Offshore staff at fast-growing telehealth company Eucalyptus say “impossible” benchmarks, fear of punishment and round-the-clock work are the real price of rapid growth.
Booming telehealth outfit Eucalyptus is facing claims from its Philippines-based workforce that staff are being overworked and underpaid since the company raised performance benchmarks amid rapid global growth.
According to an article published in the Australian Financial Review, several current and former medical assistants were forced to work under “impossible” benchmarks.
Medical and patient assistants are believed to be nurses, occupational therapists and other health professionals that deal with simpler inquiries.
Eucalyptus has given workers a target of queries or “tickets” they need to fulfill each day. Workers complained they had to fulfil all 65 tickets each day and couldn’t go home until they’d completed them.
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Former employees told the AFR that workers were often expected to work long hours to meet the targets, “sometimes close to a 24/7 routine – with very limited rest”, one said.
“Failing to meet these metrics could lead to escalation from management, particularly local management in the Philippines, and in some cases this created fear of termination,” the former worker continued.
Online forums echo these concerns. Multiple Reddit threads from current and former employees warn others to stay away from the company, with comments intensifying over the past six months.
“You’re required to overwork but just a little error, you’re punished too much,” a translation of one of the threads said.
“You can’t make mistakes, you can’t get tired, you can’t get sick because if you don’t show up, they’ll doubt you,” they continued.
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Eucalyptus clinical director Matt Vickers told the AFR that the targets weren’t focused on volume but were instead about patient care.
“New targets were set last year with increased requirements around quality of care, measures by patient satisfaction and our quality assurance auditing process,” he was quoted as saying.
The allegations come as Eucalyptus continues to scale aggressively. The telehealth company has boomed in recent years and is reportedly set to close a $190 million funding round with an expected $1.3 billion valuation.
It offers several telehealth products including reproductive health and men’s health. However, it’s the telehealth medical weight-loss sector where the brand is really taking strides.
The business supports people throughout Australia, UK, Japan and Germany, however since launching in the UK three years ago, the country has become its largest market.
“It has been a really strong year of growth for Eucalyptus. Our international business has particularly outperformed, with Juniper weight program scaling quickly in the UK and Germany,” CEO Tim Doyle told the AFR in December.
For some former workers, however, that growth reportedly came at a personal cost.
TMR contacted Eucalyptus for further comment, but a company spokesperson refused to add to the comments made by Mr Vickers to the AFR.
