A lot of intertwining forces are at play when it comes to the challenge of retaining talent at any stage of their careers in the clinical research enterprise, but one tactic that should alleviate much of the issues tied to newer hires dropping out with alarming rapidity is learning “not to put the cart before the horse,” says one workforce development observer.
“The clinical research workforce has a retention problem that the industry keeps trying to solve at the wrong stage,” according to Rend Williams, MPH, PMP, Founder and President of Foresight Business Consulting and a former executive in project management for drug development. “Most interventions land after someone has already decided to leave. The solution lies in going upstream, to the decisions made before a role is even posted, because attrition is almost always a planning failure with a six-month delay.”
Williams will tackle this theme in her upcoming ACRP 2027 (April 30–May 3 in San Diego, Calif.) presentation on “Retention Starts Before the Hire: Talent as an Operational Strategy,” drawing on her background directing oncology, hematology, and rare disease programs across the full trial lifecycle and advising emerging biotech organizations on contract research organization (CRO) governance, workforce strategy, and operational design.
“When I work with organizations that come to me with retention challenges, the first questions I ask are not about turnover,” Williams notes. “They are about the work itself: what does the team actually carry in terms of responsibilities and deliverables, what does the work require in terms of experience and hours, and was any of that defined before the last hire was made?”
The answer, she says, is “no” more often than not. The true effort required by any given team role is almost always guesswork; budgets are set before the full range of the work has been scoped; and job descriptions are written around what an organization can afford, not around what the program actually needs.
“The results are new hires that are mismatched to the job at hand before day one,” Williams says.
Her session will feature two anonymized case studies drawn from real CRO and sponsor environments to show how this plays out in practice, including the real operational cost of getting it wrong. It then introduces a two-question framework that attendees can apply immediately to their own teams, with a live exercise built into the session.
“My goal for the session is that the audience will leave thinking differently about hiring, with practical steps they can take without waiting for budget approval or Human Resources sign-off,” Williams says. “When all the stakeholders involved in recruiting and retaining critically needed new talent learn to think farther ahead, from the job description to the interview to the support a new hire needs, we can begin reaping the rewards of presenting the full picture of what jobs hold in store for candidates right up front instead of surprising them down the road.”
Edited by Gary Cramer