ICON reviews

3.5

63% would recommend to a friend

(5,278 total reviews)
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Barry Balfe

51% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

ICON has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 5,278 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The ICON employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

5K reviews
1.0
Jun 2, 2018

Management-Director

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work from home People ‘ want ‘ to do a good job but held back due to poor technology in most areas.

Cons

CEO is not concerned about morale or work from all departments. —disjointed. —Euro centric company and heavy into India. —From director level on down to worker level everyone is extremely stressed and overworked. (Not the VPs and EVPs) —Constant awards / wins coming through and they keep piling on the work. —-upper exec mngt meds to look to the VP and EVP in specific areas with high turnover or recent high turnover! ( poor leadership) —staff leave and they don’t replace which in turn causes burnout of other workers. —used to be great company with good training and now you are thrown to the wolves w No training. No support. —HR slow and not helpful at all. You have to put in a ticket to talk to someone! Unreal. Other companies with twice the amount of employees do not have this set up! —new CEO came in and made many changes and not for the better. Not everyone can be Billable when working with your direct reports and teams. Then you get punished for not being fully utilized but the contract doesn’t cover directors!!! —directors have oversight to f so many studies they can’t be effective and able to help 20 teams and 40 plus studies!!!!! -way way too much offshoring to India—- bring it back to EU, ROW and US. Decrease margins a bit. -poor work from India. Turnover now high in India —PMs on too many projects as well as other areas. —insane volume of work. Turnover in all depts. —- can’t even hire because everyone knows ICON pays poorly and expects overtime everyday including weekends.

2.0
Sep 1, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Wonderful people at many levels. "Old ICON" was a great place to work. But, it's been in steady decline since the departure of Peter Gray (former CEO). "New ICON" is awful. If you are "Old ICON" and hanging in there in the hope that things will get better -- give up. If you have a non-billable job and are located outside Ireland or Asia, start looking.

Cons

Deceptive "New ICON" management focused only on cost cutting, self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment.

2.0
Oct 23, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people at ICON are fabulous. The line managers and study managers have been CRAs before, so they are able to fully support you to the best of their abilities. The health insurance is insanely good. One of the reasons I stayed as long as I did was for the health insurance. You start off with 15 days vacation.

Cons

As a CRA you are traveling 80-90%. It's expected you link your travel, so you may hit three to four cities in one week. With there being only three big airlines now, you are usually connecting which adds to a very long day. A typical work week is 55-70 hours. There is a 10 day on site per month requirement. Travel time is not taken into account. Their vacation plan is generous, but because of the heavy workload, you are 'punished' for taking time off. The amount of work that piles up (because there is no one to cover for you) adds so much extra time, it's almost not worth it. Work/life balance as a CRA is HORRIBLE. Errands, dr appointments, socializing, etc have to be done on the weekends. Managers are sympathetic and help as much as they can, but ultimately their hands are tied by Senior Management. It's a shame I had to rate the company two starts. It used to be a wonderful company to work for. As ICON has grown in size, CRAs have been reduced to workhorses.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 5,278 Reviews

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