Pros
This review is from the perspective of a Pharmacy Business Consultant within the ISF (Independent Sales Force). This team works with non-chain, retail independent pharmacies. The team that works with hospitals and labs is an entirely separate division within the company, so I cannot speak to the pros and cons of their experience. I have a few basic pros to share: - Good PTO (21 days) - Decent health care (high-deductible $5k/year plan, but generous HSA contribution) - 4.5% to 5% 401K match. - Strong focus on diversity and inclusion (especially LGBT). I was proud that the company announced that they would fund abortion travel needs after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Kontras
- Cardinal Health over the past few years has outsourced most of its internal and customer-facing resources. For example, as an employee, anytime you need technical assistance, you are going to have to wait on hold for a long time or create a case number with the non-US-based IT team and wait several days (if you're lucky) for them to resolve your issue. Cardinal Health made the employee-hated decision to transition customer collections to GenPac, a non-US-based company. There were errors in customers being invoiced for the another customer's purchases, issues with checks and payments not being applied and accounts were receiving late fees, and a host of other issues that the non-US-based team was slow to resolve. I cannot tell you how frustrated our customers were by having to work with this team. Inevitably, the Pharmacy Business Consultant has to get roped in to help because of the lack of response, lack of issue resolution, or lack of English language understanding (seriously) from GenPac, but your manager will keep telling you to just make GenPac deal with it. But you will lose the customer's business... This is a common theme at CAH. One of the best quotes from another coworker I ever heard was "I feel like I've been tasked with putting out a forest fire but all they gave me is a garden hose." That hits the nail on the head. - Similar to the above point, CAH has a mantra of "company first, then client, then PBC." They will ALWAYS put the company above their clients, which at the end of the day became harder and harder for me to stomach. They treat their existing customers badly (see above point) but then expect you to go out and win new business. Towards the end of my time at CAH, I could not in good faith go out and try to get pharmacies to switch to us because our service-levels were so sub-par. For example, deliveries were consistently late or not delivered at all. I routinely had pharmacies go without deliveries for days at a time. This has gotten a bit better now that the labor shortage issues have abated, but it's still a routine problem. - CAH, as a big company, is SLOW to enact change. They were slow to respond to Covid-19. If you are used to working for a company that can quickly and adeptly react to market changes in order to make its offering more competitive, than CAH is NOT the company for you. - CAH is a huge corporation. As a remote sales employee, it's hard to have visibility with leadership. If you don't have a good manager who's advocating for you, both in terms of promotions and just general day-to-day "this is what I'm seeing in the market/this is what I need help with" concerns, then you will be stuck in your own echo chamber. If I had had a better manager, CAH may have been an entirely different experience for me. But most of the feedback I shared with my manager or requests for help never made it past them and up the leadership ladder. - CAH is big on what they call "succession planning." Essentially, every leader is asked every year about their recommendations for who to backfill their role. I cannot stress enough that if you do not have a manager who believes in you, you will not be named as a backfill and your path to promotion will be extremely difficult. - Within the ISF, as people burnt out and left the company, they often do not backfill positions but instead add accounts to existing PBCs. Then they burn out... The ISF had around 50% turnover in 2021. - CAH pays LOW compared to other healthcare companies. I heard that they even pay the lowest among the "big three" wholesalers. I left CAH for a mid-size healthcare company of around 500 employees and I was able to obtain a base salary of around 40% more with almost no negotiating - my old base was that easy to beat. - ISF leadership is known for being a "good old boys" club. It is very male and very white. Of the current VPs, 5/6 are men and none are racially diverse.