In the ever-changing corporate landscape, companies are thinking outside-the-box and seeking CEO talent in industries other than their own. Healthcare, Pharma and Life Sciences talent is steadily being coveted.
In a recent PWC Global CEO survey, it was reported that CEOs of organizations of all types are looking at expanding their options and stepping outside their established boarders for talent. They are targeting Technology, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals and Life Science companies. Over 15% of those CEO’s surveyed pointed to the Healthcare, Pharmaceutical and Life Science companies as where they are going to acquire talent.1
Seventy-three percent of surveyed CEO’s feel that the availability of skills is now one of their largest concerns. This is driven by the fact that over 50% of those same CEO’s plan to increase headcount in 2021 - 2022. Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO of Nokia in Finland said, “we need multi-talented people who not only understand one piece of technology or one piece of commercialization but rather the whole chain.” This is primarily because of the willingness of organizations to collaborate with partners outside of their business areas, particularly high tech innovators which is creating a need of “hybrid” workers who understand high technology as well.
CEOs also know that they need to create an environment where innovation thrives and in order to do that, they will need people who are different across every dimension, with different backgrounds, physical characteristics, experiences, and personalities. Denise Ramos, CEO of ITT Corporation said, “We want people in the company that have differing ideas, differing experiences, differing opinions, because we need to solve our customers problems and the only way to do that in a world class way is to bring a variety of people together and use their collective know how.”
At the end of the day finding the right people is important to a company, keeping them is critical.
As technology is merging into Life Sciences and Healthcare more and more, companies will need to focus on retaining their best and talented employees. To guard against the most talented from leaving, companies need to act immediately and improve key employee retention by implementing highly creative developmental and leadership opportunities as a way to prevent these employees from leaving.
- PWC 18th Annual Global CEO Survey, People Strategy for the Digital Age.
