Where do I even begin.
From day 1 this company was awful, we were given vague instructions to find the training building they’d rented and a lot of us got lost. Said building was infested with bugs the entire class and nothing was done to remedy it.
The training class was overcrowded and there was no control over it.
I did not learn ANYTHING about the actual job I was doing because half the time I was so far back I couldn’t hear the trainer or see the screen, and the other half they took the whole day answering stupid, redundant questions or teaching us things that weren’t useful for the position at all. They somehow managed to mess up my ID so I couldn’t get into the main building without someone accompanying me, or get a laptop - wasn’t allowed to bring my own. This took two weeks to fix, so I had to hand write all my notes and share a laptop with classmates. Most people quit early on in training, but the class was still too large even with half the people leaving halfway through.
Once we got onto the floor, we were thrown to the wolves with almost no direction. Some of us partnered up, but for the most part we were on our own with almost no proper training on how to use the system or properly help the clients. Technical issues were painfully common so we’d often spend long swathes of the day sitting around doing absolutely nothing while they tried to fix it. Expectations for how we were supposed to do certain things like notation on calls was changed daily, with no notification to us most of the time until QA gave us bad scores for stuff we were unaware needed to be done. Most of the QA agents were unnecessarily nitpicky about things so disputing bad scores with team leads was a common occurrence for most people. Leads were reluctant to do so most of the time and either let your request sit for days or weeks, or just told you to stop being argumentative for trying to get a fair score. People dropped like flies, by the second month of employment my training class was under half it’s original size. Nobody wanted to be there.
Over time, the requirements for notation on call got to a ridiculous point, and combined with the unaccommodating and extremely uncomfortable workspace I was injured. I followed proper procedure for workers comp, provided the company with all the documentation they needed and complied with getting an examination from one of their doctors.and nothing. Not only did they let my request for an ergonomic workspace sit for weeks without being touched(after I repeatedly asked the progress from my lead), they eventually denied both the workers comp and request completely once they finally graced me with a response. My condition continued to get worse and worse, and when I got a new lead I made another request to save myself from losing the use of my hand. He did nothing about it despite promises that he would, and later used it as leverage to try and force me to work overtime. This same lead repeatedly harassed me for speaking’out of line’ for asking simple things like reviewing QA scores, helping in chat, and taking SUP calls - which they were REQUIRED to take if a client asks. I was constantly asked to do things way above my pay grade that were the SUPs responsibility, as were many others from my class. I was, several times, offered a promotion from two different leads and the floor manager himself - yet instead of notifying me someone else got the position they elected to just have him come say "hello, I got the job you were supposed to get" with no prior notice to me after promises that I would be the next considered for promotion, and I wasn’t the only one they did this to to try and get extra work out of us under the guise of’preparing us for promotion’.
In the early stages of the pandemic, most people continued to work in-office. The only thing the company did was put up signs about the issue and put a few bottles of hand sanitizer near areas of high traffic. When it got more serious, it still took them months to consider and get work from home organized. I had already started self-isolating before that as I had been exposed to a co-worker who had returned from a trip out of country and feared he got me sick. I stayed home for weeks unpaid, as the company offered no paid sick leave, but they eventually got me set up at home. Communication was even more sparse than before, and leads were no help with work from home once you took your computer out the door of the office. There was a security breach with the company - public knowledge at this point - and the string of technical issues that followed were absolutely ridiculous for a company that boasts it’s technical superiority and security the way Cognizant does. Nothing worked, but all the agents were still expected to sit at their computers "on call" and unpaid for 12 hours a day to troubleshoot and wait for instruction. By this point, I was fed up with constantly having to’work’ trying to fix the broken system - often being asked to attend meetings hours before my shift even started - UNPAID.
Near the end of my employment, they finally got the computers working somewhat - but there were still issues with things like the payroll submission system. I didn’t receive my paycheck on my usual payday due to these issues. I was in the process of getting permanently hired into the company, but due to the system issues they implored me to wait on signing the contract to go from temp to perm under the guise of the temp agency being able to get me my paycheck sooner, rather than waiting a month to get it. I reluctantly agreed, and did get that check on time before signing my contract with them some time later to be a permanent employee with Cognizant. On my last day, I was woken up to attend a meeting they’d been trying to get me into for 3 days - but nobody had sent me the link to attend on any of those days and so I was left in the dark for the third time in a row. I got fed up, went back to bed, and when I woke up I was resolved to quit after the abuse my co-workers and I had suffered. My lead attempted to negotiate with me to get me to stay, and was very rude about it after several phone calls back and fourth but eventually she got the hint that I was not going to suffer another moment working for them.
I had been unable to submit my timecard for the days I did work up until that point, and my lead was aware of the issue, telling me she was working on fixing it. It wasn’t fixed, so I messaged the floor manager who said he worked on it. Still nothing. After several correspondence with him he eventually told me he couldn’t do anything about it and to reach out to HR - this was 4 months after I quit and waited patiently to resolve it. I reached out to HR, and the response they gave me was that it had been more than 90 days and that they couldn’t fix the issue any longer. So my last week and a half of employment I was never paid for, and they made no effort to fix something that was cause by their negligence and technical issues.
It has been about a year now since my employment with this company, so I’m sure I missed some other shady things they did to me and my co-workers but this is as much as I could recall. Do not work for this company, they are monsters.