Educating on the rewards of a career in life sciences

A business is only as successful as its people - and the life sciences sector is no different. From scientists in labs and people running clinical trials, to procuring medicines and devices, we can only be as good as our workforce allows. Working in the life sciences sector is a unique way to help patients worldwide; it's a sector that produces medicines and technologies that save millions of lives and improve millions more.

When the world faced the acute shared threat of the pandemic, the speed of the global vaccine roll out brought home the fact that major healthcare breakthroughs are within the global scientific community's reach. The UK has a proud scientific heritage that the Government has thrown its weight behind; creating a favourable investment environment for start-ups and growing lab space.

What is often less thought about is the people and skills that make up this industry and how the UK taps into talent from all corners of the country and the world. It’s really important that we create pathways for people to enter the life sciences industry from all backgrounds and no matter where they come from, as it delivers the best outcomes for businesses, and for patients.

The UK needs more than scientists alone for its life sciences ambitions

When we think about healthcare and medicines, the most familiar career paths are patient-facing. But excellent administrators, commissioners, product managers, scientists, and leaders across the life sciences sector are essential to the health and life sciences ecosystem.

The life sciences sector, like many healthcare related industries across the UK, faces a shortage of the personnel needed to continue delivering better outcomes for patients around the world. A study of the life sciences sector in the North of England found that around just under half of employers believed they were attracting applicants with the right skillset and a further 30% of employers felt there were not enough applicants. Despite this, only 25% of employers publicised available roles through university job sites, and under 17% on traditional graduate careers websites.¹

This data accords with what I have observed and heard from the sector, and it is a big part of why the UCL Global Business School for Health, where I work, has a dedicated Master’s course on Biotech and Pharmaceutical Management.

We can increase the number of applicants by looking to higher education and the potential of mid-career switchers

We need to look at widening the pool of applicants. This could mean encouraging students in further and higher education to consider life sciences as a career, or making the routes into the life sciences sector clearer to mid- and late-career professionals in adjacent industries. We also need to get better at targeting outreach to individuals who, for one reason or another, have felt the industry was not a fit for them.

This is even more important given that the UK is competing in a global labour market for the highly skilled workers that go on to solve some of healthcare’s biggest challenges. The UK has to be intentional, and policymakers should take steps to facilitate its ambitions, in the same way we have seen with access to capital and lab space.

For example, the Government recently announced a boost for life sciences in the UK by creating the West Yorkshire Life Sciences Investment zone.² It’s fantastic to see life sciences prioritised by the Government, and the 2,500 new jobs the Zone will create will provide a much-needed opportunity to diversify the life sciences industry, alongside the additional skills training and financial support for businesses, as there is significant progress still to be made.

Partnerships between industry and higher education can help to make the benefits of a career in life sciences more visible

Like many other sectors of our economy, the life sciences industry needs to do better on diversity. A recent study by the UK Bioindustry Association (BIA) found that, while the life sciences industry has comparatively strong gender parity figures as a whole, only 32% of C-suite roles and 26% of CEOs are women. Similarly, there is a lack of leadership roles filled by people from BAME backgrounds in life sciences, who make up just 13% of senior leadership positions and 11% of CEOs.³

One way that we can tackle this is together, making a career in life sciences more visible for people - through education. This is one of the reasons the UCL Global Business School for Health (UCL GBSH) partnered together with Roche.

There are steps businesses can take right away to broaden their workforce talent pool and make more people aware of the fulfilling career that life sciences offers. For those of us lucky enough to work in this exciting sector or educate the next generation of talent, we need to turn our attention to making more people think a career for them in our industry is possible.