AstraZeneca Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Cons

Policies and ways of working

Cons

Terrible Senior Leadership in the UK & Global. Leaders focused on managing up & their next job No concept of work life balance. You will work all hours under “ just get it done”. A famous Global leader once said “ don’t come to me with problems, only solutions”, and you have the elite circle of friends and men that have no idea what the common employee faces everyday Get it right first time is the mantra here! No fail & fail fast! If you fail you get fired! You can’t trust the company or colleagues with personal data, a confidential message even if it’s a Whattssapp. Whatever you do, your personal stuff will become public in days and not just at AZ UK but also at MSD and DS. AZ medical team work with these two companies on Lynparza and Enhertu. Gossiping is rife! If you mess up at AZ you’ll be talked about at MSD and DS. So think about the consequences Employees & line managers that performance you out of your job are rewarded handsomely Specific Advice - please avoid the UK affiliate till a new SLT is formed. The current Senior Leadership team are inhumane. They have fired, and frustrated dozens of employees. Reach out to anyone who has left the UK in the last 12 months The UK Respiratory & Oncology teams have weak leadership & gossiping, backstabbing is common. To get rid of your competition is the way people think here! Other than that it’s good pay & good bonus. Just don’t send anyone a Whattssapp message or email without getting it checked by a sane colleague! It will end up with HR. HR love investigations here! They don’t do any positive stuff just behave like a criminal investigation body! A dozen colleagues are under investigation for sending an email or Whattssapp or saying something in a meeting. Anyone incompetent is powerful here. They can collate and keep your comms or meeting minutes, or record you on zoom, and then use it against you! Several recent job candidates didn’t take up job offers here, including an MSL who went to a competitor after a DS colleague told him about AZ’s toxic culture and toxic approach to peoples private and confidential info Some colleagues have complained to the ICO for data breaches

Cons

promotional opportunities are limited if you are unable to relocate. The industry is in upheavel and AZ is restructuring and in a downsize phase.

Cons

Work life balance can be difficult as there is much to do to bring these medicines to market

Cons

Not much negative I have seen in the 4.5 years I have been here.

Cons

Learning curve is less in some teams

Cons

Nothing cons in my view

Cons

If you stay long time, the salary is not competitive. You have to jump to other companies to get higher salary.

Cons

I'll write cons longer because cons are either exceptions or bottlenecks caused by old regulations in a great company. Technical: Workflows are too slow for improvements, integrations take too long. But there was already a great improvement in these subjects, I believe It should be better since I left. Culture: Families can be invited to some company events like picnics. I always felt weird never meeting families of people I enjoyed working together for years. This is just a cultural choice and my perspective. Awarding: As a subcontractor, I had significant contributions to several projects which had awards. I never included. I can say the same thing for a lot of subcontractors as well. My managers, team and business partners always showed their appreciation but the company should reconsider why they didn't involve contractors to these kinda things.

Cons

The pipeline hasn't delivered and in-licensing has failed to fill the gap. None of that is a secret. It is the reason that the company is trading at $40-45 a share and not $60 a share. As a result, AstraZeneca is contracting. It used to be a very good place to work, but now there are literally 1000s of people laid off every year. In spite of the layoffs there are actually job openings because individuals who weren't laid off are job hunting and leaving AstraZeneca. Work life balance is suffering as additional work is piled on the few that remain. Even worse the internal culture is poisoned by the constant blame game between groups and individuals trying to blame each other for the company's failure in the process of trying to avoid being one of the individuals laid off themselves. Senior leaders are throwing their reports to the wolves to preserve themselves. The management can't figure out how to save the company and keeps changing their minds and thus has become inconsistent and unpredictable. It's all such a shame because just a short time ago it was a great company that I would have strongly recommended as a wonderful place to work.