Articles

Flexible Working in the Pharmaceutical Industry - A Research Project

Flexible working has had mixed results in the pharmaceutical industry. But as Steve Wright explains, it is usually linked to the way businesses implement new working patterns.

The pharmaceutical Industry is one of the fastest growth sectors in the UK with new and innovative drugs coming to market at an ever-increasing rate. It is also one of the most highly regulated areas of the economy, with obligatory product training and APBI licensing of sales representatives.

One issue facing all companies is the balance between achieving ambitious targets and meeting the needs of employees. Work/life balance is becoming increasingly important to employees, as the stresses of modern life become more apparent. So, what are the reasons for employers and the Government focussing on these issues?

There have been various changes affecting organisations and workers that have prompted the introduction of flexible working outside of the legislative framework. The most widely recognised of these are the transitions occurring in the demographics of the workforce.

There is also a growing recognition of changes at work that affect the needs, attitudes and expectations of individuals, with national statistics showing that the labour market pull has been one of the main reasons behind the introduction of employee-friendly flexible working outside of the legislative framework. Workforce composition and employee skills, attitudes and perspectives on relationships with employers, have all been dramatically revised as the work world moves from a "career-for-life" mentality to one that embraces change and multiple career paths and opportunities.

There has emerged a need for Government to assist businesses to meet customer demands for goods and services on a 24-hour basis and to balance those requirements with the employees’ home and work lives. Companies who recognised this at an early stage and implemented family friendly policies, such as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, have been held up by the Government as ‘best practice’ within their respective fields. Indeed GSK were one of the companies featured in the DTI publication “Flexible Working Requests”.

Employment legislation over recent years has increasingly tried to reconcile this balance. For example, rights to Parental Leave and protection for Part-Time Workers have been introduced. Following the introduction of flexible working requests in the Employment Act 2002, employees seem to be increasingly challenging traditional working patterns. The Flexible Working Regulations, which became law in April 2003, allow employees with parental or caring responsibility for a child under six (18 if disabled) to demand that their employer take seriously a request to work on a flexible basis, although employees are able to refuse the request on nine statutory grounds.

I recently conducted some research into flexible working practices and the steps UK pharmaceutical companies have taken to accommodate the new legislation, and the steps they are looking to take to implement further family friendly policies, with a focus specifically on the pharmaceutical salesforce.

My survey was conducted over a three-month period at the end of 2003, with eight of the top 15 UK companies agreeing to take part. This represents over 50% of the top pharmaceutical companies in the UK, with a combined workforce of 15,841 employees, with 3,512 of those employees specifically employed in the pharmaceutical salesforce, each company’s salesforce being of a broadly similar number.

All companies had some form of flexible working, 50% of whom had policies established prior to the legislation. The age range within the each separate salesforce clearly shows that the employees are predominately young females, with those under aged 39 (i.e. those employees most likely to be eligible to request), ranging from 60% to as high as 73%, with female employees making up between 51% and 63% of the workforce. The percentages of employees that work part-time vary from 1% to 21%, the majority having less than 10%. The company with the highest total had made a clear strategic decision to recruit and manage a part-time sales force.

In general, those companies with established flexible working practices identified far more benefits than those that had not taken the strategic decision to utilise flexible working before the legislation required them to do so, with employee retention (six companies) and employee morale (five companies) being identified as the greatest benefits. Other benefits identified included improved productivity (three companies) and easier recruitment (three companies).

Since the legislation was enacted in April 2003, the companies surveyed had received a total of 53 requests, one company receiving none and another a total of 14. This is an overall ratio of around one in 67 – an extremely high ratio compared to a recent survey by Klegal (KPMG’s legal arm) that put the figure as low as one in 1,300. There was a high approval rate, of 72%, with 9% of requests still awaiting a decision. Where a request for flexible working was refused, it was most commonly refused on the grounds of; (a) the detrimental effect on the ability to met customer demand; (b) the inability to reorganise work among existing staff; and (c) the inability to recruit additional staff. Although companies will face extra costs due to some benefits being unable to provided pro rata, i.e. company cars, companies did not cite this as a reason for refusal.

Some statistical analysis has been undertaken as part of an investigation into the feasibility of an employee working three days per week. This has highlighted that an individual working three days per week would be on their sales territory, actually selling, for only 1.8 days, compared to a full time employee who would be able to sell for 3.8 days per week. The difference being the required training and development, programmed team meetings, administration and planning. In effect ‘productive time’ is lost, although the ‘time overhead’ of 1.2 days per week remains the same. One further surprising result was the cost of lost sales - which can be considerable. There is also a direct link between the number of representative calls and the amount of sales in relation to part time representatives. It was shown that a three-day a week representative achieved significantly less sales, per sales call, when compared to a similar full-time representative. The difference was significant enough to warrant refusal.

In addition to established flexible working patterns such as flexitime or part-time work, companies are increasingly examining ways of increasing the options available to employees as the work/life balance issue becomes of central strategic focus.

All companies except one cited headcount restriction as a major constraint on the introduction of further flexible working practices, not only in the salesforce, but also across all segments of the business. Effectively this means that without authorisation from the parent company, the UK business is unable to take on extra employees above an agreed headcount number. Therefore, in the case of agreeing to a job share or part-time working request, the company is unable to recruit the additional job share partner or a replacement for the remaining working hours. This leaves scope to fill these and other business critical vacancies with workers with atypical working patterns, such as agency contractors or interims.

Conclusion
The UK pharmaceutical companies in the survey appear to be split 50/50 in their response to the work/life balance question. The ‘early adopters’ have seen tangible benefits and continue to strive to promote new forms of flexible working in an effort to attract and retain the best in the business. Those companies who adopted flexible working practices following the introduction of the legislation are now looking at various ways to meet both the letter and spirit of the law. This alone seems to justify the introduction of Legislation.

The barriers to an increased headcount, linked to the often urgent need to complete a project or some other business critical short-term need, means that pharmaceutical companies will continue to have a growing need for atypical workers.

Family-friendly rights continue to be a matter for debate. This is a debate that the Government will be taking an active part in, partly as it is increasingly likely to affect voting patterns. A recent survey by the Equal Opportunities Commission reported that of those surveyed, 68% of all adults, 79% of parents and 74% of carers said the way they vote is likely to be influenced by what the political parties intend to do to make life easier for parents and carers.

On that basis, it is odds on that the right to request will be extended to all parents and carers when the legislation is reviewed in 2006.

Steve Wright
Steve Wright is professionally qualified, experienced human resources specialist with extensive knowledge of, and practical skills in human resource management, training and development, and organisational development. He is Managing Director of The Training and HR Consultancy Ltd. He has worked in a range of blue chip companies in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, professional services, high technology, high street retail, and public mass transport. Steve is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with a Masters Degree in Human Resource Management (MSc), and a Masters Degree in Employment Law (LL.M).

Consulting Skills - The most important HR skill

A favourite from the archives:

The Most Important HR Skill

Consulting skills, getting your customer to “help you to help them” is, hands down, the most important skill for a human resource professional to have. Consulting skills are like golf. In order to perform best you have to completely focus on your own performance and although you should always be trying, you will never have a perfect score. There is always something you can do better; consulting expertise is a never ending pursuit but one which will offer significant rewards and satisfaction throughout.

Some HR professionals and particularly some HR executives reject the notion of being a consultant. Before arguing pro or con we should understand just what a consultant is. The most widely accepted definition says that a consultant is someone who:
Partners with a client to achieve a goal
Succeeds through influence rather than control
Can play several different roles
Frequently operates in someone else’s territory
Adds value
There isn’t much to argue about. HR is a service that is primarily and best delivered by consulting processes whether we like the term or not.

There are five stages of consulting, the first of which is Contracting. Contracting starts with opening a file for the assignment and establishing or re-establishing rapport with the client. It also includes listening carefully and understanding what the client considers to be his or her HR needs and to re-articulate them until both of you are in agreement. This validation process is absolutely essential to, and continues through all consulting stages.

After the needs have been agreed to you must determine what your requirements are to fulfill the assignment. (Yes, HR professionals can have requirements too.) These needs may include financial resources and with rare exceptions at least some portion of the client’s time. Invariably the requirements should include timely, ongoing communication. At this point you and the client should reach an agreement to proceed and you should end this stage with a clear commitment to help.

Data Collection and Analyses is the second stage of the consulting process. Regardless of the current or prior relationship with the client it is very important to understand the challenges and situation the clients faces - even beyond the scope of the HR work you are being asked to deliver. While their needs many well be validated it is imperative that you also understand the factors or motivators that are driving them.

The most successful operations in any endeavor experienced problems. They are inevitable; what differentiates between success and failure is how you respond to the problems. At this point in the data collection and analyses stage it is beneficial to start anticipating any problems that you may experience and cataloging the associated responses. Planning for foreseen problems will also prepare you to deal with the unforeseen. The importance of this step cannot be understated. Directly and indirectly, long term and short, you will benefit.

At this point you should start identifying the best solutions – and be sure to be solution oriented, not problem oriented. As the potential solutions become clear you should also make a final review to make sure that you have learned everything you need to about the situation as well as identify what resources are available when, and how to avail yourself of them if and when you need to.

The third stage is to formalise the Recommendation. This should start with a restatement of the client’s needs and end with a confirmation of the resources necessary to deliver and the final timeline. If the first three stages are conducted properly there need be no anxiety associated with presenting the recommendation. The recommendation itself, arrived at through this proven methodology, will produce no surprises or resistance from the client.

Execution is the fourth stage. Many people are surprised that execution, the actual work is fourth out of five and concerned that this is indicative of the “all talk and plan” syndrome that never seems to result in accomplishing anything. Being fourth out of five doesn’t mean that getting the work done is not paramount. Rather it means that the work is so important that there are three previous stages proceeding to insure that it is done how and when agreed.

Sometimes once the execution stage starts we quickly get caught up in the work and forget about what was determined in the three previous stages. It’s a natural inclination which must be steadfastly avoided. There are a host of sound reasons behind the process, take advantage of them and they will insure that you execute in the best possible manner.

If you should recognize, for whatever reasons that the execution seems flawed, stop and review each of the previous stages. This should not happen but there are some organizational dynamics that have a propensity to undermine sound consulting practices. The only way to deal with them is by stopping and going through the process again to make sure you have them right. Otherwise, enjoy the work!

The last stage is Evaluation, Reporting, and Change. The first level of evaluation is very simple. Did you deliver what you and the client agreed to? Did you deliver on time and according to quality, time, and resource standards? You can determine this yourself as you review and close out the assignment but the most important feedback is obtained by simply asking the client, “Are you satisfied?” Ask the question soon after completing the assignment. Whether the feedback is good, bad or indifferent, the sooner you ask the question the better.

A few simple notes including lessons learned are sufficient for many assignments but those that were long term, complex, or used significant resources should be closed out with a brief written report the client and other appropriate constituencies.

It’s always a good idea to touch based with the client six to twelve weeks after the work was completed to get their final evaluation. This will give you an idea of the lasting value of your work and also how the client will remember it – and speak of it to others.

Save your consulting records and refer to them when you have similar assignments or are working with the same client again.

Developing you consulting skills should continue throughout your career. They will fundamentally improve your baseline performance as well as drive continuous improvement. And make your work life a whole lot easier and less painful.