Recruiting and Organizational Development
It’s no secret that during the past decade or so, the Bio/Pharmaceutical industry has been challenged to balance market demands and revenue fluctuations with fixed drug development costs, whereby fiscally staying a step ahead can be daunting due to a myriad of scenarios. Facing ever present patent cliff headwinds, major drug companies around the world continue to grapple with increasing generic competition, resulting in rapid revenue loss and inefficient utilization of manufacturing capacity. Factor in the healthcare flux as more health insurance payers—in an effort to control their own costs, as well as cover the most effective treatments—may favor covering less expensive generics while placing performance metrics on medications, thereby potentially impacting what is prescribed and/or patient drug choice. Further, global regulatory approval has never been more stringent, time-consuming, and costly. Essentially, all eyes are on the bottom line as drug companies proficiently juggle allocating their drug development and manufacturing expenditures while delivering quality, timely, cost-effective treatment to patients. The factors listed above have resulted in an industry trend toward a reduction of fixed costs, offset by increasing application of variable cost solutions in both development and manufacturing activities. One of the most effective variable cost solutions in the US and numerous countries abroad often lies in flexible staffing.
The concept of placing scientific staffing at the Bio/Pharmaceutical company’s site, often called insourcing, during the past decade has become a viable solution. Most drug manufacturers outsource portions of their product testing to laboratories to help advance their candidate to the marketplace. As manufacturers elect to keep various testing activities in-house, they are challenged by either a reduced workforce and increased workloads, or conversely, the high cost of fixed head-counts with production decreases. Historically, to address staffing problems, the knee-jerk reaction was to simply hire temps to keep the work in-house. Yet over time it became obvious that for skilled technical positions, hiring temps can be an exercise in futility. One barely gets them trained, only to have them leave in approximately a year to avoid co-employment risk, or they leave prematurely because they are seeking full-time work with benefits. To more proficiently manage the competing challenges of fixed (or reduced) headcounts and variable workloads and help increase the percentage of variable costs in their businesses, industry executives see the wisdom of insourcing professional scientific staff as a key solution and impetus for increased shareholder value.
Now gaining a strong foothold around the globe, professional scientific staffing manages a qualified testing laboratory’s highly trained scientists at the drug company’s manufacturing site to perform their testing with their specific knowledge of projects and preferred way of working. Utilizing quality systems and procedures within clients’ facilities, these experienced insourced staff deliver an extensive range of both scientific and support services in a cost-beneficial manner. By eliminating the ups and downs of continually replacing and retraining temps and partnering with a strategic insourcing solution which manages and retains the lab’s scientists at their site, Bio/Pharmaceutical companies are free to focus on their core business. Hired, trained, and managed by the lab, professional scientific staffing costs less than the company’s own full-time employees; prevents temp turnover rate with managed insourcing; and thwarts head-count, co-employment, and project management worries. And if the best lab is chosen, delivers a stellar history of regulatory compliance, technical expertise, and operational excellence at the client’s facility with a highly motivated insourcing team.
Bringing the laboratory’s quality testing capabilities and technical expertise and best practices experience to the client’s site and forming a strategic insourcing partnership, professional scientific staffing can offer a flexible, cost-effective solution to the Bio/Pharmaceutical industry’s staffing challenges.
With Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories since 1987, Ms. DiPaolo provides leadership for the company’s recruiting and organizational development functions and oversees global operations for its award-winning Professional Scientific Staffing (PSS) insourcing program. Under her leadership, the PSS program has been recognized for six strategic client partner awards in six years and has grown dramatically over the past 12 years to include 800 scientists offering laboratory testing and support services in 10 countries.
Ms. DiPaolo earned a M.A. in Human and Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University and a B.S. in Business Management/Human Resources from the State University of New York. She is certified as Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).