The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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The Case for HR Shared Services in the

Pharmaceutical Industry

The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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HR in the Pharmaceutical Industry – It’s a Jungle out There…

Mapping out Search Strategies for Talented Professionals is a Challenge…

Human Resources professionals in the pharmaceutical industry are facing ever-increasing

challenges in their recruiting of skilled people for this rapidly-growing sector. In fact, this

phenomenon, as described by well-known recruiting and hiring resource Monster.com in a

column titled 'Talent Acquisition Crisis: Bridging the Talent Gap,’ from just a few years ago,

predicted this issue and outlined strategies to address this ‘crisis’:

Succession planning steps taken to ensure the ongoing growth and success of an

organization include strategies such as encouraging retirees with flexible work arrangements

to help ensure knowledge transfer and skill set continuity. Other strategies include proactive

training and ongoing education of employees to address missing skills, training business

leaders to be talent managers to anticipate future needs and address skills gaps through

targeted training, and getting involved with local school to influence curriculums and tap into

future talent pipeline.

As the findings of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Resourcing

and Talent Planning Survey suggest, “73% of organizations have noticed a marked increase

in the number of unsuitable candidates applying for job vacancies.” In that same survey,

more than half of employers (52%) believe that competition for talent is becoming more and

more competitive, compared with 20% just six years ago. As the demographics and skills of

the workforce shift, organizations that want to thrive will want to implement a multi-faceted

talent management strategy to build a competitive workforce. By proactively trying to nurture

and influence existing employees as well as future employees, organizations will put

themselves at an advantage to prosper, even in difficult times.

The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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The ‘Battle for Talent’…

The biggest challenges for HR professionals in general, and certainly in the high technology

pharmaceutical industry, are finding and keeping the best talent for their firms. The industry

employs over 1.3 million people as quoted in ‘The future of pharmaceutical human

resources; the battle for talent.’ And according to a new report, ‘The Future of Pharma

Human Resources,’ by consultants PriceWaterhouseCooper (PWC), most people entering

the sector have something in common; they want to make a difference

But, as noted in the report, ‘pharmaceutical companies are not philanthropic ventures staffed

by saints and, despite any noble intentions; they remain under pressure to satisfy the

financial expectations of their shareholders.’

“The pharmaceutical industry typically aims to attract the top science graduates and

postgraduates from the best universities in North America and Europe, PWC says, but the

most able graduates are the very people that blue-chip companies in other sectors also

want. Moreover, it adds, an already-competitive market will become even more internecine,

as two trends reshape the western world: the shrinking of the working-age population; and

the decline in the number of students reading traditional science degrees or choosing a

career in scientific research.”

The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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The Reality of the Skills Gap…

"Every year, the Manpower Group, a human resources consultancy, conducts a worldwide “Talent

Shortage Survey.” Last year, 35% of 38,000 employers reported difficulty filling jobs due to lack of

available talent; in the U.S., 39% of employers did," from 'Employers Aren't Just Whining - the "Skills

Gap" is Real' by James Bessen as posted on the Harvard Business Review.

As technology advances ever-more quickly, the skills needed to have also changed; and

employers are finding it difficult to find workers who can help them best leverage the latest

information technologies. In a great many industries, technological evolution of systems and

processes, such as the creation of new medicines in the pharmaceutical industry, drives the

need for even more educated and technology-savvy professionals. PWC goes on to note

that "we have seen how the consolidation of the pharmaceutical industry is reducing the

overall headcount." However, new sciences and technologies are producing new "industries"

which also require people with scientific qualifications.

Likewise, it adds, "we have seen how those same sciences and technologies are changing

the sort of skills that are needed," and how demographic and education trends are driving

would-be employers to search further afield for the people they need. Social factors are just

as important: the shift in family structures, increasing longevity and new attitudes to the

work-life balance are helping to shape the workplace as well, the report says. So what do all

these changes mean for the pharmaceutical industry?

The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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HR Shared Services – Finding & Keeping the Best Talent

HR Shared Services and its supporting technologies can play a key role in meeting the

talent challenge by:

Reducing HR resource requirements for administrative work, thus enabling HR to re-

allocate their valuable resources to more strategic functions such as ongoing talent

acquisition, retention and training programs - supported by automated online processes for

forms, policies and procedures

Delivering more personalized and engaging employee experiences through self-service

portals – supported by integrating portal content with employee data. This produces the

following “wins” with respect to talent:

Increasing employee satisfaction with the workplace environment.

Keeping employees enthusiastic about the quality, loyalty and trustworthiness of their

employer

Enabling them to spend less time with HR, and hence more time on the research and

work in which they’re emotionally invested

Encouraging not only employees to stay, but making them more likely to recommend

the company to other talent

The Case for HR SS in the Pharmaceutical Industry www.neocasesoftware.com

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“Given the speed at which knowledge is growing, it is becoming more and more difficult for

companies to stay at the forefront of learning and development. This is especially true of the

pharmaceutical sector, PWC believes, where new sciences and technologies are

transforming the R&D process, and where greater competition is accelerating the speed at

which products are launched, therefore increasing the pressure on sales and marketing.

Service delivery will also be critical in meeting the challenges of the next few years, says

PWC. Starting with the "people vision and people plan," PWC says its research shows that,

correctly implements, shared service centers and outsourcing can provide a better HR

service and reduce costs. But, for many companies, the first factor is more significant than

the second. Together with improvements in technology and the development of self-service

solutions, it notes, shared service centers and outsourcing should reduce the administrative

burden on the HR function, so enabling the staff to spend more time on strategic issues.”