Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - November/December 2007 - (Page 55) Pharmaceutical Executive Europe Nov/Dec 2007 The Mix 55 CEE-Suite Executives Martin Reynolds looks at the challenges of talent management and acquisition in Central and Eastern Europe. ife Sciences organisations have invested heavily in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region since European enlargement, recognising the potential for clinical development programmes and commercialisation of their products. Today, Poland’s market is worth over €3 billion and is continuing to grow. The Czech and Hungarian markets are roughly equivalent in size, at around €1.6 billion each. These leading countries are net importers, like the Baltic States, which, despite being host to dynamic and growing local producers, still rely on foreign imports for most of their needs. Global life sciences organisations (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical technologies) are now facing difficulties due to payers’ budgetary constraints, which have resulted in tighter reimbursement policies across the sector. Further challenges include: L Talent management and acquisition The developing CEE market is placing new demands on organisations to build commercial and expert support structures in areas such as public policy, health technology assessment, outcomes research, reimbursement and pricing. Medical affairs disciplines face the same challenge and will need highly competent, externally-facing professionals working hand-in-hand with marketing and health economics outcomes research (HEOR) professionals as a single commercially-focused group. Demand for health economists is also increasing. Historically these experts were located in academic or government institutions fulfilling a political brief, but now they have become an integral and well-established part of the marketing mix with great demand for their services. Life sciences organisations are also struggling to retrain existing staff within tight timeframes, needing to develop wider communication, negotiation and presentation skills to represent their company externally. Management challenges here include: ● identifying the right location for staff within different groups such as clinical development, medical or marketing, depending on the legacy organisational development; ● fierce competition for the right people — demand is high and supply is low; ● inflationary factors arising from “mobile talent” demanding higher salaries and packages, putting stress on existing remuneration systems; ● assisting academic or public sector professionals to make the transition into industry and succeed. These challenges also exist for medical, drug safety and public policy. However, there is a silver lining as companies in the CEE region have a history of employing a wealth of medically qualified personnel in non-medical roles. The challenge is retraining these people from generalist to specialist activities. Attracting and retaining scarce talent Major organisations would appear to be in the driving seat with access to larger resources (salaries etc) enabling them to attract the lion’s share of top talent. True, some executives are ‘large company’ professionals and will always want to work with a Top 10 player. But, there are many executives who leave major organisations because they feel their roles are too narrow — so big is not beautiful to all. Larger organisations are running multiple approaches: ● by promoting and developing talent internally; ● relocating talent globally for key roles; ● attracting talent within the region from competitors by networking and through advertising and recruitment services providers. These organisations are initially attractive to ‘early career’ executives with the high level of training and development they offer, as well as being a good name to have on a CV. In smaller organisations, there is an opportunity to offer a much broader scope of responsibility; however, this advantage is often undermined by the lack of a ‘support’ structure for executives. As a specialist recruitment company our experience is that, irrespective of the size of the organisation, it is essential that more innovative research, marketing, communication and interview engagement strategies are used to win the war for this talent. About the Author Martin Reynolds is CEO of Sharpstream Life Sciences, a specialist recruitment organisation. ● keeping up to speed with rapidly changing healthcare infrastructures that appear to be diverging rather than aligning; ● maximising the opportunity for the execution of clinical trials within the CEE region where operations in this field are at a mature stage and costs are rising; ● retaining a competitive edge in CEE markets where the commercial and strategic importance of the region is ever increasing. To meet these challenges, the life sciences industry needs to attract talent into critical disciplines such as clinical operations, medical, regulatory, drug safety, health economics, outcomes, reimbursement and pricing. Companies need the brightest minds to help them compete and win and once they’ve recruited those people they need to retain them against fierce pressure from competitors.
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