Walgreens Medicare Part B Center Hiring Practices

Walgreens doesn't hire its employees for the Medicare Part B Center directly, they use several staffing companies: Staffmark, Aerotek, and Select Staffing. The staffing companies don't just funnel them to Walgreens and walk away, they continue to be an integral part of handling the employee's "assignment". Paychecks to these employees don't come from Walgreens but are taken care of by the staffing companies, and Walgreens also has these staffing companies take care of the firing of employees as well.

Every couple weeks, Walgreens hires roughly 40 people and puts them through a training class. On one of my first days there, I found out that there were only 50 reps in the call center. It makes one wonder, how can a company hire 40 new people every couple weeks and only end up with 50 reps? I know turnover is typically high in a call center environment, but not this bad.

One thing I found interesting was that in the initial employment ad and also in what reps are initially told, the training is said to last 4 or 5 weeks. I will attach below a copy of their employment ads for the call center positions. It turns out that the training class lasts only 1 week and then the reps begin selling on the phone. The government offers different types of incentives and tax credits to businesses for training they provide to new employees. Hiring 40 people every couple weeks only to lose most of them after a month seems like a huge waste of money and time. Are they receiving some sort of kickback in return for "training" that makes it all worth it? Question: when they file to receive these training incentives, do they tell the government that they trained employees for 1 week? or 4 or 5 weeks? If the incentive amount corresponds with the amount of time training, this could artificially quadruple the amount they're receiving from the government.

The position pays $11/hour. The staffing companies obviously take some sort of cut too from their services of providing employees, but that might just be taken from the commission bonuses and not the hourly. Employees are told that a 15% fee is taken out of bonuses for the staffing companies. If staffing companies are only paid a percentage of commission and not hourly, this would make good sense as it would encourage staffing companies to work hard to find highly talented candidates who can bring in the big commission checks. But back to that $11/hour. Walgreens hires 40 new people every couple weeks and has them sitting in a training class for a week. None of the employees are producing at this time, they're all just sitting in a class. $11 x 40 hours a week x 40 employees is $17,600. How can it make sense to shell out $17,600 every couple weeks for training of employees when 85% of them will be gone within a few months?

From a class of 20 people (classes are divided into 2, around 20 per class), only around 3 employees are remaining at the end of 3 months. What happened to the rest of the group, did they all get burned out? Well throughout the course of a few months, Walgreens fires them. They don't fire them all on one day, they spread it out so for a good amount of time it goes unnoticed. And none of the employees are told that their coworkers were fired. It's made to look like they just had a scheduling conflict or moved on. Even some of the managers and "coaches" are kept in the dark.

Below is the employment ad Staffmark put on Careerbuilder.com for the position:

Job Description

Walgreens Medicare Part B Call Center in West Chester, Ohio, which is part of Walgreens Co., a well established company in the Pharmacy Industry focusing on health and wellness solutions, consumer goods and convenient services, is currently seeking money motivated experienced Inside Sales / Call Center Representatives to work in a fast paced outbound sales call center environment.

Walgreens is among one of the leaders in the food and drug industry, and is ranked in the Fortune's Global 500 list for largest companies in the world.

Job Description:
 

• Making outbound calls to sell diabetes testing supplies to current and potential customers.
• Shift is 12:30pm – 9:00pm Mon thru Fri (Training is 4 weeks from 9:00am – 5:30pm)
• Pay is $11/hr plus eligibility for an unlimited sales incentive bonus potential!
• With incentives, potential weekly gross earnings can range from $440-$800 (+).
• This is a contract-to-hire opportunity (we are looking for dependable long term employees with a strong work ethic)
• Must be able to pass a drug test / criminal background check

Job Requirements

 Candidates Must Have:

• High School Diploma or GED certificate
• Proof of previous Sales Achievements and a strong dependable attendance record
• Ability to be persistent with strong persuasion skills
• Excellent listening, communication, and probing skills
• Minimum 1-2 years outbound call center experience is required (ex: collections, telemarketing, inside sales, up selling)
• Good computer skills (data entry, navigating multiple screens, etc.)
• Self-motivated and organized with great follow-up, willingness to work very hard and get the job done
• Be professional and have a great personality that works well with people over the phone