Despite widespread concerns that the UK’s decision to leave the EU would have a disastrous effect on Britain’s pharmaceutical industry, the sector appears to be faring better than many expected. Aside from the fact that the European Medicines Agency is relocating from London to Amsterdam, the UK remains a destination of choice for global players looking to invest in or expand operations.
For example, according to a recent report from the BioIndustry Association (BIA) and data firm Informa Pharma Intelligence, the UK’s biotech industry ended last year on a high, having raised more than twice as much money through initial public offerings in 2017 than the previous year. This confidence perhaps explains why job creation across the sector continues to be high. Thanks, in part, to research and development (R&D) tax credits announced as part of the government’s post-Brexit industrial strategy. MSD, known as Merck in North America, has committed to investing in a new research centre in London, creating around 950 new posts. While Germany’s Qiagen will expand its investment in a genomics and diagnostics campus in Manchester, creating over 800 skilled jobs as a result. Elsewhere, AstraZeneca is in the process of setting up new headquarters in Cambridge while Novo Nordisk recently unveiled a new diabetes research facility in Oxford.
While job availability may be plentiful, sourcing and securing the talent needed to fulfil demand is another matter.
It is no secret that the pharmaceutical sector has, for some time, struggled to attract and retain the talent it needs to grow and prosper. However against the current landscape these challenges are becoming even more acute. Last year saw the world’s first FDA approved digital medicine, and aside from ‘smart pills’ which sense and record dosage, we’re also seeing automated drug delivery devices, ingestible thermometers and endoscopies in capsule form. This level of innovation is, unsurprisingly, impacting the skills that employers are seeking.
Talent shortages in areas such as digital medicine, but also specialisms including immunology, mean that organisations must be creative and look at brave approaches to internal talent management as well as considering the broad availability of skills within adjacent sectors if they are to secure the talent required for future success. However, to do so requires a new approach and a new level of insight. This insight starts with a need to better project future workforce demands.
Strategic workforce planning, the continual process used to align the long and short-term needs and priorities of the organisation with those of its workforce, may be a naturally daunting task, but it’s not an impossible one. By better projecting future skill requirements, organisations can make strategic decisions as to where they invest in up-skilling staff and where to invest in external talent acquisition.
With effective workforce planning in place, talent acquisition teams can be more targeted in their search for candidates with niche skills and big data can help pharmaceutical companies look outside of their traditionally narrow talent pipelines in order to get ahead of their competitors. From a talent sourcing perspective, the difficult job is identifying the right person, with the right skills, in the right location and at the right time – when they are considering a move, but before someone else snaps them up. However this can be simplified by the use of digital tools.
Pharma is no newcomer in terms of embracing innovative new technologies, yet I would argue that it is often behind the curve when it comes to utilising new HR technologies for internal purposes, especially talent identification, talent engagement, employee management and strategic workforce planning.
Innovative products exist today that can remove much of the burden of searching for candidates – the research required, the effort of conducting multiple searches and ultimately much of the cost: effectively providing recruiters or hiring managers with a digitally created long list of suitable talent to assess.
Predictive analytics can then be applied, a series of complex algorithms designed to monitor, cross-reference and analyse an individual’s public online activity – including the nature and frequency of updates to sites such as LinkedIn – in order to pre-empt when they are open to a new job opportunity. As a result, pharmaceutical firms can identify individuals who they may not have traditionally engaged with, in specific locations, with defined areas of specialisms, who are most likely to be ready to engage with a new employer – or apply their skills within a new sector. This means better access to a wider and deeper pool of talent, reduced waste in the hiring process and an improved experience for candidates and hiring managers.
In the UK alone, the pharmaceutical industry employs around 70,000 people and generates approximately 250,000 jobs in related fields. However, when nine in ten pharmaceutical companies are struggling to recruit for highly skilled roles, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (APBI), looking to digital technologies as a means of tapping into digital expertise can offer real competitive advantage – particularly at a time when the need to attract talent from adjacent sectors has never been greater.
Jim Sykes is sector managing director, pharmaceutical & life sciences, at Alexander Mann Solutions
