Terrible environment at NTO - Anonymous employee Novartis Employee Review

1.0
16 June 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good benefits. Good people (that are rapidly leaving however), good pipeline and opportunities to get involved in many things.

Cons

Novartis Technical Operations (NTO), is not part of Novartis culturally. The inspiring and attractive messages from Vas, the company CEO, are well received and integrated in all leadership areas of the company except for the NTO leadership group. Over the last few years, this area of the company has seen a culture of fear, lack of respect, and superficial communication emerge throughout the organization. Masked behind a masquerade of fake global townhalls (where spontaneous questions and interventions have been carefully prepared to look good and engaged), forced pictures, and communications aimed at pretending that the organization is engaged and empowered, the real pulse of the organization is one of fear of speakup, not knowing if tomorrow our roles will be there anymore, blaming of errors or for not achieving unrealistic targets, and of heavy condescendence from the Head of NTO towards leaders and people behind closed doors. Most of the focus and discussions are on budget and reporting, and the HR systems are merely transactional with superficial people development plans and systems ( a lot of blah blah and nice pictures, but fear to ask and get involved from HR). This environment is slowly creating compliance issues and problems which people are afraid to speak about (no matter how “safe” the business practice office claims to be). How long will Vas and his team continue to close their eyes on this……? there are 28000 people in NTO that truly do not feel “un-bossed”!!!!

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5.0
24 May 2026
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Pros

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Cons

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2.0
25 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Pays pretty well in comparison to similar jobs in the market

Cons

Unstable schedule where you are often asked to come in overnight (1-2 am) regardless of if you have worked the previous day or are off. Basically feels like you're permanently on-call to conduct environmental monitoring. Training is slow. The Micro dept in general is currently understaffed. The job also involves lab work once you are done with your daily environmental monitoring tasks. The work never ceases and the Technicians as a whole has several responsibilities. Promotions seem to come very slowly here.

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