Nurturing Future Success

By Julian Rogers, Deputy Editor

How the pharmaceutical giants are planting the staffing seeds for future prosperity. NGP looks at how the pharmaceutical giants are planting the staffing seeds for future prosperity.

Recruiting and developing talent within any industry is critical to its growth, but when that industry is pharmaceuticals, attracting and retaining the best staff is paramount. The ongoing drive to deliver blockbuster products means that fresh talent is key to the health of the industry. Firms are constantly delving into the domestic and foreign talent pools to unearth a new generation that will carry the business forward. However, in this highly competitive market, there are growing fears that the US pool is running dry. Concerns are also being expressed that that too many are opting into the management and marketing side of the industry – leaving a severe shortfall of qualified and experienced scientists to drive future R&D.

Despite the allure of medicine, many US graduate students are deciding against studying Pharmaceutical Sciences, a trend that has not gone unnoticed. “Not enough graduate students are trained in the pharmaceutical sciences,” says Dr Hartmut Derendorf, Professor and Chairman of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Florida and Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). “There is a shortage in formulation, physical pharmacy, pharmacokinetics and drug delivery. Currently, few American students are choosing pharmaceutical sciences as a graduate degree so the majority of future scientists will be foreign-trained. Hence, the available scientist pool critically depends on immigration and visa policies.”

The US pharmaceutical industry’s stature allows it to tap into raw talent from abroad and manage it. The academic institutes attract top scientific talent from Europe, Asia, and the former Soviet Union, amongst others – indeed, having experience of working within a leading US pharmaceutical company is seen as a major boost on an employee’s resume. Most of the successful research organizations are based in the US, so there is a general perception that opportunities for career progression are better here than in other parts of the world, and those who return to their native country have little trouble finding work having previously been employed within Big Pharma.

One reason for the shortage of home-grown talent is because of how notoriously difficult the market is to break into, with employers demanding years of former education and excellent qualifications. More than six out of 10 workers in the pharmaceutical industry have a Bachelor’s, Master’s, professional or PhD degree – twice the proportion for all industries combined. Those that do get in generally have a well-paid and structured career; however, Dr Derendorf says that too many are opting to go into the management side of the business. “A research career is often thought of as a lengthy education with not enough financial incentives,” he complains. “In pharmacy, for example, entry-level salaries in the profession without a PhD are higher than entry-level salaries for PhDs in the pharmaceutical sciences after they complete an additional four-year graduate education.”

Derendorf continues: “Due to the National Institutes of Heath (NIH)-based funding’s emphasis on basic research, academic faculty have difficulties to obtain NIH support for applied research in the pharmaceutical sciences. This has led to fewer and fewer academic departments doing research in applied pharmaceutical sciences and has depleted the pool of US-trained pharmaceutical scientists.”

Generation gap

A major problem the pharmaceutical industry (and indeed the economy as a whole) faces is that of an ageing workforce. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2010 there will be a potential worker shortage of nearly 10 million as more than 25 percent of the working population reaches retirement age. Another factor is redundancies. The pharmaceutical industry used to be seen as a ‘job for life’, but an increase in mergers, acquisitions and company relocations has seen a rise in job losses.

Despite the competitive environment and hunger for top professionals, some employees stay with the same company all their lives, with the pharmaceutical industry allowing a change of direction. Frank Waltmann, Head of Learning at Novartis, says the fact that staff can choose to switch careers is a major attraction. “We are global company with many opportunities and career paths. You don’t have to necessarily follow just a scientific path. You can have a career in management or project management and we can move people around in the company. There are different ways to become a leader or a specific expert in this organisation.” As well as this, Waltmann says the nature of the work in pharmaceuticals helps attract people into the industry. “As a pharmaceutical company we improve lives, extend lives and we save lives – many people are driven by this. Pharmaceutical firms get criticised, but overall we are still attractive to those who want to work in this industry.”

Currently, the US markets around 20 of the world’s best-selling drugs. This strength in the market gives HR departments a financial advantage over their overseas counterparts when attracting the best-qualified and experienced staff. Once talented individuals are on board, then comes the training and development – an area that has seen a surge in growth in recent years. Thomas Kaney, SVP of HR at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) says that, despite the concerns, the pharmaceutical industry is still considered a popular career choice among young people. “The industry, in many ways, still has its own allure despite all the difficult challenges. It is still considered an important industry and I think that many of the people, particularly the younger generation, are inclined towards it because of its mission. They would rather be in a company that is doing good for society and in the business of health rather than making guns or nails or whatever.”

The career development of staff is where huge benefits can be realized for the firm. Bosses are always looking for delivering better and more cost-effective training, and advances in technologies has allowed this to become possible. The introduction of e-learning has enabled training to cross international boundaries and saved on the huge costs and logistical headache of face-to-face instruction. Training and the opportunity to advance up the career ladder is seen as a key bargaining tool when companies want to retain key staff.

And it is not just drug discovery that has seen training and development rise. Kaney says that resources have been heavily pumped into sales reps over the past few years. “The value and capability of the rep is the differentiator. They can no longer sell just by being good friends with the doctor. They can no longer throw perks at the doctor or take them out for dinner because of our compliance regulations. It has to be value-based selling and it has to be based on scientific knowledge behind the products and it becomes, at least in this country, virtual continuing medical education. At the management level, overall training and development resources have increased significantly. I wouldn’t say that the cost base for training has increased significantly because there has been many new, better and different ways to deliver. Also, the corporate university idea is no longer viable – in other words, being bricks and mortar and a big campus.”

The problem with training employees is how to gauge real profits at the end of it. While it can be easy to calculate the ROI on other areas of expenditure, measuring the value that training has had on any given individual can be difficult sometimes. Michael Pozsgai, Global Enrolment Optimization Consultant at Eli Lilly, is no doubt as to the benefits of distance learning. “Distance learning tools offer increased flexibility to the investigator sites while maintaining training quality,” he asserts. “Technology is readily available for most basic forms of distance learning and the costs are decreasing. Distance training material is also becoming more interactive with the ability to perform polls or ask questions during the training session. Archived distance learning followed by live question and answer sessions using teleconferences or web conferences promotes training interaction and clarification of the training material.”

However, despite its undoubted advantages, Pozsgai says pharmaceutical companies are aware that distance training is not always the best option. “Not all training can be accomplished entirely by distance learning,” he says. “Training of complex procedures, for instance, may require a hands-on approach; however a hybrid distance learning approach coupled with live training can reduce the time needed for live sessions from perhaps a two to three-day meeting to a focused one-day live meeting.”

With so many staff and the wide spectrum of training and development on offer, it is easy for companies to become bogged down with programs. “You should focus on key initiatives,” explains Waltmann. “I have seen some companies where they have tried to address all the needs at the same time. They try to do language and communication training, but you need to focus on certain initiatives, which are important for the business. Also, many training initiatives are disconnected from the business needs. They just do what they think is good but they don’t do a well thought-through analysis of the business needs.”

Before the training comes recruitment. And without experienced and qualified staff the pharmaceutical industry would grind to a halt. This is why the need to keep a high caliber of graduates coming into the industry will be an even greater priority over the next few years. On top of this, the need to offer competitive packages that incorporate opportunities for personal and professional development alongside the traditionally high salaries will emerge. The US firms occupy the lion’s share of the market, but the growing lack of qualified scientists is a major worry. The US faces serious problems in the coming years as experienced professionals retire, so filling the skills shortage will be at the forefront of most business plans. Although breaking into the industry can be hard, Big Pharma knows that fresh talent is its future lifeblood and it has to do everything possible to make the careers, particularly on the science side, appealing. And the current crop engaged in the pharmaceutical industry needs the training and development to carry the industry forward. Only time will tell if Big Pharma succeeds in meeting its challenges.

 

Talent management

Thomas Kaney, SVP of HR at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), speaks to NGP about talent management within the pharmaceutical industry and the challenges companies face with regard to bridging the skills gap.

I think the talent gap that exists industry-wide is at the succession level to the highest-level jobs such as division heads and certainly CEOs and COOs. It’s a pure leadership issue because over time the pharmaceutical industry has been so intense from the technical side of the business like marketing, product development and R&D. The people that have grown at the very high levels have been ‘supermarketeers’ for instance or super managed markets experts. It has also been a little myopic and tunnel-visioned because there has been no time to take them at mid-management level and broaden them as leaders. I do think that one of the most important talent gaps is who is really ready for strategic leadership – particularly commercial leadership at the big division level. Within R&D we have great scientific leaders who are great thought leaders and well respected – and scientists follow scientists. On the other hand, we have now, and ready for the future, a new form of leadership that is a true, strategic, general management kind of leadership translated over to the science environment.

The issue I see is that the environment is running faster ahead of us than we can catch up. It is a relative momentum issue vis-a-vis with the environmental demands, particularly as the pharmaceutical industry is no longer insulated and is under attack from payers and the public and is considered a dirty industry instead of a noble industry. Before you did not have to manage the environment or the public’s expectations. That game is over, it is a whole different and bigger game that is running faster ahead of us than we have the leadership talent to catch up. Managers manage what is and take it to the next level on a day-to-day basis. Leaders create new responses to demands that haven’t been invented yet and that would be the differential gap that I have in my own mind.

Training and technology

I think it is changing rapidly and intensifying. The place to look closest with that is sales training because that is the marker. That is the area where everything has to get better, quicker and more efficient and more effective. There is e-training, remote training, teleconference training. We are moving entirely towards that direction and away from intensive, face-to-face training. I think the direction will continue to be looking for outsource providers who can do it better, faster and cheaper but can still keep the quality. We will search the landscape everyday for the new best thing to deliver training better, faster, cheaper and we are only limited by the technology available. The intention is fewer resources, lower costs, better training using better technology as it becomes available.

The future

I think the need to do more with less will continue to be the training strategy. I think the focal point of training is going to be two things. First, that which leverages the business and has clear outcome measures as to where limited resources can be put in training that will actually drive the business instead of just training business. And secondly, the whole fuzzy area of leadership development and training and talent management channels. This is not training for everyone, not what I call sheep dip or force-feeding training where you get an entire herd of people at a certain job level in. Pick your key talent and give them special development because they are your leaders of the future. Don’t ignore training for others – there is a big menu for a few and a smaller menu for the many.