Subpar leadership, a lack of opportunities and a waste of my career.
Pros
Sick leave policy. Some benefits are decent i.e. private health insurance, discounted gym memberships and subsidised meals. Shift patterns means booking holidays and getting appointments is easier. Volunteer days are fully paid. Additional holidays purchasable through benefits scheme. Pay is good.
Cons
In short: As it stands Teva has been one of the worst companies I have ever worked for. There does not feel like there is an adequate route for personal development or career progression as progressing through grades simply means a minor pay increase and a different email footer, rather than additional responsibility, respect or progression. There is more onus on being one of the chosen few, than being adequate or excelling at your role. More weight is given to those who laugh at bad jokes during meetings, are agreeable to unreasonable asks and roll over to their superiors than being good at your job or being dedicated to your work. The staffing levels are poor, the issues are frequently ignored and leadership simply don’t care as long as their leaders don’t notice the inadequacies of the department. The fake corporate showmanship is rife and the apathy leadership have for real issues with real technicians is detestable. Bonuses are held over our heads and overtime is given and taken away like toys to children in an attempt to make us beg for more. The training is awful, new starters are expected to be brilliant from day one and blame is pervasive. Bigger quality issues are swept under the rug if a technician can be blamed instead. Shifts are draining, morale is low and overall, site cannot keep it together. the site GM has changed thrice in 24 months. Unfortunately, working here will simply be a footnote in my CV to show “number of years worked” in support of my next job rather than personal achievements. In more depth with examples: Working at Teva has been a waste of my time. From top down there are countless examples of poor leadership, incompetence and nepotism. I will address this in sections for ease. Leadership There have been numerous complaints about leadership in microbiology, and they have all been ignored or given faux attempts at improvement. Within microbiology, the director is more concerned about networking with females colleagues or giving their favourite employees additional opportunities (such as paid for conferences, secondments, better career opportunities) than improving the department. For example, in recent times there was a growing instability amongst the technicians where blatant favouritism and nepotism was evident. This was brought up numerous times, yet never addressed. It was ignored. Another example - incidents of snide and targeted comments towards certain colleagues. This hit a point where when a particular colleague would speak their team leader would make faces as if disgusted and annoyed that they dared to speak or contribute. The response to these complaints? Ignorance. Continued ignorance. The leadership within microbiology have continuously showed that they are not able to or unwilling to support their technicians unless it immediately benefits them. They use overtime as a shiny coin to wave in their faces, withholding it if it suits them and pushing for it when they need it, but often technicians are almost expected to beg. In multiple instances, leadership attempted to strongly coerce colleagues into swapping overtime payment for hours in lieu in favour of saving budget and looking better to senior leadership. Favouritism amongst leadership is also blatant and unapologetic. There are too many examples to provide where certain colleagues have been given favourable treatment due to their proximity to leadership. A secondment position for a senior microbiologist was created just to benefit colleagues that are particularly close to leadership. This was in spite of the microbiologist positions having been filled and frequent requests to review the availability of these positions have been rebuffed with common statements to requests for progression being "the budget doesn't allow", "There are no positions available" amongst other similar comments. Senior leadership is also woefully inadequate. They are so out of touch with the regular colleagues that they were more concerned about how they came across in employee surveys than actively working on improving departments. They possess an air about them that suggests they are above basic courtesies, as if we should almost worship the ground they walk on. They have failed to maintain site standards on numerous occasions. Blaming colleagues for the inadequacy instead of their poor leadership. The Workplace Culture Overall, the culture is negative. The working culture at Teva can be described as thankless, corporate apathy and a perpetual churning of employees. The shift hours are brutal (12 hours), the work menial and uninteresting, and a culture of blame is pervasive. The company itself has a "no blame culture", but the finger is pointed more than constructive feedback is given or achievements are rarely celebrated despite this "policy". For example, a points system allows colleagues to garner points through positive recognitions and convert them to additional benefits. However, this system is mostly ignored. Team leaders act like these things come out of their own payslips with how often recognition gets ignored and denied. Evidencing this - there has been a site wide push to give more recognition and approve more of them as leadership due to the volume of complaints that the recognition given by others is deemed not enough and team leaders too stringent and lacking in their praise. Staff also have nonsensical expectations of their workload. Leadership expects them to "spin the plates" and "make do" with what they have. Despite being at half the staffing power, they are expected to perform as if at full capacity and when they cannot keep up they are reprimanded and told to do more, to do better, to find a balance, stay on track and get back to basics. The shift work becomes draining as there is a constant battle of keeping up with daily tasks and trying to cut down on the continuously rising pile of additional tasks that always, for some reason always need to be done as soon as possible. On one shift pattern, it is commonplace for technicians to stay behind after hours (at no extra pay) to complete tasks. It must be stated this was not forced, but due to the sheer workload that is expected of them, there is a silent obligation that they stay behind to get it done otherwise face reprimand or an overflow of work further down the line. From the beginning new starters are expected to work at full capacity without adequate training. They are expected to perform, not make mistakes and to know how to do the job from very early on without adequate onboarding, 1-2-1s and time for training. This has been exasperated due to the current staff workload being doubled and time to train is becoming as rare as a thank you from leadership. Morale is hitting newer and deeper lows. At any given time, at least 50% of the shift are looking to leave for greener pastures, a fact leadership know and unsurprisingly, ignore (an overt callback to the head in the sand approach described above). To paraphrase leadership: "The average technician only lasts two years, we expect them to leave anyway". Enough said. Career Opportunities and Progression Career opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry are rife, as is progression in those roles - this is simply not the case here. Career progression in micro consists of grades - A, B or C (formerly levels 1, 2 and 3 respectively). These grades mean nothing. Apart from a small pay increase (in real terms, 1k per year between grades) there is no material difference between a grade A (lowest) and grade C (highest) technician. The only discernable difference is the tasks open to you as a technician which are minor written reports or senior microbiologist work thats regarded as easy and low level. From a technician, there is an opportunity to progress to senior microbiologist. This at times seems more like a fantasy, unless the applicant is a member of the inner circle hand picked by leadership. In comparison, a sterile specialist has nine grades to progress through. After senior microbiologist there is nothing else. There is no opportunity to become a subject matter expert or a specialist. Senior microbiologist is the ceiling as a technician. The opportunity to become a team leader appears once a career, if the current team leader decides to leave. Otherwise, there is no moving up, often there is no lateral move either. Commonly, colleagues from other departments try and move departments to progress, seek new opportunities and become better, but stay in the company. These have often been blocked and moves denied. One colleague recently was denied on application and later found that their application hadn’t even been looked at. The root cause? Their department team leader didn’t want to let them go. With regards to training and actively progressing in the role, the goal posts are frequently moved and manipulated. There is a checklist that technicians work through depending on grade. The checklist would suggest that once completed, the technician should be ready to move up to the next grade, however, this is not the case. The checklist is used against technicians to evidence why they do not deserve promotion or bonuses, but never used to benefit their case. This doesn’t allow technicians to have obtainable career goals meaning that they have no understanding as to how their career may be progressing. Additionally, the training is totally reliant on fellow technicians being available to train others. If this is not the case, progression in their role completely stalls. If understaffed for example, training simply cannot take place. In one case, a colleague simply did no additional training for an entire year, and this was used against them in their bonus review, Despite, their next step in their training plan requiring approval from leadership before a training pack can even be printed. There are no accessible courses in this department that allow specialization or increasing expertise. In the time I have been in employment here, one person has attended a training course to improve their expertise. Work ethic, consistency and dedication play no role in progression. There are 1-2-1s once a year. These are intended to be monthly, however, leadership cannot manage their schedules adequately enough to fit these in. These 1-2-1s are purely tick box exercises to keep up with KPIs from senior leadership. They are simply required for appearances, and to feign an interest in careers and progression for colleagues. They are performative and rarely provide constructive feedback or support if required. A significant issue resulting from this is that when bonuses are given and colleagues are chosen to recieve no bonus due to their "poor performance" they are not told that they are straying from the path. They are not given notice that they need to improve, be better, pull their weight or be at risk of reprimand. They are simply ignored and when it benefits leadership they will use this lack of communication to their advantage and admonish their poor performance and use it as justification as to why they do not deserve their bonuses or pay rise or promotion.