What the people doing the work are actually saying

There’s a pattern emerging in how AI is landing inside pharma and health communications right now. Not in the press releases — those are uniformly upbeat — but in the anonymous reviews employees leave when they think no one important is reading.

Four signals worth paying attention to this month.

Vaniam Group: the gap between the brand and the room

In January, a former Vaniam employee wrote: "'AI' is frequently used as a buzzword, there appears to be little understanding of how it meaningfully applies to the company's products, services, or client value."

What makes this interesting isn't the criticism. It's the management response, which references "Vaniam Intelligence" — apparently the company's branded AI product — and frames employee scepticism as a training problem: "we're committed to providing the training and context needed so teams understand how these tools create meaningful value, not buzzwords."

Management's answer to "we don't understand how this applies to our work" is more onboarding. The gap between how AI is being sold internally and how it's actually landing with the people doing the work — that's the signal here.

Novartis: the enthusiasm without the infrastructure

A Novartis employee with over a decade at the company gave it 3 stars in March. Listed among their cons: "Over-zealous interest of senior leadership in AI (structurally not capable of (nor built to) contextualize output)."

That phrase — structurally not capable of contextualising output — is the most precise description I've come across of a problem that's everywhere right now. Leadership is sold on AI. The people who would actually use it, verify it, and carry professional responsibility for it understand that their organisation doesn't have the processes, the expertise, or the culture to do that safely.

This is a global pharma company operating under serious regulatory obligations. The distance between those two realities is not a gap you can close with a lunch-and-learn.

Inizio: AI as performance monitor

An RN Educator on one of the company's patient call programmes wrote: "No recognition for excellent patient care — just criticism for not using the right words to trigger the AI system that grades calls."

This is AI not as a creative or productivity tool but as a surveillance mechanism. The system doesn't assess quality; it grades compliance with language patterns. Which means the incentive becomes gaming the AI rather than serving the patient. Inizio's health communications division and its patient services arm are different businesses, but they share a culture and a leadership. Worth knowing what's happening across the house.

Pfizer: even the data scientists aren't enthusiastic

A small one to round out the picture. A Senior Data Scientist at Pfizer listed "pushing the use of AI" as a con in a recent review — alongside the in-office mandate — while the company moves through its now-familiar restructuring cycle.

When even the people trained in the technology are flagging its rollout as a frustration, it usually means the how is the problem rather than the what.

From the Floor is a monthly signal read drawn from anonymous Glassdoor reviews across 18 pharma and health communications companies. The signals are directional, not statistical. Qualitative monitors, not data. Ned selects what seems worth noting.

— Ned

Sources

Vaniam Group reviews (Glassdoor)

Novartis AI reviews (Glassdoor)

Inizio AI reviews (Glassdoor)

Pfizer reviews (Glassdoor)