Merck Reviews

Pros

Great benefits, rewarding challenges, culture, six sigma, learning, collaboration. Opportunities for promotion exist for effective and hard working employees who can make an impact.

Cons

Levels of management to approve changes, some processes can be streamlined and simplified, eliminate duplication of effort, celebrate milestones, accomplishments more often

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to challenge current processes, communicate communicate communicate.
Enable more input from the shop floor, create an environment where employee contributions are heard and valued.

Pros

1) Most of the people at Merck / MSD work everyday for the betterment of humanity and take great pride in the contributions the company makes to the world. Merck really is about putting patients first.
2) You get to work with and learn from some very smart people
3) Because of the companies size and multinational reach there are an enormous number of career paths across functions and geographies available to people who are motivated and do great work
4) The company treats its employees very well in terms of compensation, benefits, and work-life balance
5) The company strategy shows a clear commitment to research and innovation unlike many industry contemporaries

Cons

1) The industry is going through significant change and challenges so Merck is evolving to remain competitive while continuing to fulfill its mission. These changes are painful as colleagues lose jobs and some of the perks of working for Merck are reduced.
2) Merck operates as a U.S. based multinational, not a global company. The culture is therefore very U.S. based making it difficult to operate outside the U.S. occasionally
3) Politics gets too involved in decision making and some senior managers are more interested in kingdom building than moving the company forward.

Advice to Senior Management

1) Stay the course with the research driven strategy (regardless of Wall Street disagreement)
2) Recruit the best and the brightest to replace employees that become complacent

Pros

Benefits, salary, commute, colleagues and pension

Cons

poor group interaction (silos) and complicated ways of doing things

Advice to Senior Management

continue to transfer Merck for the better

Pros

Immediate managers emphasize work life balance.
Good health care benefits and overall compensation.
Plenty of money in budget for IT projects

Cons

No career prospects for IT development.
Too much bureaucracy. Time tracking on IT projects is meaningless, since it is predetermined.

Advice to Senior Management

Middle management defense of bloated and highly segmented organizations prevented Schering-Plough employees teaching Merck how to be lean. Constant reorganizations lead to 5 different managers in a two year period.

Pros

Good work/life balance, good benefits - although there have been steady increases yearly in medical insurance premiums, and good training for the initial years. Merck has top products and great research to back those products.

Cons

Merck tends to interpret FDA policies and regulations very stringently. There is often little room for flexibility and this makes marketing and selling challenging.

Advice to Senior Management

Look towards other ways of improving profitability other that cost containment. Better transparency regarding job security as well as faster decision making would also be appreciated.

Pros

Merck has a lot of good scientists

Cons

Merck doesn't treat its employees well

Pros

Competitive compensation, outstanding benefits with minimal employee cost, generous 401K match and employee pension. Company culture fully supports work life balance. Challenging projects and opportunity for professional development.

Cons

Decision making is a very slow process and requires multiple levels of approval and buy in. Alignment of the company's support functions and the business direction are not in sync. Communication from leadership down is not effective. Company "encourages" employees to speak their mind, but punishes those who do. Company is going through a mass global downsizing but is still operating under as though they have the same number of employees causing existing employees to do more with less and no ownership of work.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to rethink the way work gets done and discontinue operating as if there were not layoffs.

Pros

Excellent benefits and salary. Ability to grow with the company. Working with excellent management
staff.

Cons

Job can be demanding and many time lines to meet. Can get lost in a large company for
promotions.

Advice to Senior Management

Show respect to all. Listen to coworkers thourghts and recommendations.

Pros

Respect and interested in employee input.

Cons

Politics can become difficult. Employees feel Upper Management does not communicate adequately with their employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication key.

Pros

1. Work/life balance
2. Benefits
3. Great opportunity to learn

Cons

1. Lot of favoritism
2. Complex processes
3. Difficult to get approval for professional trainings

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you get the inputs from people who have hands on experience while making decisions