Ranjana Smetacek Director General, Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India |
Ranjana Smetacek, Director General, Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) emphasises, “The pharma industry needs to retain and nurture existing talent and equip young workers with the skills and knowledge necessary for better understanding of emerging challenges and opportunities to cultivate a strong image of an employer of choice.”
During 2002-09, many multinational pharma companies decided to conduct clinical trials in India. Seeing the boom in the Indian CRO industry, research analysts have projected manifold growth. Also anticipated that the Indian CRO industry will require large number of skilled and talented manpower to meet the demands. This forecast encouraged private institutions like CREMA, ICRI etc. to start offering courses in clinical research for graduates to enhance their skills and meet the needs of the industry. A few institutions have tied up with pharma and CRO companies, as well as universities to give assured placements. This practice was being successfully followed for last few years but unfortunately, the Indian CRO industry is now seeing some tough times.
Realising that the Indian CRO industry’s growth has unexpectedly become sluggish, investors, as well as Indian CROs became anxious and started looking for reasons for the slowdown. The climax in the story came when NGOs alleged that globally Indian subjects are considered as ‘guinea pigs’ and thus forced regulators to start delaying the approval process, as well as strengthen and monitor clinical trial procedures.
Dr Arun Garg General Secretary, IPGA Prof and Head, School of Medical and Allied Sciences, KR Mangalam University, Gurgaon |
Commenting on the current status of the Indian CRO industry, Dr Arun Garg, General Secretary, Indian Pharmacy Graduates’ Association (IPGA) and Prof and Head, School of Medical and Allied Sciences, KR Mangalam University, Gurgaon says, “The clinical trial industry is suffering badly because of Indian regulatory policies. It should protect human volunteers, as well as provide opportunities to good CROs. The current global pharma business of India is promising and is on the track of growth. Inspite of this, Indian CRO industry is facing problems.”
In October 2013, the US- based CRO, Quintiles decided to shut its phase-I facility in Hyderabad due to regulatory hurdles in India. As per the joint venture agreement the decision was taken mutually by Apollo Hospitals Enterprise and Quintiles. The closed unit had 20 employees who were given the option to switch to another job at Quintiles. The announcement attracted a fair amount of attention in India, as well as in the global media. Quintiles, however, retained its full-fledged Indian operations.
Challenges
D A Prasanna Chairman Association of Contract Research Organizations (ACRO) India |
Highlighting the challenges faced by the Indian CRO industry, DA Prasanna, Chairman, Association of Contract Research Organizations (ACRO) India says that the most serious challenge in 2014 would be motivating and attracting clinicians to conduct clinical trials in India. He also says that though several regulatory changes have been introduced as a result of the concerns raised by NGOs regarding the safety of participating patients, these changes would need the clinicians to spend significantly more time on conducting the study.
Global HR talent
Indian has a sixth of the world’s population and a fifth of the global disease burden. India is therefore a relevant and important country for clinical research since data from Indian patients is important for both global and local studies. Globally, the CRO industry is attracting highly qualified scientists and doctors to clinical research. But unfortunately due to uncertain career prospects in India, there is a flight of talent from CROs in India. As per Dr Renu Razdan, Chief Operating Officer, Neeman Max and Vice Chairman ACRO, “Retention of bright and internationally-competitive people in CROs is the biggest challenge. Since the industry is dependent on regulatory changes, some of which are moving at a snail’s pace, young people do not want to endlessly wait and are looking for other options.”
Opportunities
Pointing out the global trend Prasanna informs, “There is one technological global trend which is in India’s favour; this is remote monitoring of clinical research sites. One pharma company out of Switzerland has been rumoured to have ramped up nearly thousand clinical research associates (CRAs) at its India research centre. Since India has competency in IT-enabled services, this could be a silver lining in the dark cloud.”
Trupti Talati Senior Director, HR, Quintiles India |
“The global biopharma markets are more mature and the challenges they face are more in terms of providing continued career growth for employees and meeting their growing aspirations. India, on the other hand, is a relatively younger biopharma market and therefore the challenges are more in terms of recruitment and early stages of career growth of employees,” reveals Trupti Talati, Senior Director, HR, Quintiles India.
Commenting on global HR trends Garg says, “The global HR trends are mostly in molecular biology, biotechnology and genomics leading to new drug discovery which are lacking in India.”
HR strategies
Abhay Kumar President, Indian Pharmacist Association |
The most serious HR challenges in the biopharma/ lifesciences industry in India are not very different from those faced by other industries. The industry is trying its best to maintain talent acquisition and talent management via various programmes and initiatives. Finding the right people for the right role always remains a challenge, as is managing employee expectations and aspirations through effective and integrated talent management. Abhay Kumar, President, Indian Pharmacist Association (IPA) comments, “We believe that the demand and supply of HR for the pharma industry will be optimum and will continue to grow as we hope the Indian pharma sector will touch new heights at the global level.”
Talati feels, “While there is no challenge in acquiring talent in India across the skill sets we require, the level of experience and expertise required and availability varies by business. We use a combination of avenues for recruitment, including online portals, campus recruitment, etc. We have a very strong referral programme at Quintiles India and referrals contribute a significant percentage (much above industry average) to our recruitment requirements.”
Across the sector, each department plays an important role in building the company as a successful entity. Similarly the pharma industry, which is mainly backed by R&D timelines, also has several other departments which basically connect the blocks and makes the entire process into one successful entity. Talati presents her own company’s hiring process and informs, “The hiring outlook across departments for companies such as ours continues to be positive. Historically our company began operations in India with core clinical services and therefore we have a very strong team and presence in this segment. We have also been witnessing strong growth over the last few years in our data-driven and technology services which are a unique strength of ours in the country. Data-driven services and analytics are the future of transformation in clinical development and we are extremely proud of our capabilities in this area. This is where we expect to see maximum recruitment over the next couple of years.”
Need for diverse skill sets
“India is a major hub for data-driven, technology and analytical services given the tremendous pool of skilled talent we have in the country. Both these factors, as well as the trend of biopharma players outsourcing for greater efficiencies, augur well for continued growth of biopharma companies such as ours in India. Therefore, our requirements are for diverse skill sets and we recruit professionals with medical and life sciences backgrounds, as well as with data management, biostatistics, business processing and technology backgrounds, in addition to functional expertise,” adds Talati.
Retention strategy
Pharma is one among the few industries which hires large number of women in various departments within the organisations. Hence, pharma companies are working continuously to create women friendly work culture and policies within the organisation. Revealing more in this context, Prasanna outlines, “There is a great emphasis to adopt progressive and flexible HR practices.
We support women to achieve a work-life balance, particularly in bringing up children and remaining on the job, during those critical years when they may snap, with family and employer expecting them to be super-human.”
In the pharma industry, few departments like R&D, Q&A and Q&C, legal etc. are considered very sensitive as data related to new molecules need to be kept confidential. Talati shares Quintiles’ retention policies, which help the company retain talent, “Today’s workforce is increasingly mobile and keen on exploring varied options from global exposure to opportunities in new verticals/ departments or sometimes just keen to spend more time with their families. Key to ensuring committed and engaged employees is to adapt organisational policies to create an enabling environment and meet the evolving needs of today’s workforce.”
Vital role of pharmacists
In India, doctors and pharmacists are considered as God. However, 2013 has a been dry phase for pharmacists as Indian regulators have made regulations stringent in India. Pharmacists are placed in the middle of the supply chain of medicines, and hence their contribution is quite large. Like other professionals from the supply chain of pharma industry, pharmacists also look for better career options. The recent circular issued by the Indian regulators to keep two full time trained and qualified pharmacists at chemist shops for 24X7 creates better prospects to them. This development helped the pharmacists community and at the same time left no choice to chemist owners but to upgrade the chemist as defined by the law and pay decent salaries to pharmacists. Kumar states, “A pharmacist plays a very vital and decisive role in the pharma industry. Sadly, there is not much to say about the demand for professional pharmacists in the other fields. Contrary to the pharma industry, the government sector is not so enthusiastic about the importance of pharmacists in the healthcare sector, while in fact they are as essential as the physician/doctors in India.”
Highlighting the current scenario and actions which need to be taken, Garg points out, “A pool of young scientists are available to the industry but there are no adequate opportunities. There is a large pool of M pharm post graduates available for the industry, but there are hardly few takers.
Commenting on the efforts being taken by the IPA for uplifting the Indian pharmacists, Kumar informs, “IPA is making all efforts to provide a platform for the budding pharmacist. We are trying to get all the registered pharmacists under the umbrella of IPA to create a unified voice to ensure that all the aspiring pharmacists are not deprived of what they deserve in the pharma industry.”
Need of the hour
In a competitive world, talent needs to be updated to meet the current requirements. Understating the talent crunch in the Indian pharma industry, the OPPI has especially formed a governance and human resources management committee comprising of HR heads of OPPI member companies. One of the key mandate of this committee is to address issues and challenges for attracting talent in the pharma industry. While revealing more about the initiative and its functionality, Smetacek informs, “Towards this initiative, an OPPI delegation consisting of managing directors and HR directors, visit academic institutions and interact with both students and faculty. These visits allow students a better understanding of growth trends, challenges and business models in the healthcare industry. At the same time, our members get the opportunity to hear from faculties and students about their concerns, suggestions and expectations, while promoting career avenues in our sector.
In the recent past, the Indian CRO industry attracted a lot of criticism on various fronts. This, in turn, badly impacted the industry’s growth. Disclosing ACRO’s initiatives for the Indian CRO industry, Prasanna informs, “ACRO’s key initiative is to promote responsible clinical research in India by working with all stakeholders in clinical research eco-system. There is a trust deficit between NGO, media and clinical researchers on patient safety. Lower the deficit, better the prospects of attracting investigators and talent to conduct clinical research.
Giving insights on maintaining constant inflow of talent in the Indian CRO industry, Prasanna suggests, “From a long-term and capacity building perspective, bio-analytical expertise and bio-statistical expertise is in short supply. Expertise in this area is built by practical experience over the years. Intake of students needs to be increased in these two disciplines. Students should be given extensive on-the-job experience through internships. Perhaps pharmacy schools and statistics colleges should have access to CROs and pharma companies like medical colleges have access to patients (hospitals) and students learn in medical schools as residents.”
He continues, “In the short run, we are working on advocacy so that over conservatism in regulation does not choke the sector. Secondly, we are supporting skill development in CRO sector by contributing to life science skill development council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT’s) programmes. As far as members of ACRO are concerned, we employ a significant proportion of highly educated and trained women in our service.”
Today’s pharmacy graduates are going to be the future of the Indian pharma industry. IPGA has also already initiated a job fair during the 65th IPC Delhi which has helped many students in making their dreams come true. More than 100 students were placed at the job fair.
Speaking on the other initiatives that IPGA has been trying to inplement, Garg highlights, “Since last five years our recommendations are to change the curriculum with more emphasis on Drug Regulatory Affairs, Intellectual Property Rights (Patents), Molecular Biology, Genetic Engineering, Herbal Drug Technology, Medical Devices etc. Use of computational skills like videos/ power point presentations/webinars etc. in teaching. Improvements in problem solving skill development and documentations. More industry participation in academics through industrial tours, training by experts from the industry in academics.”
Talati suggests, “We need to adopt processes and policies that allow employees the flexibility to choose their career path be it a lateral or vertical move within the organisation. Creating a culture that fosters synergy between an employee’s expectations and an organisation’s objectives will continue to be top priority.”