The Worst Company I've Ever Worked For. Rotten To The Core. - Aseptic laboratory technician Quantum Pharmaceutical Employee Review

I can promise you that any good reviews written about Quantum are either made by HR to save face or another current employee that stands to lose something if they write anything negative. Quantum is a dumpster fire. I'd like to make it clear that I resigned on good terms with my team and the company. I am not writing this because of a negative exit, I only have the intention of informing future candidates of how toxic it is at Quantum. Salaries are woeful. There are no benefits. Bonuses are very small. The working conditions are difficult and you will become depressed working here. The work culture is truly awful. You will not feel appreciated or valued. You get free meals a couple of times a year to distract you from how low your wages are and how bad your job is. The company advertises roles on indeed and lists the following: - Competitive salary - Pension - Flexible shift patterns - Free food and drink at work - Strong social committee - Eye Care Vouchers - Cycle to work scheme Firstly, the salary is not competitive. There's a reason why they don't list it on the job ad or tell you in the interview. It's the legal minimum wage plus 15% for the unsociable work hours. All their competitors pay more. Their employers pension contribution is also the legal minimum, I don't even know why they list this, it's illegal to pay less. The shift patterns aren't flexible, you do a week of 5am - 2pm then a week of 1pm - 10pm, weekend work is mandatory. The free food and drink is apples, instant coffee and milk, it's not the free lunch they make it sound like. The social committee only makes posts on the work social page and is of no benefit to the average employee. You can try ask for those free eye care vouchers but you won't get them, I promise you. Cycle to work scam, it doesn't exist. Throughout the entire interview process you will not be told the salary or asked about your salary expectations. Many people don't ask during the interview because it gives the wrong impression but that's a mistake for this company. You will be phoned by them if you are successful and asked if you want to accept. At this stage I asked the salary but I was told I would find out in their offer letter. They then started the process of adding me to their system before I even knew what I would be making. The offer letter came through and stated the legal minimum wage. Disgusting for the role requirements, working any role in any supermarket will pay you more. For these roles they are asking for between 2 and 5 years of laboratory/GMP experience with a Bachelors or Masters degree in a related field. Good luck paying off those student loans with less than £2000 a month. The company offers employer sponsorship but doesn't give it out to many employees. Many staff members have had to fly home after being told that they are not being sponsored at late notice. Do not rely on this company to sponsor you. Quantum relies on immigrant labour because no one else will work for them given the horrible state of the place. They advertise that they sponsor as a way of attracting new staff because the staff turnover is so high. But in reality they barely sponsor anyone below the supervisor level. Honestly though, being a prisoner to this company for 5 years for a visa is truly a depressing thought. The Company: Probably the worst Company you'll ever work for. You are completely expendable and replaceable. Your physical and mental health will be sacrificed for the company. Their disorganisation and incompetence is embarrassing for an entity of it's size. They will cut corners at any opportunity. This might be a good company to invest in because they will make any sacrifice for money, but it's awful to be an employee of for the same reason. Let me give you some examples. I worked at the Luton site where are all the compounding isolators are some of the cheapest and minimally functional of their kind. They use vaporous hydrogen peroxide for decontamination. The isolators are very bad at removing this HPV after gassing and technicians are required to open the loading door anyway to load more preparations. They are then exposed to this harmful vapour, multiple times a day, consistently. One of my old colleagues has natural jet black hair but it had been dyed red at the front from repeated exposure. This toxic vapour is contacting unprotected eyes, skin, hair and being inhaled. If the isolators were of better quality, this would not be a problem but the company doesn't care about the health of their workers. You will be scapegoated if it benefits the company. Through 2024 & 2025 the facility was experiencing a lot of microbiological deviations that were getting the company in trouble with the legal governing body. The problem was a lack of investment in appropriate PPE and inadequate cleaning processes. The company fired a head of department and a Managing Director and blamed the issues entirely on them to stay operational. Even your job at that level is not safe. The problem is, it's hard to find replacements for staff because the company is so obviously incompetent. We had a new Head of Quality join the team in January 2025, with his face posted on the work social page. That was the only time I saw him, he quit the same day. Clearly he saw the state of the company and left instantly. Anyone with future prospects joins for the work experience and immediately starts looking for another position. Quantum is a revolving door at any level under the Directors. The staff retention is only held together by the vague promise of visa sponsorship. The pay is dreadful. All their competitors pay more for the same jobs in both the private sector and the NHS. Whether you work in Production, Release, Over Labelling or Microbiology, you will be underpaid and over worked. In all these departments, unless you are a Supervisor or Compounder (Production only), your salary is minimum wage on the dot. Unless you are in upper management, asking for a raise is futile. You will be denied one regardless of your competence. There was an ex-colleague of mine who did the job of 2 people they were so good, but they were being paid minimum wage like most people. This worker asked for a raise but didn't specify a number, just asked for more than minimum. They were told no immediately with no reconsideration so they left the company. The department then had to hire 2 replacements to do the work that this 1 person was doing, costing the company double what it was before. Objectively a bad business decision. Your hard work will not be acknowledged and your dedication will not be appreciated. This company pays rock bottom rates considering how much they turn over annually. Quantum Pharmaceutical Ltd is a publicly traded company so you can see their financial reports on the UK gov website. In 2023 they had a turnover of £174m with a taxable profit of £30m. In 2024 that had jumped to £200m, with a profit of £29m, even after millions had been invested in constructing the new facility in Luton that year. That's a lot considering the company has less than 300 employees. That's to say nothing of the parent company Target Healthcare Group, so it's not like there's a lack of cashflow to invest with. Have a look at their salaries section on Glass Door and observe how low they all are considering the stress that comes with this industry. All employees are working round the clock while handling medicines or documentation that will affect someone's chances of survival. Some MAB vials that production handles cost more than half of one's annual salary. Production staff are in the facility from 4am to set up for the day and QC staff regularly run past 10pm because of the work load. Staff members are regularly sacked for human error, with the company always being able to say that they did not follow the Standard Operating Procedure documentation. Getting management to throw the department a bone is like squeezing blood from a stone. The company frequently requests for overtime, sometimes for many weeks in a row. The staff accept this because they're so underpaid that they have to take the extra pay but if they didn't then the company would not be making their quotas. For this there is no thank you or recognition. In the past, supervisors have fought relentlessly just to get the department to buy the staff lunch, one time, for the additional hours they put in. They have one week a year dedicated to mental health awareness. On the Friday of that week they buy everyone lunch which is kind. You're supposed to talk about your mental health over a warm lunch with your colleagues. Although you're barely given time to serve, eat and talk before you're told to get back upstairs into the clean room to make products the second your unpaid lunch break ends. You'd think that on a Friday afternoon you could be spared a couple of hours to talk about mental health, once a year. Every positive thing that the company gave you left a bad taste in your mouth. There is an annual bonus scheme. Staff are encouraged to work hard throughout the year and stay up to date with their online learning to get the highest bonus possible. Only to be told that their role doesn't allow for the higher performance bonus for some reason and the goal posts have been moved on their online learning. So the already small maximum bonus of £300 is now £150. What's really sickening is how much the company campaigns about how meaningful it is to save lives with the chemotherapies they make. They really shove it down your throat on work social pages and in motivational speeches you get given every now and then. They are always talking about the value of the work they're doing. Anything to try distract from how badly they're screwing over their staff members every day with awful hours, low wages with no additional benefits, management bullies and a toxic work culture. If they really cared about the patients their medications are treating then they would invest in staff members, better equipment, better consumables and better PPE, for the quality and safety of their products. If errors are made then Quantum doesn't hesitate to fire people with immediate effect. The entire facility is under CCTV surveillance, including the canteen, and management watches the cameras to try and catch people disobeying the rules. Everyone is wound extremely tight and it's not a culture that encourages taking responsibility for mistakes. Everyone is scared to be honest about the situation. There is constant pressure from above. The Role: Monotonous and mind numbingly boring. The best part is talking with your colleagues when you're free but you are told off for doing this to maintain good clean room behaviour. You will master this role within a couple of months and gain zero transferable skills. You get to put GMP on your CV but that's only useful if you stay in the industry. I guarantee this job will make you want to leave it though. You will have to wear a lot of uncomfortable PPE for the duration of your shift. This is a very depressing job. Due to the shift hours, you will have a horrible sleep schedule and no social life. Unless you're in QA or management, you will spend your whole working day in a windowless facility with all white walls. There is an extremely noisy HVAC system that you will have to work next to at times with no ear protection. You can't breathe with your mask on, the hair net is itchy, you aren't allowed to scratch yourself and all the cleaning agents burn your eyes and skin. The temperature in the facility is supposed to be accurately regulated for several reasons, but expect it to be freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. The PPE is thin but made of a plastic-like polymer so it provides no heat when you're cold and it feels like you're wearing a tent when it's too hot. You are meant to spray your hands with IPA to sterilise them regularly through the day. IPA evaporates at low temperatures so when you spray your hands it takes all of the heat out of them with it. Your hands become very cold from this and if it's already cold in the facility then you can't use your hands properly. Compounders are the only staff members in the facility that sit down, no one else is given a chair. You will likely be stood up all day, every day, week on week. Even when you got up at 3:30am for your morning shift and you can barely stay awake. For cleanliness reasons you aren't allowed to lean on any surfaces or sit on the floor or anything like that. There is a lot of repetitive processes that will bore your already tired mind. The company pays a "shift allowance" of 15% extra if you work a shift that starts before 6am or finishes after 7pm. There are 2 main shifts Monday - Thursday, 5am - 2pm and 1pm - 10pm. The Friday and Sunday shift are 7am - 4pm. So of the 5 days a week you work, you should receive shift allowance for 4 days. If you take holiday then that day will be paid according to your salary and doesn't include the shift allowance. It's a sneaky way of them paying you less than you normally earn if you take time off. The annual leave allowance is the legal minimum by the way, is that a surprise by now? 20 days annual leave but you're not allowed to take any time off between early December and mid January (around 6th Dec - 14th Jan roughly). This is to maintain production over this period and stop everyone from taking time off at once. Because the facility stays open during Bank Holidays, you are also required to work them, this is non negotiable. The mandated closure days are 25th & 26th Dec and 1st Jan. This means you work the other 5 Bank Holidays in a year, but you are given those 5 days back in your annual leave package, making your allowance 25 days in total. Absenteeism is measured using the Bradford Factor, which is a scoring system that more harshly punishes multiple instances of time off. The equation looks like this: (Instances x Instances x Total Days). The unacceptable score for Quantum is 40. A score higher than 40 will prevent you from earning any bonus at the end of the year, will put you on a performance improvement plan and will cause your probation to be extended by 3 months. Your absenteeism record will not reset until 365 days after the incident, so if you take 2 days off in Feb and 2 days in August, your record is 4 days until Feb the next year, when it drops to 2, then in August it will drop to 0 again. This scoring system can feel particularly harsh if you were to take 2 instances of 2 days each and 1 instance of 1 day, totalling 5 days. I don't think any other company would consider this serious enough to remove an employee's bonus and put them on PIP. But when input into the Bradford Factor equation, 3 x 3 x 5 = 45, and anything over 40 is unacceptable. I have worked at companies in the past where you are allowed to take 7 days a year as paid sick leave, whereas Quantum doesn't pay any sick leave. Even though you are working in an aseptic lab, making medications for immunocompromised patients, you are pressured to come into work if you're sick with the threat of these punishments and the wages you won't receive because it's unpaid. The company doesn't care about your health or the safety of their patients, it's only about money for them. The sad reality of this company is that all employees are so poor that they can't afford to decline overtime or protest for better conditions. No one feels like they have a choice, because at the end of the day, either they stay quiet and get their head down, or they complain and get unfavourably looked upon. The company is badly run and even upper management clearly don't enjoy working there. Do yourself a favour and don't even apply to this place.