Reports: UnitedHealthcare offering buyouts with goal to cut 30K+ jobs
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UnitedHealthcare has exclusive signage rights at CityPlace I in Hartford.
Health insurer UnitedHealthcare is offering buyouts to certain employees in its benefits operations as it seeks to significantly reduce its workforce, CNBC and other news media reported Thursday.
The employees have been given until March 3 to accept the buyout offer, CNBC said, citing two unnamed people who are familiar with the offer. Employees who do not accept the offer will remain in either their current role or a comparable position, but if UnitedHealthcare does not meet a resignation quota through buyouts, it will lay off employees, the sources told CNBC.
The media outlet said the company declined to share how many employees received the buyout offers.
A statement provided to CNBC by a company spokesperson confirmed the buyout offer.
“This voluntary option is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our team is best positioned to meet the evolving needs of the people and customers we are honored to serve,” the spokesperson told CNBC. “We continue to grow our workforce with more than 3,200 positions currently available on UnitedHealth Group’s careers site.”
Various posts on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suggest the company intends to lay off between 25,000 and 30,000 employees.
UnitedHealthcare employs about 6,400 people in Connecticut, according to a company website. It is not known how many employees in the state could be affected. Overall, UHC employs more than 440,000 people.
UHC’s benefits operations unit oversees multiple subdivisions that help manage customer service, claims, enrollment, customer’s insurance benefits and more, CNBC reported.
UHC is the insurance division of UnitedHealth Group and is the nation’s largest private health insurer.
UHC joins CVS Health in making large staffing cuts. Last year, CVS Health, the parent of Hartford-based Aetna Inc., announced plans to cut 2,900 jobs.
According to CNBC, UHC expects the termination date for employees accepting the buyouts to be no sooner than May 1, according to an internal memo viewed by the news outlet. Some employees who accept buyouts may need to work beyond that date, but the company does not expect to require them to work past Nov. 13, the memo said.
Employees accepting buyouts will receive severance packages based on the number of years they have spent at the company and their salary grade, CNBC said.
UnitedHealth Group is cutting costs as medical expenses increase for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries and in the wake of a costly cyberattack against its subsidiary, Change Healthcare. It also has faced anger over high health-care costs following the fatal shooting of its insurance unit CEO Brian Thompson in December.
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