IQVIA reviews

3.7

72% would recommend to a friend

(15,227 total reviews)
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Ari Bousbib

76% approve of CEO

62% positive business outlook

IQVIA has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 15,227 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The IQVIA employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmazeutika & Biotechnologie industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

15K reviews
2.0
Dec 20, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay and benefits are pretty decent although in the course of five years, a number of perks started to disappear and health premiums continue to go up for the same plans. Decent work life balance with opportunities to work from home although, unless you're management, the amount of vacation is a bit paltry when you first start out.

Cons

The new CEO announced the day he took over that he was surprised that we weren't as big in India as we were. True to his word, there have been two IT specific lay-offs since he took the reigns with a number of jobs and positions going to contract companies in Bangalore. Our reqs for full time employees were denied and will be fulfilled by one of these contract companies instead. In five years, I've been through four such layoffs because management can't seem to make up their mind how the organization is supposed to be structured so they experiment at the cost of talented employees. The "good 'ol boy" network is definitely in effect at the management level with a number of absolutely non-technical managers landing management roles because of their personal ties to someone up top or on the other side, technical engineers being forced into management because there's no other career path. Hence you have non-technical decision makers and technical decision makers with no desire to manage running the majority of IT. In five years, travel has been slashed so it only exists to a handful of people, training has been reduced to cheap/free online or local courses. Conferences either have to be paid for personally or it needs to be almost free. Employment appreciation day was done away with, the micro-purchase plan was reduced from $1200 every three years to $800 every three years but was eliminated totally for 2015. Several months ago, we closed one of our buildings and got jammed into an open office environment and lost of cafeteria. The coffee makers are always breaking or running out of coffee and the bathrooms are absolutely overrun at all times of the day. IT's unwillingness to put money into projects that are needed means they're dumping money into terrible products and services because it was the cheapest offer. No one is innovating, we're asking how other big companies are doing the things we're doing almost as a mantra.

3.0
May 1, 2018

Typical mega corporate

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pros and cons vary widely by department, but this is my experience. Very good pay, flexible work schedule, working from home several days a week. General freedom to get your work done the way that you want to, as long as it's done and customers are happy.

Cons

The biggest problem is that they are overall very cheap, despite my salary and good bonuses. When you're the biggest CRO in the world, it's hard to show organic growth and so you have to find ways to scrape together pennies for shareholders. This has led to a lot of offshoring, which makes it impossible to get anything done quickly as you have to wait for someone in Slovakia or China to get back to you. Benefits were destroyed this year, with high deductible medical insurance being implemented. No office perks - you get black coffee and you like it. No employee engagement, worsened by employees working from home. Constant reorganizations. Growing pains from the merger. They have reduced the number of buildings from three to two and now down to one, which means hot desks for everyone. Not much room for advancement. I haven't had any luck when applying to other departments, but switching jobs within related departments is relatively easy. No professional development. Travel or other expenses are now nonexistent unless it's customer paid.

1.0
May 1, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Junior staff are exposed to a great deal early on. For someone just starting out in the clinical research industry, or a university graduate, you really do learn a lot and you have the opportunity to work in many therapy areas and on all trial phases.

Cons

The attitude of upper management and the way staff (especially junior staff) are treated at this company is absolutely unacceptable. The extent of the managerial incompetence I witnessed and the sheer level of blatant bulling by senior staff members is disgraceful and I would encourage avoiding this company at all costs. I worked in multiple departments in more than one country while at IQVIA and this deplorable attitude seems to be part of the general company culture throughout. I would say I personally experienced or was witness to multiple cases of genuine workplace harassment by senior staff and no amount of complaints to HR went anywhere. Most of the staff in HR were friends with the managers we were complaining about; favouritism/nepotism is rampant!! Junior staff were constantly put down and managers took no accountability for poor team performance - they would publicly throw their staff under the bus before they would ever own up to their own mistakes. Sexism was also a big problem in one department I worked in while at IQVIA and one of the male directors would often make derogatory comments about female staff and their choice of clothes in front of the entire office. Anyone who was underperforming (mainly because they were desperately overworked) would be publicly shamed at team meetings. Benefits would be withheld from the entire team and this would be blamed on that one persons mistake, isolating them and creating an atmosphere where staff were so afraid to make even simple human errors. Pay rises were virtually non existent and don’t expect any kind of work-life balance; junior staff generally work all hours for no overtime while managers leave early. They think the occasional free lunch can fix everything and god help you if you try to go over their heads to complain about poor treatment because they will make your life hell!! Fear-mongering was a common tactic employed by senior staff and they would frequently tell us that other members of the team had complained about something we said/wore/did but would not tell you who it was, so everyone was constantly paranoid and there was no trust on the team at all. You could say nothing in confidence to your manager, it would always get back to the rest of the office. The volume of staff turnover at this company is truly shocking but it is a reflection of just how poorly they treat their staff. Staff members having what I can only describe as mental breakdowns while at the office was a common occurrence in every department I worked at. Confidential employee information being used as gossip amongst senior staff was also not uncommon and there was a general lack of support for the chronically overworked and underpaid junior staff. I left this company with an extremely negative outlook on the clinical research industry as a whole and for this reason I decided to make a career change. I have since moved to a different area of the healthcare sector and to a company that actually treats their employees like human beings and I have never been happier. I am not one to leave scathing reviews like this but this was genuinely the worst place I have ever worked and I was horrified by the way myself and my colleagues were treated. I would avoid working here at all costs unless you are at a very senior level and can stomach turning a blind eye to the awful way staff are treated!!!

Viewing 19 - 21 of 15,227 Reviews

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