Latest / Lab to Lives / The Hidden Factors Behind Executive Retention in Life Sciences
Transcript
- 0:13Ivanna Rosendal: You're listening to Transformation in Trials.
- 0:16Ivanna Rosendal: Welcome to Transformation in Trials.
- 0:23Ivanna Rosendal: This is a podcast exploring all things transformational in clinical trials.
- 0:27Ivanna Rosendal: Everything is off limits on the show and we will have guests from the whole spectrum of the clinical trials community and we're your hosts, Ivana and Sam.
- 0:35Ivanna Rosendal: Welcome to another episode of Transformation in Trials.
- 0:40Ivanna Rosendal: Today in the studio with us, I have Federico Graep.
- 0:44Ivanna Rosendal: Hello, Federico.
- 0:45Federico Grayeb: Hello Ivana, how are you?
- 0:47Ivanna Rosendal: I am very well and happy to be here with you.
- 0:50Federico Grayeb: Thanks for having me, thank you.
- 0:52Ivanna Rosendal: And Federico is currently doing research into the topic of why executives are leaving life sciences, and that is exactly what we're going to focus on today during this episode.
- 1:02Ivanna Rosendal: So, federico, just to set the stage for us, can you tell us more about the retention patterns for executives in life sciences?
- 1:11Federico Grayeb: Sure, so by patterns you mean the strategies and the processes that human resources are used to retain talent In our industry.
- 1:23Federico Grayeb: I mean we share similar strategies with the rest of industries, with just one major difference.
- 1:29Federico Grayeb: So, first, what's the goal?
- 1:31Federico Grayeb: Overall, the goal is always to increase the level of job satisfaction so that you retain talent, and the way most industries do that is by offering competitive compensation, benefits package and engage in positive culture, healthy work-life balance particularly for executives, career growth or career development opportunities and also some levels of autonomy, of participation in decision-making processes.
- 2:12Federico Grayeb: So those are the most common traits that we share with the rest of industries.
- 2:19Federico Grayeb: The main difference in our industry is that the ability that we have to offer an inspiring and compelling mission, because we can offer a job through which people can contribute to either increase the quality of life of patients or sometimes even save lives or at least alleviate human suffering.
- 2:48Federico Grayeb: So that's a major plus and major difference.
- 2:53Federico Grayeb: But despite of this, turnover rates in our industry are among the highest.
- 3:01Federico Grayeb: Actually, after IT, information technology, we have the highest turnover rates and they are rising Even at, for instance, at a global level, the attrition rate, which is the number of people that leave a job every year is at a managerial level in our industry is 10%, and then on top of that you need to add the pandemic effect, and here it's still unclear how it's going to play out in the coming years on this effect, because in our specific case we have two opposing forces.
- 3:43Federico Grayeb: One is that we share with the rest of the industries is that, as you know, the pandemic has led to a shift in working conditions, increase in virtual collaborations, decrease in employee engagement.
- 3:55Federico Grayeb: As a result, many people of this, many people, started to question and to reevaluate work life priorities and some people left the jobs.
- 4:07Federico Grayeb: That's something that we share with the rest of industries, but there's an opposing force in our specific case, and that is because we play such a critical role in addressing this pandemic.
- 4:22Federico Grayeb: Many people felt that they were actually making a positive contribution to society, so that increased the level of job satisfaction.
- 4:31Federico Grayeb: So I'm not I cannot show you yet what the main effect is going to be.
- 4:36Federico Grayeb: What I can tell you is that job satisfaction is not a good predictor of turnover, and I'll be happy to discuss that later on in our discussion.
- 4:48Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah, that is a very interesting point.
- 4:50Ivanna Rosendal: I do want to dive into a couple of things that you said already.
- 4:54Ivanna Rosendal: So we are the industry with the highest turnover rates for executives, and that's rising.
- 5:03Ivanna Rosendal: That is a shocking factor to me, especially when you mentioned that we are such a mission-driven business area where it's easy to find purpose.
- 5:15Ivanna Rosendal: I wonder what are some of the dynamics that contribute to people leaving.
- 5:21Federico Grayeb: Yeah well, it's not counterintuitive, actually, because there are two elements here that are at play.
- 5:28Federico Grayeb: One is that we're talking about executives, right?
- 5:33Federico Grayeb: So in our industry you need extremely highly talented people with a high level concentration of knowledge across a broad range of disciplines.
- 5:49Federico Grayeb: You not only need technical knowledge, but you also need to know about medical affairs, production you name it but also the complexity of the health care systems, the number of critical stakeholders.
- 6:04Federico Grayeb: You also need talented people that can deal with the magnitude of the potential reputational and financial risk that our industry has.
- 6:14Federico Grayeb: So you need extremely talented people, and we all know that these talented people usually get more offers, job offers, so usually they tend to experience higher turnover rates.
- 6:28Federico Grayeb: But also there is a second element in our industry and that is the high level of isomorphism.
- 6:38Ivanna Rosendal: Isomorphism.
- 6:39Ivanna Rosendal: Tell me more about that.
- 6:42Federico Grayeb: You like that word, so that's.
- 6:46Federico Grayeb: What it means is that companies tend to look alike, so companies tend to have similar organizational structures, practices, strategies.
- 6:59Federico Grayeb: The roles are very similar and this is particularly salient within specific clusters by medical affairs or ultra rare disease companies or biotechnology companies.
- 7:14Federico Grayeb: So within those clusters, job hopping is easy because there's a high level of isomorphism.
- 7:23Federico Grayeb: When you change your job, the organizational culture doesn't change that much and your role is not that different, so it's easy to move around.
- 7:32Ivanna Rosendal: So those two elements.
- 7:32Ivanna Rosendal: That contributes to that it's easier for people to change roles because they can have something very familiar in another company because of this phenomenon.
- 7:42Federico Grayeb: Yeah, and that's why job embeddedness comes into play in this discussion, but yeah.
- 7:53Ivanna Rosendal: OK, job embeddedness.
- 7:54Ivanna Rosendal: I like the terms that you use there.
- 7:56Ivanna Rosendal: They sound so definitive.
- 7:59Federico Grayeb: So we have two already isomorphism and job embeddedness.
- 8:03Ivanna Rosendal: I love it Tell me more about job embeddedness.
- 8:06Federico Grayeb: Sure.
- 8:06Federico Grayeb: So in plain terms, it's the extent of a person's stuckness or enmeshing within a wider social system.
- 8:20Federico Grayeb: It's job embeddedness is like job satisfactory is like we call them constructs.
- 8:26Federico Grayeb: So it's a construct and it's defined by a broad constellation of factors that influence retention.
- 8:36Federico Grayeb: And the word is three American researchers that came up with this breakthrough concept at the beginning of the century and they studied job embeddedness in the retail industry and insurance.
- 8:50Federico Grayeb: And now what I'm doing is I'm adapting that concept to our specific case of executives, working and life science company.
- 8:59Federico Grayeb: So that's in a nutshell, but I need to give you some first, some background why job embeddedness is a better predictor than maybe other more commonly used concepts such as job satisfaction.
- 9:17Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah, I am curious about job satisfaction.
- 9:19Ivanna Rosendal: Why is that not a good indication of attrition?
- 9:25Federico Grayeb: It is up to a certain extent.
- 9:26Federico Grayeb: So for the past 50 plus years, the academic literature has used two concepts or constructs to determine turnover, and those are job satisfaction and job alternatives.
- 9:43Federico Grayeb: So, in essence, people who are satisfied with a job will stay, those who are not leave.
- 9:48Federico Grayeb: And then, given the same level of dissatisfaction, people who get more offers will be more likely to leave than those with fewer ones.
- 9:57Federico Grayeb: So that's pretty intuitive and the research has confirmed this.
- 10:04Federico Grayeb: These two concepts are the two most widely used and also what the academic research has also done during these 50 years is that they added other things like organizational commitment, perceived organizational supports, and some others also studied some individual predictors or personality predictors of turnover, like, for instance, the level of unchangeance, counter violations and its influence in turnover.
- 10:41Federico Grayeb: So there are many different concepts, but even if you add all them up, you're only able to, according to the literature, to determine 25% of the reason why people leave.
- 10:55Federico Grayeb: So if companies and human resources the responsible for human resources on the act on increasing, for instance, the level of job satisfaction, that will still be experiencing a lot of people leaving the company because there are many other reasons besides job indebtedness and besides job satisfaction why people leave a company.
- 11:24Ivanna Rosendal: I would love the three main ones.
- 11:27Federico Grayeb: Okay.
- 11:27Federico Grayeb: So these three are not caused by job satisfaction, but by external events.
- 11:38Federico Grayeb: I'll give you an example for each one of them.
- 11:41Federico Grayeb: So the first one, it will be you leave following a plan that you're already having in place.
- 11:47Federico Grayeb: So say, for instance, that you or your spouse gets pregnant, or your spouse gets relocated, or let's take those two cases.
- 12:03Federico Grayeb: Or you want to study and you get accepted into a famous business school.
- 12:10Federico Grayeb: So that's the external event that is not tied to job satisfaction.
- 12:13Federico Grayeb: So what happens is that you're pretty much satisfied with where you work and the type of culture where you work, but all of a sudden this happens.
- 12:25Federico Grayeb: Then this external event happens.
- 12:27Federico Grayeb: You call up the plan and then you leave, so it's not tied to job satisfaction.
- 12:32Federico Grayeb: The second path that can unfold over time is that you leave, but without following a plan.
- 12:40Federico Grayeb: So in this case also, you're pretty satisfied with what you're doing, but all of a sudden you notice that, say, a colleague of yours is being mistreated by your spouse, or, of a sudden, your company is asking you to do something against your beliefs, or you're passed over for a promotion.
- 13:00Federico Grayeb: So what happens then?
- 13:02Federico Grayeb: That's a negative effect, and what happens then is some negative emotions start to come into play here, and there's an anger and distrust against the organization, and in many cases people leave the job even without following the off given advice of never leave your job without another one hand.
- 13:23Federico Grayeb: So here job alternatives do not play a major role.
- 13:28Federico Grayeb: So it's not only job, so you might leave even without having something else in hand.
- 13:35Federico Grayeb: And the third path that you can take that is caused by these external events is that you leave for something better.
- 13:44Federico Grayeb: So again, you're satisfied with what you do, but all of a sudden you receive an unsolicited job offer that that that event triggers some mild dissatisfaction, because then you start to make comparisons between what you have or what you could have, and then perhaps, after a long, more complex process, you might be so at the end of the day, what I want to say is that there, these external events that are not initially tied to job satisfaction, can make people leave their jobs.
- 14:22Federico Grayeb: So there's something else that the companies need to do if they want to retain their talent, and that is where job embedding comes into play.
- 14:33Ivanna Rosendal: But can I just ask?
- 14:34Ivanna Rosendal: So the 25 percent is what the company can.
- 14:39Ivanna Rosendal: What can be linked to job satisfaction?
- 14:40Ivanna Rosendal: Do the external events, the three types that you just mentioned, do they account for the other 75?
- 14:47Federico Grayeb: Yeah, actually there are other reasons, but what?
- 14:52Federico Grayeb: These three are major ones.
- 14:55Federico Grayeb: So I tell you that these three represent the 75 percent, but what I can tell you and what not me, but research, and what research can tell you is that job and betterness is a much better predictor than job satisfaction, received organizational support and job alternatives combined.
- 15:19Federico Grayeb: That's really interesting.
- 15:22Federico Grayeb: What I mean by that is that I'm sure that there will always be cases where you cannot control, but if, instead of focusing on job satisfaction, you look at a broader picture, which is job and betterness and I can elaborate on that You'll have more chances that your turnover rates are going to decrease instead of increase.
- 15:46Ivanna Rosendal: Well, I would be curious to hear what can a company do to make sure that people stay?
- 15:53Federico Grayeb: OK, so just first, so the theory behind job and betterness, for that first.
- 15:58Federico Grayeb: So I can tell you what companies can do is that think of imagine a person's life like a web.
- 16:06Federico Grayeb: Your life is like a web, and in the middle of this web it's your job.
- 16:11Federico Grayeb: And then around this, your job, you have objects, or we call them nodes, and then there are attachments to these objects.
- 16:20Federico Grayeb: So the number of and these objects can be people, institutions, groups and explain that, but the number and strength of these attachments can vary.
- 16:31Federico Grayeb: The overall connectedness of this web can vary, but it is this web, like quality, that retain people in their job.
- 16:40Federico Grayeb: And the factors that retain them can are both factors that are related to the job, but also what we call off the job, things that are happening outside the office that retain people in their jobs.
- 16:58Federico Grayeb: So many times people do not change jobs because they want to preserve the status quo, and what government veterans represents is the number of attachments people have in the office but also outside, like, for instance, non-work friends, relatives, participation in different social groups, even churches, whatever it is.
- 17:30Federico Grayeb: Also, the second dimension is the sense of fit that people feel inside the office.
- 17:36Federico Grayeb: It'll be with the organizational culture, but also the sense of fit that you feel with your community, how well you fit within the local community.
- 17:46Federico Grayeb: And the third factor is called sacrifice, which is what is it that you will need to give up if you leave your job?
- 17:55Federico Grayeb: On the job, sacrifices would be okay, it's pretty easy.
- 18:00Federico Grayeb: I mean the money and perks and benefits.
- 18:02Federico Grayeb: But also outside job, it'll be many routines that you already have on other items.
- 18:09Federico Grayeb: So what is it that a company can do?
- 18:12Federico Grayeb: Because usually many companies only focus on the on the job factors.
- 18:20Federico Grayeb: But so in the case of number of attachments, if you want a person to be highly embedded, they have to have a lot of attachments, right?
- 18:29Federico Grayeb: So if you focus on the job, it would be okay this let's assign this person a mentor, let's strengthen the internal network of this person, let's have this person participate in different teams.
- 18:43Federico Grayeb: So it'll be increasing the level of attachments on the job.
- 18:47Federico Grayeb: But then outside the job, the number of attachments have to do with non-work friends, relatives, but also they are also created by the number of activities, of hobbies that you pursue.
- 19:05Federico Grayeb: So as a company, if you have some company-based company support programs, or even if you sponsor a sports scheme, or the point is that recreational activities, which is through which you develop these attachments, and interpersonal responsibilities like, for instance, say, you have an alien parent that you need to care for, you have a soccer practice of your son after school that you need to attend to these two things are much better fulfilled if a person can decide or has a saying on where and when to work.
- 19:58Federico Grayeb: Believe what it boils down to is that companies should try to integrate the personal and the work life.
- 20:08Federico Grayeb: So the better the fit between the person's private life and work life is, the higher the chances that they're highly embedded and therefore they remain in their jobs.
- 20:26Federico Grayeb: And what research tells us is that job embeddedness acts as a sort of buffer against these different shocks.
- 20:36Federico Grayeb: So people, when they're highly embedded, they have fewer thoughts about leaving and even when an unexpected event happens, they are less likely to leave.
- 20:46Federico Grayeb: And also, highly embedded people, as a consequence, are more motivated, are better performance and have experienced high levels of job satisfaction.
- 20:58Federico Grayeb: So the question is try to look at the person in a more holistic way.
- 21:06Federico Grayeb: That that will be the final.
- 21:08Ivanna Rosendal: I'm interested to maybe have a more philosophical angle on this, because it makes complete sense what you're saying, that if companies start thinking more about the holistic person, they can also design or maybe even remove the barriers for the person to have the full life and thereby also embeddedness.
- 21:28Ivanna Rosendal: But is it the role of the company to go into that sphere?
- 21:34Ivanna Rosendal: And also, can you design a way of working that will fit all the different kinds of lives that people live?
- 21:43Federico Grayeb: Well, actually yes, I know it'll be that simple.
- 21:47Federico Grayeb: I'm not sure the answer, the longer one would be.
- 21:49Federico Grayeb: First, it's a very expensive strategy.
- 21:52Federico Grayeb: First you need to decide which is your target group, so it's not a joint strategy.
- 22:00Federico Grayeb: It's not something that you can design for everybody.
- 22:04Federico Grayeb: So say, for instance, you will be designing it for people with high technical knowledge that you cannot afford to do, or some senior executives.
- 22:15Federico Grayeb: The second thing is that there's a tool and that's what I'm developing to assess the level of job embeddedness, and through this tool you will be able to identify which are the most important factors.
- 22:33Federico Grayeb: So first you decide which your target group is.
- 22:42Federico Grayeb: Secondly is that you have this group go through this tool so that you can understand which factors are the most important for these people, and then, as a company, you decide which programs are the best to tackle these decisions.
- 22:58Federico Grayeb: But it's an outstanding strategy.
- 23:03Federico Grayeb: It's not something that you can do for everybody and there's no way you will be able to know what every single person needs Right.
- 23:12Ivanna Rosendal: And what makes it expensive there you?
- 23:16Federico Grayeb: go.
- 23:16Federico Grayeb: What makes it expensive?
- 23:17Federico Grayeb: As I said, if, for instance, you want to minimize relocation, it's always more expensive to have a person not in the place where what this person should be.
- 23:32Federico Grayeb: Or if you want a person to pursue some hobbies, or if you want to dedicate some funds to finance their professional growth, that's an expensive thing to do, so it's something on top of what you usually would do.
- 23:57Federico Grayeb: Even if you want to fund a sports team that can participate in a local team, I mean or some community activities, these are things that are usually not in the human resources budget.
- 24:19Federico Grayeb: That's what I mean by expensive.
- 24:23Ivanna Rosendal: Oh, I see Now.
- 24:26Ivanna Rosendal: Are there any ways to create a job in business to the broader type of roles you have in an organization?
- 24:37Federico Grayeb: And by broader you would mean.
- 24:41Ivanna Rosendal: Not those specific ones that may be scarce, like technical talent or executives.
- 24:46Federico Grayeb: Well, one thing that you can do for starters is that the way you recruit people right.
- 24:53Federico Grayeb: If one of the major drivers of job in business is the sense of fit, then make sure you hire based on psychological fit with companies who have values.
- 25:06Federico Grayeb: So that'll be one thing that you can do and you can do it for everybody.
- 25:12Federico Grayeb: And also this, well, the possibility of remote work and have people have some saying in where and when they work, so they can take some time off for the personal errands or responsibilities.
- 25:34Federico Grayeb: That'll be something that you can do for everybody.
- 25:37Federico Grayeb: But then there are other special things that you need to do for your special target group.
- 25:47Ivanna Rosendal: I would be curious to learn how did you get interested in this specific area of research?
- 25:52Federico Grayeb: So I'm a former business executive, so I was always in the operational part of business, leading subsidiaries, international subsidiaries of multinationals, of multinational companies at a single and multi-country level, and I was always intrigued by the fact that people with similar backgrounds and responsibilities and roles would stay much longer than others.
- 26:23Federico Grayeb: And I always wonder what is it that makes people go through this job hopping and what makes people just stay so long?
- 26:33Federico Grayeb: So that was my concern and that was what interested me.
- 26:39Federico Grayeb: And even though I was always in operations, I was always interested in the human aspect of business and actually I wrote a book on conscious leadership and what I said is that my work purpose is to help elevate the level of self-awareness in business, and I do that through.
- 27:02Federico Grayeb: Well, I quit my corporate job because I wanted to dedicate this to my passion, which is elevate the level of self-awareness in business, and I do that through coaching in executives.
- 27:16Federico Grayeb: So that's how I came with this type of topic.
- 27:25Ivanna Rosendal: I am kind of curious.
- 27:26Ivanna Rosendal: Maybe you don't have to answer this if you don't want to.
- 27:30Ivanna Rosendal: If you do, coach executives within the life sciences space, what are some of the things that you see are in common between the people you coach?
- 27:41Federico Grayeb: What do I see?
- 27:43Ivanna Rosendal: Are there any concerns that they share in general about life sciences?
- 27:48Federico Grayeb: There's one major thing I would say, and that is without giving out a lot of information, is the concern in regards to the level of authenticity, and I can explain why.
- 28:13Federico Grayeb: So, without referring to the individual executives, you know that as an industry, we don't have a very nice reputation, Even though we say that we have the four worst reputations after the tobacco industry, which makes sense oil and gas.
- 28:35Federico Grayeb: They pollute financial services because of financial crisis, and then it is us and because there is this perception that, well, this is more in the US, but not only of high prices, but also not very transparent research activities or some very aggressive money efforts.
- 28:59Federico Grayeb: So, the level of authenticity I remember one executive recently told me that he felt like an imposter because he couldn't say out loud what most of his peers said, which was that his work was patient-centric, that his priority was improving the quality of life of patients.
- 29:23Federico Grayeb: So I would say that that's the level of authenticity and actually that is something that I would like to contribute to change, and that is a better alignment between what one thinks, says and does.
- 29:45Federico Grayeb: So I think that's one of the major things.
- 29:54Ivanna Rosendal: And that makes sense also that it will make it easier to be the person that you are in your job if you can maintain that level of alignment.
- 30:06Federico Grayeb: Yeah, and you'll stay longer in that job if you feel that you can be yourself.
- 30:11Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah.
- 30:11Federico Grayeb: Right, and that's the kind of thing.
- 30:16Ivanna Rosendal: Well, federico, as we draw to the end of this episode, we always ask our guests the same question, and that is if we gave you a magic wand so that you could change one thing in our industry, what would that be?
- 30:31Federico Grayeb: Well, I think what we just discussed, I would say, increased the level of authenticity by getting a better alignment between what you think and say and do.
- 30:42Federico Grayeb: So that will be the magic wand and I think that's the has to do.
- 30:46Federico Grayeb: It's an individual thing, I mean, it's not a magic wand, but it's something that has to happen at individual level and has to do with well, first you need to find your work purpose and then be consistent with that and even though sometimes in the short term, it might be even detrimental to your career.
- 31:07Federico Grayeb: So, yeah, but that's the change I would like to see, and that has to happen at an individual level.
- 31:13Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah, oh, I have to take it.
- 31:16Federico Grayeb: So no magic wand, it's just individual responsibility.
- 31:21Federico Grayeb: Yeah.
- 31:23Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah, and I think your mission of elevating the level of self-awareness in business would really help achieve that goal.
- 31:31Federico Grayeb: Yeah, mildly contributing, a small contribution, but yeah, that's my aim, that's where I would like to focus my attention and I'm trying to.
- 31:45Ivanna Rosendal: Federico, this was a really interesting conversation.
- 31:47Ivanna Rosendal: I would love to read the results of your research once it comes to a conclusion.
- 31:53Federico Grayeb: I will let you have them show the report and that was.
- 31:56Federico Grayeb: It's been very interesting really.
- 31:58Federico Grayeb: Many thanks.
- 32:00Ivanna Rosendal: Thank you so much and wait, wait, before we draw your clothes.
- 32:03Ivanna Rosendal: If our listeners have any further follow up questions or to get in touch with you, where can they find you?
- 32:10Federico Grayeb: I think it's the easiest way is through LinkedIn, right?
- 32:13Federico Grayeb: So yeah, they can do that.
- 32:15Federico Grayeb: I think that that will be the easiest way.
- 32:18Ivanna Rosendal: Yeah, great, we'll include that in the show notes.
- 32:22Ivanna Rosendal: Thank you so much.
- 32:24Federico Grayeb: Thank you.
- 32:24Federico Grayeb: Thanks for having me.
- 32:25Federico Grayeb: It's been a pleasure.
- 32:27Federico Grayeb: Yeah, I enjoyed it.
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