Glassdoor is your free inside look at Covance reviews and ratings — including employee satisfaction and approval rating for Covance CEO Joe Herring. All 177 reviews posted anonymously by Covance employees.
Be The First To
Add Photos
65% of the CEO
Joe Herring
Current Employee – been working at Covance full-time
Pros – Benefits are fair, flexibility with work schedules
Cons – Antequated IT systems/equipment, promotes growth opportunity (lateral & upward) but doesn't happen any longer (hire many from the outside for roles that could be filled with current employees), Senior Leadership
Advice to Senior Management – Invest in IT and Grow your bench (invest in your current employees).
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
2013-05-17 11:21 PDT
1 person found this helpful
Former Employee – worked at Covance full-time for more than a year
Pros – Great Benefits!
Good pay, lots of overtime available (although often required)
Great experience builder for anyone fresh out of college looking for entry level work
Much of the work is very interesting and rewarding
Doing great work generally for a good cause
Cons – Atrocious work/life balance
NOT an easy position to have with a family life, unpredictable and long hours
Work can often be very monotonous and boring
Extremely stressful at times, massive turn-over at this position
Team instability from turnover and high stress with training new members often leads to a depressed and overworked atmosphere.
Advice to Senior Management – Keep teams together by limiting turnover. A stable team environment would vastly improve work atmosphere.
2013-04-22 12:02 PDT
1 person found this helpful
Current Employee – been working at Covance full-time for more than a year
Pros – Lots of opportunities to learn new skills, great compensation and benefits. Company values your education and has tuition reimbursement. You start off with 21 or more days of paid vacation time.
Cons – Can have long hours and high stress depending on position and department. Toxicology is especially busy right now and experiencing high turnover.
Advice to Senior Management – Spend more time talking to the people actually conducting the research - inlife technicians in the vivarium. We make your business possible.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend
2013-04-16 16:55 PDT
1 person found this helpful
Former Employee – worked at Covance full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Great for entry level positions. Good overtime pay. Vibrant city location. School reimbursement along with other benefits.
Cons – Once you've learned the skills, the job can be boring and monotonous. This can leave you feeling boxed in and limited. As with other companies, politics and who you know matters. Work : Life ratio sucks and can be unpredictable.
Advice to Senior Management – Increase cohesiveness of how technicians are treated across teams.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend
2013-04-09 09:15 PDT
1 person found this helpful
Former Employee – worked at Covance full-time for more than a year
Pros – -Benefits were good
-PTO was fair
-Good work-life balance (for most)
-Met some of my best friends at work (totally unexpected)
-Great resume builder
Cons – -NO room for professional advancement unless you "run with a certain crowd"
-Most supervisors and department managers are med techs or have general education degrees with no real scientific training
-NOT flexible with educational advancement UNLESS you're an aspiring MT (other degree programs i.e. MBA, PhD are not supported)
-Employee review structure is designed to promote departmental competition and distracts team unity
Advice to Senior Management – -Utilize the talents of your employees
-Restructure the employee reviews for bonuses to be fair and maintain department morale
-Support individual growth and development (not everyone aspires to be a MT terminally)
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend
2013-04-08 13:09 PDT
Former Employee – worked at Covance
Pros – Lots of opportunity to move to different positions.
Cons – The pay is not very good for entry level.
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend
2013-04-08 07:52 PDT
Current Employee – been working at Covance full-time for more than 10 years
Pros – -fantastic helpful team-oriented coworkers
-flexible hours in some departments
-very interesting work
-good benefits
Cons – -supervisors and lower management poorly trained and ineffective, with singular goal of making upper management happy (regardless of the effect on everyone below)
-culture of fear (management induced)
-monthly roller coaster to "make budget or else"
-little to no employee recognition or appreciation (regardless of excess time worked, quality, quantity, effort, etc)
-depressed environment with high turnover
-6% of workers selected annually to fulfill quota in order that bonuses and raises can be witheld
-philosophy is to hire recent grads and work them until they burn out, and then replace them
Advice to Senior Management – Get managers and supervisors who want to manage, and then train them. Don't allow them to rule with bullying fear based tactics. Reconsider burnout philosophy and make attempts to reduce turnover. Take advantage of the benefits that employee longevity can bring to achieving overall satisfaction and success of a group.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend
2013-03-28 17:45 PDT
Current Employee – been working at Covance
Pros – Good strategic management
Excellent comp package
Cons – Increased size creating some silos
Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company
2013-03-25 06:08 PDT
Former Employee – worked at Covance full-time for more than 3 years
Pros – Work with good (non management) people, feel like your job makes a difference to society as a whole.
Cons – Inept middle management makes daily work painful. Ineffective management style is fostered and encouraged by upper management.
Advice to Senior Management – reward performance and discourage gossip. please leave your bad mood at home.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
2013-04-22 19:01 PDT
1 person found this helpful
Former Employee – worked at Covance full-time for more than 10 years
Pros – Good benefits, some caring individuals, a good place to learn.
Cons – Hard work, stress, and an overused old system to keep labor costs down (8% must be labeled as sub par and at risk of loosing their job). The environment has gone from we are all in it to succeed to I must do whatever I can to look good, which may not benefit the team or company overall. Senior management are accountants with no vision or or real team building skills or ideas.
Advice to Senior Management – Hold yourself to the same expectations that others are held to. It is time for a new vision and leader.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend
2013-04-14 11:34 PDT
Would you like us to review something? Please describe the problem with this {0} and we will look into it.
We're sorry but your feedback didn't make it to the team. Your input is valuable to us – would you mind trying again?
Your response will be removed from the review – this cannot be undone.
Copyright © 2008–2013, Glassdoor. All Rights Reserved. Your use of this service is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy & Cookies Policy. Glassdoor ® is a registered trademark of Glassdoor, Inc.
Simply post an anonymous review for a current/former employer or recent interview experience. Your post is anonymous – and if you're worried someone will be able to identify your review, you can even post without telling us your job title and location. Learn More.
No thanks – I'll just look around