Quintiles Reviews

Pros

The benefits and training department are great.

Cons

Very fast paced and the pay is low given the amount of work that is expected.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more to the support staff. Do not base pay on the position title but on the level of work that is performed.

Pros

- Fantastic training programmes
- Monthly half day
- Petrol card allowance

Cons

- Too many protocols per CRA
- Too much bureaucracy
- Unsatisfactory pay

Advice to Senior Management

Be more people focused. Listen to your employees. Move away from using a paintbrush approach. Employees should be regarded as individuals, each with their own interests and needs. Employ a little more flexibility, it does not add much value for employees to have to stay behind on a Friday afternoon waiting for a predetermined knock off time even though no value is being created.

Do not assign too many protocols to your CRAs. This sends quality out the window. Move away from metrics and focus on value creation. With the need to meet metrics, employees neglect everything else and only focus on what really matters e.g. days on site and having reports in on time.

Pros

Relaxing atmosphere, friendly people who are willing to help each other. Good for learning opportunities

Cons

Only senior management enjoy the benefits of the resources of a big company. Lots of politics at the senior management levels. Few people are passionate about their job and drive the rest

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

You can be home based for just about any position
Opportunities to apply for different opportunities if you do not like your current position

Cons

Salary is so-so and promotions are few and far between - with annual raises that do not even cover the cost of living increase from year to year
Too many changes in the company happening all at once
CRAs are leaving because they are overworked with too many protocols to work on at once

Advice to Senior Management

Make work life balance really work - people are overworked, getting burned out - remember the early 2000's when nobody wanted to work at Quintiles? Well it has come full circle, back to where nobody wants to go above and beyond because they are overworked and trying to just get the basics done, let alone do superior work - and people are leaving/nobody wants to come work at Quintiles, especially CRAs.
Stop focusing only on metrics and put quality into the equation, there will be less re-work being done which impacts the bottom line of the company. People are only concerned about meeting their metrics, instead of how they are performing and doing quality work. And people will only do what is considered a "metric" because that is how they are evaluated and will not go outside the box because it doesn't count, and if they miss their metrics they get in trouble/penalized, so why do anything other than what counts. This is leading to people only doing "their job" which does not allow for teams to utilize people to their best capabilities, instead they are like robots only working/focusing on metrics.

One last piece of advice - stop with all the changes. Also, when changes are made, try it out with a pilot program first, instead of causing upheaval to thousands of employees, making people get acclimated to the "new way" all at once and it is the blind leading the blind. Maybe roll it out slowly and please make sure the Management has reviewed the program, identified most of the kinks, and have SOLUTIONS before you roll it out company wide. The employees feel like guinea pigs in an experiment where nobody knows what they are doing, nobody has the answers to anything and the program does not work and nobody wants to admit it, so they force it upon the employees even though it is not working.
Examples, QCR, CPM (most PM's can't support the workhorse of the company - CRAs!!!!!), CTMS

Pros

CRO is in a slightly better condition than the big pharmaceuticals.

Cons

None. Would be happier is paid more.

Pros

Mostly good line managers who care about their direct reports.
Great to have a home-based option for many roles within the company.
Great perks for traveling CRAs.
Good training programs.

Cons

Things were kind of slow for a while as was the case with most businesses but I stuck it out and when the dust settled and business started to boom again I was still standing and got the big promotion!
Long working hours in the clinical part of the organization.

Advice to Senior Management

You are doing a great job running the business and looking out for us as an organization. All the employees know we have profit margins to meet, but some in the organization are "working harder" when we need to be "working smarter."

Pros

-Work Worth Doing, great feeling that you are contributing to a better tomorrow. Good to know the work you do affects the health of billions worldwide.
-Good pay
-Great benefits
-Management (dependent on dept. you work in) somewhat flexible with outside work requests (i.e. doctor appts., leaving early for family related functions, working from home when kids are sick)
-Very professional atmosphere
-Second to none in IT, very creative/ innovative

Cons

-Work-life balance is lacking.
-Not directly told, but expected to put in as many hours as needed to get the job done. Expect 50-60 hour work weeks.
-Business units make promises to sponsors without realistic understanding of man power needed. Difficult position to be in as a company because if you tell the truth you may lose the sponsor's business where as another CRO will lie to get the business. Bottom line, resources (i.e. competent, motivated man power) need to be in place. This is not currently the situation. Many roles have merged, 1 person may be expected to do the work of 2-3.
-CTMS investment not looking like a good step for company moving forward. System has created 3 times the amount of manual entry it was expected to cut down on.
-Promotions can occur based on inconsistent decision making. Can be frustrating as a contractor to see less qualified individuals be promoted around you.

Advice to Senior Management

-Listen to your people. They do the job everyday and know what is needed to do quality work.
-Hire more competent, motivated staff, and cut ties with ineffective leadership who are content with the status quo.
-Make decisions based on long term growth, don't be reactive and ensure staff are supported. The customer is not always right.

Pros

Solid backlog of projects, solid investment in infrastructure, much of the "working" staff are experienced and capable, truly global organization

Cons

Quintiles is constantly in change mode and our staff are exhausted. The changes are not always improvements and often result in less efficient processes. The executive leadership changes in the past year were especially damaging to Quintiles. Our employees have little confidence in the current leadership team and are still mourning the loss of some very strong and well respected leaders who have moved on to competing CROs. It seems like the decisions regarding leadership were based on politics and personal relationships and this is obvious to our employees. At Quintiles, you need to make friends with the right individuals in order to thrive. Don't expect recognition for doing your job well - you must "manage up" to do well in this company. HR function is too powerful, making operational decisions (promos, raises, punitive actions) over the opinions of the actual supervisors. These HR decisions are often driven by the personal biases of HR leadership, as opposed to evidence and fact.

Advice to Senior Management

The Board needs to take a hard look at the current exec leadership team. Many of the EVPs/SVPs are working to support their own ambitions with little concern for the health and future of the company - not to mention a lack of competence to lead their functions. There is a reason that our metrics have declined since 2008 - stop allowing the execs to sing their own praises and take a deep look under the rug.

Pros

the largest CRO in the world
sufficient training materials

Cons

poor management
it is very hard to get promotion

Pros

opportunity to get profound clinical knowledge
stable work
nice co-workers

Cons

lack of promotion
understaffed
histeric on system compliance

Advice to Senior Management

need to recognize good job done not only verbally but also promote people in due time
to decrease pace of changes in systems