Abbott reviews

3.7

70% would recommend to a friend

(9,395 total reviews)
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Robert Ford

77% approve of CEO

63% positive business outlook

Abbott has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 9,395 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Abbott employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Industrie manufacturière industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

9K reviews
1.0
Nov 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They pay you, albeit below industry average.

Cons

Management is incompetent and unknowledgable about their position. The trend is to hide stuff from FDA during audits, not to actually do things appropriately the first time so that FDA has nothing to find. Quality is seen as an annoying hindrance that needs to be circumvented. The only way to advance is to suck up to the right people. It's very much an "old boys" network. New products are not being researched or designed. The Office of Ethics and Compliance is known as the "Abbott Police" because of how often they interrogate people. People constantly feel like they're being watched and can't say anything to anyone about anything because the "Abbott Police" will come after them. During investigations, you are informed you can't speak to anyone about anything, you are told you can't take notes about anything said by the investigators, and if you do take notes, you must destroy them. People are investigated on a regular basis and when an investigation occurs, everyone in a department is brought in and interrogated. There have been instances where Abbott employees have made up false accusations (everything from fraud to harassment) in order to get rid of co-workers. It's a guilty-until-proven-innocent investigations where the investigators are co-workers at corporate headquarters in Chicago. They are not trained investigators. They could be people who hold the same job as you and who you have interracted with on previous occassions related to actual job related matters, not an investigation. The general approach by employees is becoming such that they quit as soon as they are informed they are under investigation. Many employees are currently looking for employment elsewhere rather than remaining in such a hostile work environment.

3.0
Nov 16, 2008

One person's experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Still offer pension plan and 401k and their stock is fairly stable. They are very socially conscious and they try to do the right things for customers and employees. Great gym with personal trainers available to salaried employees. Company is family friendly and offers a few flex-time options (though, many managers don't allow flex-time).

Cons

They like to say "quality", but have little clue on how to actually achieve quality. Senior management tends to hire former auditors to determine how to get quality product. While auditors know how not to do things, they are typically poor at saying how TO do things. They have difficulty doing long-term planning beyond 2 years. Middle management is incompetent and/or afraid to communicate upwards or step out of their comfort zone. New computer systems (documentation systems, databases, etc) often are compliant to regulations, but fail to implement gains that could be had with electronic systems (systems are usually much less efficient than even a fully paper-based system would be).

4.0
Nov 13, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunities to change course in your career. A large, diverse company that is willing to let employees move into different positions. Benefits are generous. Recent efforts to boost work-life balance are great.

Cons

On the science side, many of the managers are great scientists given promotions solely boost their salaries into acceptable ranges. This means many of these people lack management skills. The HR department is sub-standard. Difficult to deal with HR in manager-employee disputes or internal job search. They tell you don't meet job qualifications and then 3 months later you find out someone even less qualified was given the job.

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