Working at Kaiser Permanente — Reviews by Employees

In reading all these statements it seems that the following is the Kaiser way to "Thrive" (here's the recap):
Leadership is inconsistent, in cohesive, makes very poor decisions.
Organization allows management to treat employees so poorly.
Psychological stress & harassment.
Overpaid directors, managers who treat people like crap, they look down their noses at you.
It doesn't matter how hard you work, people are hired based on who they know, not what they know.
Management does not know what they are doing & just doesn't care.
Co-workers are backstabbers & incapable of doing their jobs & the morale really sucks.
This place is toxic.
What a horrible place to work.
The incompetent are promoted & the excellent are fired.
The culture of this company is terrible, it allows the employees to be lazy & incompetent.
They would rather let the best employee go than to get rid of the worst kind.
Management only cares about themselves.
They have created a toxic environment & all the employees operate in constant fear & intimidation.
Department management has poor or no communication, favoritism & retaliation is ramped.
You have to be a phony, sneaky, backstabber to be a manager or to get favored.
Sad place to work.
Management protects the incompetent & promotes the lazy.
Upper management, HR, & the like are racist, judgmental, & unprofessional.
Senior management is only out for themselves.
As a nurse of many years I find it distasteful at best to work for such an organization. They also suck the life out of their physicians. Run away quickly if you are tempted to work for them. Run quickly & run far.
Very political, you will be used then fired!
If you put in extra hours & work your butt off you won't be looked at for a promotion. If you do NOTHING & walk around & let everyone else do the work for you... you get promoted.
People don't follow through. It makes it impossible to do your job when other departments won't respond.
It seems the less you do the further you will go.
There is no work-life balance.
They seem to get rid of the good employees & promote the dumb-nuts.
The management is dishonest & sneaky. I don't trust them... not many people do. No one's job is secure. Sad. Very Sad.
All the administration cares about is $$.
They don't give a shit about the hard working employees.
There is a lot of backstabbing, gossiping, continual talking & unprofessionalism.
There is little support from management, & when they want to get rid of you, they will try to use other co-workers against you.
It can be a very manipulative & hostile environment. Additionally, racism, discrimination & harassment is rampant.
Overall, Kaiser is a toxic work place.
The current department, I am working in is a bloody nightmare. I have never experienced the degree of disrespect & general mistreatment from a member of management before.
Job security is bad & life/ work balance is a joke.
There is nothing balanced about working 10 to 12 hour days with no guidance from management & if you complain, you are viewed as a “bad fit” for the department.
Incompetent management in & on every level....
Lack of professionalism, no concept of work flow management, complete lack of underst&ing of job requirements & mechanics of subordinates job criteria, ZERO ethical guidelines & a horrific lack of respect & fairness shown to employees.
You will NOT be supported by HR or by upper management....forget it. You will be much better served not saying a word.
Very dysfunctional in the area of communication.
We have become so focused on passing Joint Commission & knowing all the rules that simply taking care of patients is taking a back seat.
There are a lot of two-faces. Talk good when your around & talk bad when you're not.
The stress due to the environment is very bad.
The hours are extremely long & the senior management isn't appreciative.
Management is the worst I have ever experienced; simply described as Cruel & stupid.
Work / life balance is lip service.
Be very careful of the passive / aggressive games.
Management has favorites & everyone knows who they are. Some are liked, some are dislikes.
Gossiping & backstabbing is constant.
People are allowed to be lazy, to talk all day, to not do their jobs but the rest of us are expected to pick up the slack.
Upper management is full of idiots. no competency at all.
Co-workers are hostile & do not like to work. prefer to chit-chat the days away instead of get stuff done.
Management is horrid.
Stress you out to the point your health becomes an issue.
They want you to be a Kaiser drone.
Management is insane, sick, & twisted.
It's the worst place to work when you are competent; others who are incompetent form an "alliance" to get rid of competent folks in order to preserve the incompetent.
Working for Kaiser = unlimited stress.
They hire marginally skilled inexperienced managers & supervisors with questionable ethics. There are so many good & decent hardworking nurses, doctors & clinicians who give & always get overlooked.
"Keep your head down," is the constant refrain.
A place of low morale, high stress & lack of trust for our leaders.
The managers play favorites, everyone is afraid to speak, directors & managers are highly overpaid, & they treat people like crap. Scary place!
What a joke Kaiser's non-retaliation policy is; same goes for compliance - what a sham!
Management's flavor of the month. If you're not, you get spit out like garbage!
Kaiser is constantly hiring incompetent people, & overlooking those with substantial experience & hard workers.
If you put in extra hours & work your butt off you won't be looked at for a promotion. If you do NOTHING & walk around & let everyone else do the work for you - you get promoted.
You end up having to quit to find peace, before they find a reason for fire you.
If you don't respect yourself, no one will respect you, which is why you shouldn't work for Kaiser!

You'd think that when a physician who works above and beyond (12 hr+ days at times)…has the care of the patient as their primary goal, who's patient's just absolutely love them, and who cares about the company they work for…that the company would be proud to have this physician employed in their staff.
But, with Kaiser Permanente in Colorado…that's the kind of employees who get treated the worst! And we're not talking about someone who's just treating the sniffles or something minor. This physician deals with life and death issues with their patients everyday…many needing more than the 15 minutes per visit the company wants physicians to adhere to…you just don't tell someone that their going to die in a 15 minute time slot!
And this physician is always watching out that the patients get treated properly and cost effectively…all within company policy.
Yet, there are physicians who make costly mistakes (both to patients and the company)…cause the death of patients…are sued and brought before the Board…these physicians some how are able to keep their jobs year after year!
It seems that a few "random" evaluations from others in the department saying the physician was not taking good care of patients ("was mean to them") has more weight than all the good and all the neutral department evaluations. And the physician's own patients themselves have given this physician the highest marks of all the physicians in Kaiser…something a patient doesn't do if their physician gives them bad care or is "mean" to them.

"Kaiser Permanente…our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve…"

Then Kaiser…treat the good physicians you have with the same respect that you say you have for your members and let the members receive great care from some of the finest doctors out there!

This feedback is for those potential candidates who have applied for positions at Kaiser. Either the HR Recruiters don't know what their doing or the Management is fully communicating with HR. I was contacted to interview for two Kaiser positions in seperate departments. With both positions the management seemed to echo the same message as if they wanted to discourage outside candidates from applying for jobs and that was Kaiser's enviroment and business model is very different from other carriers, Dah! If you have worked in this industry long enough you know that the business model is very different. Especially working in a sales environment. As every work environment is different as well. To add more insult to injury during the interview the manager then goes on to explain he too came from the outside and that it was a difficult for him to transition and that utimately Kaiser's preference is to hire candidates from within who already know the "kaiser culture." My point to all of this is why waste an outside candidates time if you know utimately that you plan on going with an internal candidate in the first place. To disclose this to the candidate up front pretty much told me that you had no intention on hiring me or anyone else from the outside. I decided to write this feedback because I read another post from someone who applied for more than one position who appeared to be qualified and when through interviewing with several people each time before being told they elected to go with someone else.

As someone said earlier "dog eat dog." Leadership is inconsistent, incohesive, and makes VERY POOR decisions. My boss claimed to offer autonomy, but was an incredible micromanager. I was not treated as a human being, and my perspective was irrelevant. I was shocked that this organization allows management to treat employees so poorly. I'm relieved to be out, and wish I would have found this site before I took the job. They relocate a lot of people from out of state--probably because the locals know to avoid this place.

Wow! Seems like all the Kaiser locations treat employees the same - AWFUL! I'm adding my 2 cents from Colorado. I agree with everything people from around the country are saying. Management flavor of the week; psychological stress and harassment; overpaid directors and managers who treat people like crap; they look down their noses at you. I work in an office, not a medical center. I am happy with the doctors in the clinics; it's the management at these clinics, HR, upper management, directors, Board of Directors, all evil people!

I worked for Kaiser as a temp and thought that I had run into a good thing, boy was I wrong. The first assignment I had was decent but my manager was pushing me to take the job of another temp that had been fired, (not until she had trained me first, of course). I took the new assignment to show that I was a good employee and could do the work, but found out quickly that it doesn't matter how hard you work, people are hired based on who they know, not what they know.

The first lesson of Kaiser is this, people are not trained well, they don't know how to do their jobs, there is nothing written about HOW TO do your job, it seems to be made up as you go along.

Second lesson is that you should never, ever, ever ask your manager or supervisor for help as they are clueless and are there to crack a whip, you may stay overtime for over a month not taking bathroom and lunch breaks, but you will be labeled as "not a team player" if you tell them that you are tired and need to go home after 8 hours or if you tell them that you can't do something right now.

Finally, realize that your co-workers were hired not because they know how to do their jobs but because they have friends that work at Kaiser and got them "in" somehow. Most of my co-workers could barely comprehend their work and most did not have the necessary basic clerical skills to complete it. One co-worker continued to make mistake after mistake and for some reason, management did not want to get rid of her, the attitude seemed to be to just pass the work that she couldn't do to someone else (me), I have never seen this attitude in any other place that I have worked.

To summarize Kaiser - Great benefits, if you can be hired permanently or put up with the abuse, management does not know what they are doing and just doesn't care, co-workers are backstabbers and incapable of doing their jobs and the morale really sucks. I don't care how good the benefits are, you need to respect me as a person, I told Kaiser no thank you and walked away from a screaming manager who was having a meltdown. If you don't respect yourself, no one will respect you, which is why you shouldn't work for Kaiser.

Allot of the recent reviews of how terrible Kaiser is are right on the money!!! This place is toxic. What a horrible place to work. The incompetent are promoted and the excellent are fired. Never go to work here. Tell every would be job seeker never do it. You will go nowhere.

All I have to say is the culture of this company is terrible. It allows the employees to be lazy and incompetent. They would rather let the best employee go than to get rid of the worst kind. No such thing as disciplinary other than a slap on the wrist. The managers are incompetent and do not care for their staffs. Just found out my pension after nearly 10 years of working for this company will be a measly $1000 a month after the age of 75. What a joke! they make billions yearly in profit and this is all I get? You can keep it and I do hope your company will sink one of these days.

This is the very worst place an employer could create. Everyone hear is sad and depressed. Management only cares about them. They have created a toxic environment and all the employees operate in constant fear and intimidation. Retaliation is ramped. It is a mental study for any would be psychiatrist. This is the worst place you could ever work. All of the comment are exactly true. Do not work hear.

I agree with the comment about if "you are not management's flavor of the month". Department management has poor or no communication, favoritism is rampid, if you're not in a union you are on shaky ground. You have to be a phony, sneaky, backstabber to be a manager or to get favored. Sad place to work.