How TA and HR are winning in Life Sciences - Takeaways from LEAP HR

Gareth Hayes and I attended LEAP HR in Amsterdam in February where 100 senior HR and TA leaders from the Life Science Industry came together to look at how to tackle some of the challenges they are currently facing. Below is our interpretation of what some of the key talent acquisition challenges were and what we hope are some practical ideas to help kickstart your approaches if you are finding yourself stuck and need some inspiration to help move things forward.

As the delegates started to flow into the auditorium in the historically converted church you could feel a mix of excitement and anticipation amongst us all.

For many of the attendees it was the first opportunity to step away from the business and reflect on their strategies in what has been a challenging couple of years globally.

It was clear that the pace of change within the sector has been electrifying and there was a general consensus that this pace and scale of change wasn’t about to slow down, in fact many believed the next 24 months could well be as turbulent as what had preceded. Whilst there was an element of nervousness about the upcoming challenges and what may lay ahead the one consistent message from Big Pharma to start up Biotech’s was that they were still in growth mode, with over 75% of delegates saying they had significant hiring plans for 2023 and beyond. The challenge, and why many were here, is that 92% also said they are struggling to find the talent they need to fuel that growth.

You could also sense in the room, and many expressed this during the networking sessions and drinks, that the expectations on them and their HR & TA teams were growing yet funding and resources were dwindling. So many articles are written about how talent is the biggest challenge that the C Suite sees to the success of the business, yet that doesn’t seem to be filtering down to those having to tackle those challenges. In fact, I would say that many of the senior leaders in attendance felt that they had to become much more “tactical” rather than strategic in their approach simply as they didn’t have the capacity to step away and focus as they might like.

So what were the main themes that came out during our time at LEAP HR? I don’t think anyone will be overly surprised by the key topics, I think everyone will resonate with these and have similar challenges within their own organisations.

• Broadening Existing Talent Pools & Engaging Diverse Talent
• Transitioning to a Skill’s First, Location Second Approach to Hiring
• Amplifying their EVP Within a Crowded Market 

Broadening Existing Talent Pools & Engaging Diverse Talent

Finding quality talent is difficult and with an ageing population across Europe, people opting to retire earlier and increased long term sick absenteeism it’s not going to get any easier. Over 500,000 people dropped out of the UK workforce alone since 2019 and rates of sick absenteeism are up 44% across Europe (Source: National Library of Medicine).

The conversations led to some practical ways in which organisations are looking to tackle talent shortage challenges. These are no means exhaustive, but they are ideas that appear to be alleviating some of the pressure organisations have been facing.

Look at having a hiring strategy for older demographics. Many smaller biotech organisations were reporting that they were focusing on bringing experience into the organisation by bringing back retirees. Looking at those that have chosen to leave the workforce or had naturally retired and offering them an opportunity to continue to contribute but, on their terms, offering more flexible or part-time work arrangements. 

Network referrals, I was surprised that nearly 40% of participants we talked to didn’t really feel the referral program was pushed internally or used as a way that would really add value to the recruiting process. At Kelly we partner with Hireup to gain maximum leverage from this channel, what we heard worked well was during the briefing call taking time to coach and train the Hiring Manager community to leverage their networks and promote corporate posts on sites such as LinkedIn.

Understanding not everyone outside the Sector knows the types of opportunity that exists within the Life Science eco system. For Scientific talent the correlation between career growth in the sector is pretty easy to follow but what if you are a Data scientist or a Cyber Security Specialist? Making careers more visible for non-scientific roles could open a whole new raft of talent that just didn’t know what was on offer.

Tackle retention with Internal Mobility. Ensure your opportunities are visible to your internal talent and that you create an environment and simple guidelines to encourage movement internally. Simple steps – find out if are your roles visible internally to employees – conduct a poll, do they know where to go to search jobs and apply. Secondly why not educate them on career paths? Consider running a virtual career event by region where employees can attend and learn more about different parts of the business and open roles. Thirdly, are you promoting internal promotions and moves? Think about a regular celebration of internal mobility to share within your organization.

Reskill return to workers. We have worked with organisations at Kelly very successfully in this space where parents who have been raising their families are in a position to return to work and require some support, confidence building and retraining to engage in meaningful work.

Invest in students for production line growth. We heard from a medical devices company who would invest in hiring and training students over the Easter break so that they had an increased workforce over the summer. Many of these students would work all the available time they had during their holiday periods and had high levels of retention over their academic careers.

Continuing with Production workers the Night shift has always been a hard slog to keep talent flowing. Practical steps like offering a late-night bus service for those who don’t have their own transport or by offering a “car sharing” allowance have had positive impacts.

Diversity needs to be visible. I don’t think we can do real justice to this topic in our short review of the event. During the 2 days we heard how organisations are showcasing their commitment to a diverse work force not just pre interview on their career sites and media posts but during the interview process. Ensuring access to people from communities during the interview process that can showcase real life examples of their commitment to both a diverse workforce and inclusive workplace. The need for this to be woven into the fabric of an organisation is paramount and it really needs to be top down and bottom up. 

Transitioning to a Skill’s First, Location Second Approach to Hiring 

During the workshops everyone on the tables Gareth and I sat on agreed the value that this approach brings; to companies, to individuals and to TA functions constantly scouring the market for talented people. However, TA leaders are still somewhat wrestling with the practicalities of making it happen. Barriers include compliance and legal concerns, lack of visibility as to what skills will be required for the business moving forward the sheer size of the undertaking. A first step approach discussed was to look at a pilot – could you start this within HR/TA or with an area of the business that are strong partners with TA. Identify the skills needed over the next 6 months, carry out some market mapping to locate pools of talent that can fit, and present this as a proposal for internal commitment. One of my favourite sayings is “how do you eat an Elephant? In bite size chunks. Couldn’t be more fitting when looking at opening up roles to multiple locations.

 Amplifying their EVP Within a Crowded Market 

This is something that got a lot of attention at LEAP HR. No longer is a noble purpose enough to drive applications flooding through the door. There was a lot of discussion around how do you convey your culture to prospective candidates, bring it to life during the interview process and make sure that your hiring process brings in the right talent but also those that add to your culture. The concept of how to maintain culture as a growing biotech generated a lot of discussion but the need to balance fast paced growth and keep true to the core identity of the business was a genuine concern for fast paced growth business.