Trading places and switching sides
pharmafile | July 29, 2004 | Feature | |Â Â Â
Power, intrigue, corruption and more than a dash of Hollywood: yes, the Mafia has it all. And just like La Cosa Nostra, which they say no one ever leaves, the pharma industry has a reputation for long-serving employees.
Pharma may also exhibit other similar traits, with power and intrigue in particular coming to the fore whenever a new merger is in the offing, but the similarities end there – to my knowledge no pharma executive has yet found a horse head in their bed.
But the fact remains that people do tend to stick with the industry for a considerable part, if not all, of their working lives. Any visitor to pharma's numerous conferences, award ceremonies and social occasions is more than likely to see an ex-colleague or two who have left their former company but stuck with the industry, either moving to a different pharma company or a service company. Of these two alternatives, pharma has traditionally been viewed as the better choice.
Working for the drug squad
"To some extent pharma is a more comfortable environment. By pure definition of being a product business, rather than a service business, it is still a relatively comfortable industry financially and therefore you are not going to be as tight for cash as you would be in a CRO for instance," says Grant Coren, director of recruitment and HR at services company Astralis.
With its greater resources, pharma companies can generally offer employees an environment with much greater infrastructure and more investment in an individual personal development and training than would be found in a service company.
"Working in big pharma you are likely to get 'the package' which includes a lot more benefits," adds Sarah Whitmore, communications consultant at Essence Health, and ex-Glaxo Wellcome. "I think that the bigger agencies are offering that as well now.Within 'the package' the pay scales offered for similar roles in pharma and its service sector continue to favour pharma.
According to Nick Stephens, managing director of recruitment company RSA, service businesses typically pay 15% less than the product businesses [pharma].
"I don't think that can ever change because of the symbiotic nature of service and product businesses. One of them produces the product that makes the margin that makes the whole machine work and everybody else is simply an extra and it will be ever thus," he explains.
But working on the service side can still be an attractive career move, offering different things to different people: from the 20-year veteran to the novice looking to gain their first taste of pharma before taking the plunge.
Experienced employees often have more opportunities to be close to top-level business decisions or get on the fast track to the top. Bigger service businesses, such as Quintiles and Parexel even provide career paths that are almost the same as those found within the industry itself.
But how many people swap their place in the industry for one where they're on the supplier side?
"It works in direct proportion to the number of people who are at risk in their current jobs," says Mr Stephens. "There are very few people who make that transition voluntarily."
Or as one person working in a senior position on the service side rather more bluntly put it: "Until very recently there has been an enormous amount of 'fat' in most pharma businesses and that is beginning to be trimmed now. Those who do move [of their own accord] tend to be much more confident than those who don't, or they tend to be forced out – both types are likely to look for a job in a service business.
There are, however, no hard and fast rules about staff movement. Pharma company Abbott, for example, has gained more employees from the service sector in recent years than it has lost to it.
"Within the last couple of years perhaps two people have left us – one to join an advertising agency and another to go into management consultancy. We have had four people that I can think of who work in our marketing area who have come from agency work," said human resources director Amanda White.
In fact the company turnover of sales and marketing staff is about 4% lower than the industry average of 17%.
Losing complete control
As the industry weathered a storm of mergers and acquisitions over the past ten years, with their attendant 'rationalisations of headcount', it has begun to look just a little less copper-bottomed than perhaps it did in the boom years of the 1980s.
Hypothetically, an employee with a particularly unlucky career sense could have joined, and then been made redundant from, Glaxo when it became Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham when it became GSK, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer when it became Aventis and so on. You would just hope the poor hypothetical individual did not then choose to go to either Sanofi Synthlabo or Aventis – just in case!
Hypothetical this example may be but Astralis' Mr Coren confirms that it is not entirely from the realms of fantasy: "There certainly are some poor souls out there that have been through it three times in the space of five years," he says.
Ms Whitmore only went through the merger process once, when her then employer Glaxo merged in 1994 to form Glaxo Wellcome; the pre-GSK stress was such that, when it became clear that another transaction was more than likely, it became a factor in her decision to switch to the service side.
"Although I came through the first merger with a really nice position in marketing, it was a very stressful time. The internal politics were horrendous and change management was forever going on. You really felt you had no autonomy or that you were actually making a difference," she says.
"I think that's typical of the very large pharma companies that you do ultimately end up feeling like a very small fish in a very large sea."
The wrench of change after a major merger transaction is familiar to many in the industry. In the worst cases, the good people leave, especially if they have the security of large share options, leaving behind people who feel they are in the wrong job, but don't have the luxury of an alternative. They then have to cope with the sudden rise in politics and bureaucracy that working in a newly-enlarged company can often produce. One ex-industry person, now employed on the service side, describes working in a big pharma company after a merger as "like wading through treacle".
Should I stay or should I go?
If you are thinking about moving to a service company there are a number of things to consider. You will need the ability to work in an environment that is constantly demanding and is constantly going to stretch you. You will need to be able to deal with customer demands and have something of a 'service mentality' as one recruiter put it. The downside of working for a communications agency, for example, is that often you can't shut up shop at 5.00pm if there are deadlines to be met. Even if you are a manager in a service company it is also likely you will have to 'do' more than you will have to 'manage'.
There is also likely to be some sharing of jobs that no one really wants to do, whether they are distributing the post or changing cartridges on printers. In this instance the service company can appear to be quite the parochial little operation, when compared to a big pharma company mail room operation, catering or IT department.
"Service businesses look as if they're smooth and making a lot of money, but the support systems are much lower and you find people having to do their own damn photocopying! So it only suits people who have a work ethic, unless they're very lucky," explains Mr Stephens.
This sense of responsibility extends to service delivery – if you don't do your job it will be noticed because there is nowhere to hide. Just as pharma doesn't have to provide a career for life, nor does the service side need to be forever. Abbott's Ms White does not see a problem with people coming back into the main pharma companies having had a spell in agencies. "It may well be that they've got additional skills and perspectives that are quite useful to use. For instance, they probably know how to manage the agencies better," she suggests.
Career opportunities
If you can appreciate the differences between the two sectors then you can avoid making the wrong decision.
"I would certainly encourage people to really understand which is going to be more attractive to them and why," says Mr Coren. "For somebody to have a well-rounded career it is hugely beneficial to work in both. But it is not a question of one being better than the other because both sectors bring with them different skills and experiences."
The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence and there are, of course, a lot of satisfied people working in big pharma companies. Going over to the service side of the industry is just one option for those seeking a career change.
