Novartis Reviews

Pros

-good carrer orientation.
-good work life balance
-supportive management
-no time keeping practice , which give employees a kind of freedom to perform.
-good pipeline.
-Company has good ethics.
-Work gets recognized in form of awards

Cons

-location priority
-As company works more on outsourcing model, vendors are more previleged/prioritized then employees
-If you show off you get promoted else you are ignored (management is not capable of tracking the right candidate).
-you scrach my back, I shall scratch your back approach from management.
-If you have technical orientation for IT, wrong place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Hope the message is conveyed with my Cons part.

Pros

Personally, I had a great experience, a chance to interact with people across the organization, support of management, great impact. I felt appreciated and have been rewarded with cash and stock bonuses. This can be a fantastic place to work in the right department with the right managers.

Cons

In spite of great potential, Novartis has too many sociopathic managers who only consider their own careers and those of their sycophants. I personally did not suffer from this unduly but watched as other extremely talented people were crushed by this culture.
Too many of the middle managers are terrible people managers with no value add to the company apart from deep "personal loyalty" (ie. a$$kissers ) to their superiors. The illusion of agreement with a superior is valued much more highly than plain speaking and the pointing out of problems, issues etc.
For me, in spite of success, promotion was a long time coming and caused me to keep an eye out for new possibilities, mainly because I was considered "too negative" because I raised issues rather than just toeing the management line.
Speak up culture is virtually non-existent in spite of a lot of lip service to the contrary. People are even afraid to fill out anonymous surveys honestly.
Novartis has an IT organization which is disfunctional at best and totally incompetent at worst which makes it difficult to do the job. Furthermore, IT is becoming more and more sensitive to criticism of any kind.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the toxic managers. Too many departments are suffering under these people. Why should work be a place your employees dread coming to each day? Really encourage a speak up culture, have a way for subordinates to properly review their managers anonymously. I have seen too many good people leave their departments for other departments or companies because of poor management and it is a waste of talent. I have the feeling that this is becoming more and more problematic due to promotion of people whose only talent is buttlicking or hiring of people not suited to a people management role. Remember that a$$kissing is not a valuable behavior in the long term and that a good academic background does not make someone a suitable people manager! Promote the people who challenge you rather than the ones who make your life easy, in the long run they will make the difference.
Let the lab heads make the scientific choices and let the senior managers handle the people more, meaning resolving conflict, coaching, career development, defending the decisions of their people, empowering etc. You don't hire a bunch of PhD level scientists with strong backgrounds in a particular field and then micromanage them to death.
Siloing is getting worse since I joined and should be curbed and reduced at all costs.
Be careful that research is not becoming too Cambridge-centric. I think the balance of cultures between Switzerland (slow, careful, high quality) and the US (fast, innovative but sometimes cheap&dirty) is a important and should not be undervalued.
Improve IT. Listen to the people at the borders between IT and the business, they will tell you where the issues are.

Pros

Culture
challenging job
opportunity to learn
global team
good exposure to SAS
work from home flexibility
flexible work hours option

Cons

compensation
hikes
employee manager relation
work life balance
lack of strategy
lack of versatility
consultancy mind set
poor yearly incentive

Pros

Large Global company
Very interesting pipeline, particularly with regard to Oncology Translational Medicine
Very intelligent and competent scientific & clinical group
Team members (on studies I worked) were professional and motivated to do their best

Cons

For Oncology Data Management -
lack of DM metrics and thereby accountability. This leads to a culture of who can point the finger the fastest opposed to accepting responsibility for errors and creating processes or improvements to prevent them in the future.
Accepted DM culture of doing least amount of work for most amount of money, i.e. abundant and blatant internet surfing and Facebooking while at work.
Completely outsourced model (starting to come back in-house) and high on-site contractor use. This is not necessarily a con if appropriate metrics are in place, but since not, fosters continuous blame to CROs and contractors opposed to process correction and thereby negating vendor relationships as well as producing a high turn-over rate of contractors.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward productivity, fire those who want to surf the internet all day.
Create / Implement department metrics to assess productivity of individuals. This will also reshape blame culture to one of accountability.

Pros

Flexible hours, health benefits, free product

Cons

Open office environment, low merit increase

Advice to Senior Management

Provide recognition when earned

Pros

Safety of the employee are utmost important. Great working environment that place people's safety first. Work with a great team!

Cons

There is a gap between the higher management and operator in the plant, contract employee and Novartis employee. Need to improve the program of " work and balance" such as the fitness facility and etc.

Pros

Big pharma- competitive package-decent pipeline

Cons

Constant changes since 2009--products not getting approval-no growth opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

Be more open and transparent-invest in talent management.

Pros

Depends on your department, but I really enjoy those I work with , they are a very competent and supportive group.

Cons

Depends on the department, departmental disconnect (e.g. Market and Sales verses R&D)...

Advice to Senior Management

Better communication and transparency

Pros

Strong pipeline and good training

Cons

Its big pharma with all of the typical behaviors

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice to actually take input from the reps in the territories before redrawing footprints

Pros

First off, not for everyone. Expectations are high and direction may be limited. This is not a follow the leader type of organization. Individuals with their own ideas will run into some of the same obstacles to change, but those that can bring those ideas to a group and work with that same group will have unique chances to advance their ideas. If you are looking to follow tasks from 9-5, this is not for you. However, on the other side, a very flexible work place that does not promote "clock watching". You have a high level of expectation and you are given quite a bit of freedom to get there.

Cons

Like any large company, there is a certain amount of beauracracy that is a pain to deal with. The multiple incarnations of Novartis that allow for seperate cultures (e.g. the academic feel of NIBR might not be suitable for Pharma), is also the same dynamic that makes almost every global initiative slow and tedious.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the associates that are creating the data. The bigger we get, the more "middle management" seems to get created and a "class" system begins to rise.