearly reorganizations, but this past year there has been at least 3 reorgs in the company. Compensation - Salary at Benefitfocus is a lot lower than the national standard while the cost of living in the Charleston are is well above the national average. It's hard to find a place to rent or buy near the office because the pay doesn't equate to the cost of living. Merit Increases - I have watched merit increases decrease over the years at Benefitfocus and this past year they were super low compared to prior years; with some associates actually not even getting a raise. We have busted our butts this past year and got little to show for it. Rewards for hard work - Forget getting a reward for hard work like the free stock or compensation. You may be told by your manager or director that you are doing a fantastic job, but when it comes rewards they are given out to the same people every time; as there is a lot of favoritism shown to those people. Speaking of stock all developers get 100 shares of restricted stock when they are hired, but the rest of the design & engineering team get nothing. Developers are certainly considered more important than other associates by Benefitfocus. PTO Policy - While we receive a generous amount of PTO each year the con to that is that it does not roll over; use it or lose it. The thing is that it is hard to use all of your PTO since you are so busy working on many different projects. Another negative about this policy is that at the end of the year lots of the staff realize they are going to lose their PTO so they take off leaving everyone shorthanded and creating work for those not on PTO to finish out for the 4th release and patches to follow. ***Update - BF has updated their PTO policy because they know they screwed up; so now PTO runs April 1st - March 31st. Patches - There are so many patches between releases; and they are sometimes about as big as the release itself. We have so many issues with our software that it is hard to work on your release items because you are bogged down working on patch fixes up to the release, causing you to rush through release items; so prepare to patch those issues after the release. Work Life Balance - There really is no such thing as a work life balance at Benefitfocus. Everyone works long hours here and there is rarely any downtime; be prepared to work late nights and weekends, even holidays. When you take PTO you dread coming back due to how much work will be waiting on you. Training - With the company moving toward an Agile methodology there has been little to no training of the associates. It is going to be a complete failure if everyone is not trained. Company Sponsored Events - There is no telling how much money the company wastes on events like "One Place". They worry so much about the budget but waste so much money on events for clients and on advertising, while underpaying their associates. I'll stop right here because there are way too many cons to list, but I would just say to a future prospective associate to think long and hard before committing to work for Benefitfocus.