Micro Focus: How to not do the right thing. It just does not care.
Micro Focus: How to not do the right thing.
Here is the short version of for those short on time 😊. The full story can be found by googling the title.
Micro Focus made a mistake in 2019 with enrollment some of its benefits, yet confirmed them. September 2020, they modified the committed benefits for 2020, including supplementals that can be carried over year to year or when the employee leaves the company. They did that by tampering with and modifying the statement committed to start January 1, 2020 and back dating to that data, also as a way that seemed to cover up the changes. It affected 12 to 32 employees, many probably never noticed.
Micro Focus HR benefits played the clock to try to convince that error does not matter with 2021 enrollment which is not true for supplement life insurance. They claimed they could resolved and couldn’t. Some employees did cancel existing life insurance and now have lost the coverage. Micro Focus offered no way to restore the coverage, other than with extra pain and risk during the pandemic and state lock down.
Micro Focus never followed up on paying for damage of lost coverage. When HR was reported (whistle blow) for document tampering, fraud and cover up, they threatened, with mock litigation language, through outside legal counsel supposed to discuss why Micro Focus would not have to be accountable. Answer never discussed breach of commitments, and damages due to reasonable reliance, only that ERISA law would protect, yet that is a different topic. Never mind that life insurance coverage was lost during pandemic when risk are high. Whistle blowing investigation and legal justification were driven by head of litigations!
All that despite a no-retaliation policy. It could be construe that with such actions, Micro Focus attempted to push not older employees which have otherwise stellar records but are expensive. It’s a form of ageism. Clearly Micro Focus does not care as it disinvest widely everywhere including in business-critical investments.
Employees and future employee should run. Why work for a company that does not care. Customer should wonder if they can trust companies that drive crazy audits but don’t respect they own commitments.