PRA International Reviews

Former Employee – worked at PRA International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – PTO accrual/carry over is AMAZING! People are friendly/knowledgeable. Work/life balance is understood and recognized by all.

Cons – New staff hired in at way higher salaries than those with more experience. Varying monetary values amongst those that are in the same position with same # of years of experience. Manager turn over or rearranging happens all the time - in 6 years of employment I had 5 different managers. Constantly trying to relearn someone and prove that you deserve the next promotion/increase, etc.

Advice to Senior Management – Value your employees. Stop being so secretive about every aspect as this causes rumors to swirl and negatively impact your employees.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at PRA International full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Fellow employees are on average experienced, intelligent, capable and hard-working. Current CFO is a tremendous asset to the company.

Cons – Sycophantic management culture where people who bring legitimate risks and concerns to senior management are penalized. Top-heavy with VPs, PRA has a labyrinthine and overlapping reporting structure, but not enough 'boots on the ground' to provide a quality product. IT organization is particularly poorly led. Employees are handcuffed by bloated systems and processes that are poorly integrated. Many of the more successful VPs have a kiss-up, kick-down management style. Watch your back (and your front!)

Advice to Senior Management – I worked at PRA for 10 years and left after watching the management structure and values corrode over the last few years. I couldn't be happier to be out of that snake pit, and working for smart people with solid values. As others have said to management: go back to PPD, you have tainted PRA.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at PRA International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Some departments allow a reasonable amount of flexibility. Benefits are very good. Lots of smart people, and some managers are very good.

Cons – Compensation is not great, and seems below market. Bonuses are not consistently paid out. Limited job opportunities for growth.

Advice to Senior Management – Do a better job of retaining the good people you have.

Current Employee – been working at PRA International full-time for more than a year

Pros – Advanced in technologies. Very accommodating. Working from home not a problem.

Cons – Very high workloads. Often multiple projects at a time, even in start up phase.

Advice to Senior Management – Avoid overloading staff with work: these are likely to leave and will not be cost effective.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at PRA International full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Developed some great personal and business relationships.

Cons – London-educated CEO has hired numerous executive vice-presidents, directors, and “consultants” – staffing them with friends from the UK and former cronies from PPD.

To maintain the illusion of profitability, the executive team under-resources studies. They also cancel raises and bonuses (except to themselves) shortly before payout is due.

The effect on employee work/life balance and morale is deplorable. Hundreds of valuable and profitable employees have resigned over the past three years. Vacancies remain unfilled due to lack of applicants. In the end, it’s the customer who suffers; so they are taking their business elsewhere. High turnover, poor sales, etc… Basically, every metric is going in the opposite direction that it should.

I am shocked that the private investors who own PRA tolerate this. PRA was once a great CRO and employer. I have seen PRA executives fired for much, much less in the past.

Advice to Senior Management – Those valuable and profitable ex-employees are now competing against you. At the same time, your revenues and profits are in free-fall. See the connection?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at PRA International part-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Worked with some really good people. Certain amount of flexiblilty regarding working hours. Office facilities were good compared to other offices.

Cons – Management are biased towards certain people. Great deal of favouritism, particularly senior management. Taking out a grievance against a manager, (even though the employee manual states to do this, if you have problems with a manager,) is a total waste of time. HR will always take the managers side, even when there is definate proof that a manager has lied and fabricated evidence. Honesty and trust are words that are non-existent in PRAs vocabulary. The whole PRA experience has been extremely TOXIC!!!! My advice to anyone contemplating working for this company is - DON'T!!!!!

Advice to Senior Management – Some senior management are like tumours that need to be removed, rapidly, before they have time to infect their staff and need to be stopped from 'brainwashing' new employees. More importantly they need to learn to speak the truth!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at PRA International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – can meet some nice people below the level of management

Cons – Managers are selected depending on social connections not competence. These managers then go on to micromanage, selecting arbitary rules that are applied to those out of favour (have openly stated their issues) whilst blatantly breaking the rules themselves. HR protects bullying managers, going to extraordinary lengths which in the end make them look ridiculous and all credibility and respect is lost from the top down. There is also a subtle culture of age discrimination, those reaching a certain age start to have 'performance issues' that are manafactured by said micromanagers, backed up by HR forcing people out of work.

Advice to Senior Management – go somewhere else!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at PRA International full-time for less than a year

Pros – Good vacation package and medical insurance.

Cons – Very small IT shop, very silo/hierarchical setup means no career advancement or learning opportunities for the IT staff.

Arrogant management that thinks they know everything. Unethical behavior by management is an accepted norm.

Very poor management at all levels, decisions are made behind closed doors and then handed down to the team, there is no open communication. Good old boy’s system at work. Zero accountability for the management. Incompetent management has no long term vision.

Top heavy layer - too many managers, very few workers. Lot of bureaucracy, means decisions are never taken/implemented.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employees, they are asset to the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at PRA International full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great environment; good benefits; great people;

Cons – Need better career plans for all depts.

Current Employee – been working at PRA International full-time

Pros – Benefits are good
People are great to work with
Vacation is 4 weeks a year
Sponsors are great
Location in Raleigh is good

Cons – Leadership of the company in all departments
No career path for employees
Raises are small
Frustrating environment
Employee turnover is extremely high and management is aware with nothing done

Advice to Senior Management – Fix the things that employees are telling HR are broken instead of just ignoring the problems. There are alot of good people with are employed there.

– I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company