Biopharma reaches for homegrown talent

In the weeks running up to the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and pharma giant AstraZeneca, the UK’s NHS England gave it a codename. It was dubbed the ‘Talent vaccine’.¹

The label is likely to have been in recognition of what Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the university, describes as a “multinational effort”² in which a global pool of talent came together to work towards a common goal.

But it is uncertain how likely it is that a similar initiative could be driven by talent in other regions of the world. Many countries have struggled to foster a strong base of local talent, either through a lack of guidance for students emerging from STEM subjects at university or by falling prey to a brain drain effect as promising young scientists and technicians in low- to middle -income countries flock to markets that offer more lucrative opportunities.

Though talent is vital to all industries it is particularly so for pharma and biopharma given the sector’s complexity, making a shallow pool of local talent a real issue. “Biopharmaceutical production is extremely specialised,” says Adrian van den Hoven, director general of Medicines for Europe. “You need specialist biochemists, engineers, even people with a lot of IT skills.”

So just how reliable is the biopharma talent pool, and can the industry ensure it has access to the people with the skills it so desperately needs long into the future?

Cytiva’s Global Biopharma Resilience Index presents an unsettling picture of the anxieties surrounding pharma’s access to talent, which emerges in the Index as the area where the industry is weakest (see chart 1).

Talent is now biopharma’s weakest link

Chart 1: The Global Biopharma Resilience Index reveals that access to talent is the area where the biopharma industry faces the greatest struggle

An expensive business

The idea that talent is freely available and easy to source only resonates with some of the survey respondents, and a quarter say the opposite: 25% say that the sourcing of talent in technology, manufacturing and R&D is a substantial or very substantial challenge.

Part of that challenge stems from just how expensive sourcing talent has become. More than 50% of executives and policymakers in the research say that the cost of talent has become a key issue in their country in recent years as expectations of benefits and remuneration have soared. The industry’s shift to more specific areas means greater demand for a limited supply of highly sought after skillsets, and local companies in lower-income countries face stiff competition from big multinational firms in high-income countries because of the kind of incentives they can offer.

Japanese respondents are having the hardest time with talent costs with an index score of 4.26 out of a possible 10. But the countries that lead the index overall — the US, the UK (both 4.55) and Switzerland (4.33) — do not fare much better (see chart 2).

Bureaucracy is another challenge. Rigid labour regulations appear to be a sticking point when it comes to accessing the right workers: just one in five respondents say that domestic policies around the use of foreign talent are “very flexible”. Respondents in Germany and South Africa reported the greatest challenges with regulation, scoring 6.36 and 6.31 in the index respectively.

This issue comes at a time when a rise in economic nationalism marks a shift away from a global order to one that puts domestic interests first.

But unless countries can train the right people at home, cost and bureaucracy are going to become even more of a challenge.

Chart 2: Countries with a lower GNI gross national income per capita are more likely to struggle to access talent

Home improvements

The way respondents feel about the quality of education and training in their own countries varies according to the level of expertise in question.

About three-quarters of respondents (74%) say they are confident in the quality of education and training for PhDs in the pharma sector. But only 69% say they are confident in workers with general technical skills, and 64% in engineers and workers with regulatory knowledge. It’s a clear sign that the talent generated in academia for research and development roles is of a high calibre, but more could be done to bring other areas of industry up to standard.

The biopharma talent pool on the ground

We speak to senior leaders at pharma giant Amgen and biotech powerhouse Samsung Biologics to find out more about talent risk and to hear what they are doing to secure the best workers.

In conversation with
Arleen Paulino
Senior vice president of global manufacturing, Amgen

What has Amgen done to improve its access to talent?

Talent is always a challenge and an opportunity for us, and we are definitely seeing with the growth in the biopharma space that there is a war for talent.

In many of the regions where Amgen is located, we have formed partnerships with local universities to help ensure that students are ready to take on a role in our industry once they have completed their courses. This is a very important way of strengthening the talent pipeline.

We also work with trade organisations to figure out whether there are programmes we could put in place, such as internships, to help individuals working in other industries to transition into the biopharma industry.

What kind of transferable skills can be valuable in biopharma?

Biopharma manufacturing increasingly requires advanced digital skills, which can be hard to find. There are a lot of workers in the digital space — in gaming, for example — that have the type of skills we need.

So we are looking at how we can help those individuals to make that connection and apply their talent in biopharma. I think there will increasingly be a convergence of disciplines that are necessary to take the biopharma products of the future forward.

Are there any skills that are particularly difficult to source?

Amgen’s facilities are highly automated, and we often struggle to recruit automation engineers. They are very difficult to come by, so we are now thinking about how we can build the right curriculum to develop these skills.

A closer look
Powering the future of Samsung, one training course at a time

To keep a business empire running at full speed, talent is a priority. So Samsung Biologics, the biotech division of South Korea’s largest conglomerate, has taken control of training.

In July 2020, it signed a memorandum of understanding alongside the country’s government to establish a bioprocessing centre that would help foster talent for a highly skilled element of the industry.

The facility, which is modelled on a similar research institute in Ireland called the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training, will help companies gain greater visibility of the talent they need. But Samsung Biologics is also stressing the need to train people as early as possible.

According to John Rim, the company’s chief executive, it is working with a local university to provide two weeks of training to fifth-year pharmacy students at its Biotech Academy training facility.

“We also provide consultancy to another local university regarding their bioprocessing training curriculum and their training facility set-up,” says Rim.

Samsung Biologics is involved in South Korea’s Covid-19 response, so that pipeline of talent is crucial. The company is planning a $2bn plant at its industrial hub in Incheon, with a launch scheduled for 2022 — and will need the best people to ensure its success.

Ambitious plans need ambitious people on the ground, and according to Rim the industry’s most resilient players will recognise this. “Although we operate on a global scale,” he says, “We remain dedicated to helping the local biopharma industry continue to thrive.”