Parexel reviews

3.8

75% would recommend to a friend

(3,841 total reviews)
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Peyton Howell

78% approve of CEO

63% positive business outlook

Parexel has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 3,841 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Parexel employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Farmacéutica y biotecnología industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
1.0
Oct 10, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Staff, not management, who work with you are the very people holding that company together and are the best you could ask for as colleagues.

Cons

Very poor management style, only cares about the money line for the company and will work you to death. Not everyone is treated fairly and if you don't hit the right manager right off during your first month there, watch out, you are on the black list - not able to move out the department, receive minimal raises, no "ata boy" for any good job well done and can be denied upping your education because they will find a way to say the course doesn't fall within your job title. In doing performance reviews, over 90% of staff receive "met rquirement", and when mgmt. is asked how do I get to the next level (beyond met requirements), you are told "you have to go above and beyond". That is their favor answer, and they don't explain - "you just have to go above and beyond what you are doing" is said over and over. PAREXEL will try to cut corners wherever they can and that means at the staff's level. PAREXEL wants 120% out of you daily but can't provide the needed equipment - their laptop/desktop systems are way out dated and the internal equipment is always down....makes it very difficult to do your work, and then this it held against you in performance, so that gives them the opportunity to hold back raises are give you a very minimal raise.

4.0
Aug 14, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Health Benefits are great. For my part, the Line Managers and Leads I have had have been superior, smart, and hard working. All willing to go that extra mile and very "open door". There are really a LOT of good and hard working CRA colleagues to work with and for the most part they do help each other when needed. There are many options to train yourself, and reimbursement for this as well as professional organizations are great thing not all CROs offer. You get BOTH vacation days and SICK days, and yearly PTO total is better than that of some other biggies.

Cons

They set goals for on site and travel that they average in with all other "admin" and training times, and even CRAs on the road 90%+ cannot meet these goals. CRAs are also expected to deduct time spent working on reports, etc., FROM the travel time, rather than perhpas not billing the other work because we do it while traveling. That means if you had flight delays and took 10 hours to get home, but deduct half, you may actually not MEET your travel metric! Crazy, right? Then when you get the performance evaluation, you are deemed "average/meeting expectation" and some have even gotten "needs improvement". I don't know of any CRA here who has gotten an above average rating on the 1-5 thing. In the comments section, yet. This allows them to withold pay raises, which has been common of late even though company IS making money. (Check BusinessWeek Bloomberg report; both acquisitions and stock prices are UP). Expectations of CRAs are really high, work a 60 hour work week and you may or may not get recognition. They sort of seem to want us all to feel like we are just making the grade and it can be a little depressing.

1.0
Apr 28, 2025

No support

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Team structure is strong and functions well.

Cons

Company likes to tell you they don't do layoffs. Instead, they manufacture reasons to fire people.

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Parexel Response
1y
Thank you for sharing your Parexel experience. We're glad you find our team structure strong, but are concerned about your comments on support and employee retention. We strive for a supportive, transparent, and fair work environment, and your feedback suggests we may be falling short. We'd like to understand your concerns better. Please reach out to me at Tom.McGoldrick@Parexel.com for a confidential conversation. Parexel is committed to employee growth, development, and fair treatment. We value open communication and continuous improvement, with your feedback being essential to this process.
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