700 jobs coming to Dublin
UnitedHealth Group will bring 700 new jobs to Dublin beginning later this year as it takes over office space previously occupied by Nationwide and JPMorgan Chase.
The company said it plans to hire for the jobs over the next two years, filling positions that will provide support to health providers and individuals enrolled in UnitedHealthcare plans.
Colleen Gilger, economic development director for the city of Dublin, welcomed the announcement of a company bringing jobs to Dublin.
“This is great news for Dublin and the Columbus region,” Gilger said in a statement. “We welcome this leading health-care firm and the hundreds of jobs they will bring to our community, and look forward to working with them as a corporate and community partner.”
A little more than half the positions created will be call-center jobs, with a starting rate of $14 to $16 per hour, UnitedHealth Group
President Dave Wichmann said, but there will be a dozen different job types at varying pay levels.
Gov. John Kasich made the announcement Friday, along with Wichmann and Rick Dunlop, CEO of United Healthcare’s health plans for the state of Ohio.
A 165,000-square-foot building at 5900 Parkwood Place is being renovated for the health insurer. It had recently been vacant after Chase, like Nationwide before it, consolidated workers from the building at a different location.
Military veterans are being especially encouraged to apply, the company said. UnitedHealth, based near Minneapolis, has joined with 100,000 Jobs Mission, a public-private partnership aimed at hiring veterans.
In Ohio, UnitedHealth serves about 2 million people through employer, Medicare and Medicaid plans.
At the announcement, Kasich — who is known to talk philosophically about the ethical responsibility to take care of others — spoke about UnitedHealth as a company “founded on values,” with a “sense of morality” informing its work to help people get healthy and stay healthy. He also challenged the company to continue finding ways to help people get the treatment they need.
Kasich cited the new UnitedHealth jobs as an example of Ohio’s continued diversification from manufacturing jobs to ones in a variety of sectors, including technology and financial services.
The new hires will bring the number of UnitedHealth Group employees in Ohio to more than 4,000. More than 1,000 of those will be in central Ohio, including an office in Westerville that employs 300 workers.
Dunlop, who heads the company’s Westerville office, said the company is receiving no public incentives for the project. He said this further demonstrates UnitedHealth’s long-term commitment to creating jobs in central Ohio.
UnitedHealth looked at a dozen potential sites before settling on the Dublin building, he said, adding that the company chose Dublin based on the availability and location of the space, as well as the strength of the Dublin community and its amenities, including good schools.
Extensive renovations are underway at the site, such as the addition of a “state of the art” gym, Dunlop said, and some amenities outside designed to encourage employees to get out for a stroll or to eat lunch outdoors in good weather.
Anyone interested in applying for a job can do so online at http://workatugh. com.