How Many Biopharma Employees Would Rather Be Working Somewhere Else?

How many people working in the biopharma industry would jump to another company if they could? According to this survey, it's just over half: well above the average set by other industry sectors.

The usual reasons are cited, in part (pay, opportunity for advancement). But two factors that seemed unusually prominent in our industry were high stress levels and "difficult relations with supervisors and co-workers". I found that last one interesting, because (like all science and engineering fields) we do have a certain number of people in this business who can be described, as the old British music hall song has it, as "E's all right when you know 'im, but you've got to know 'im first". And there's the ever-present disconnect between the scientists and any non-science-background upper managers, a clash of worldviews if ever there was one.

I've worked in some situations where most people seemed satisfied, but I've probably spent more of my career in those other workplaces described by this survey. I well recall an employee survey many years ago, given out with pencil and paper, yet, where people were calling out to each other before the start with helpful questions like "Is "half-assed" hyphenated or not?" and "Do you capitalize "Moron" when you're talking about a specific one?"

Some of what this survey found, though, is surely pent-up demand. There have been fewer and fewer opportunities to change companies over the years, and it used to be a fairly frequent career move. So I...

Source: In the Pipeline - July 23, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs