Few people do not want to progress in their chosen career. It can boost self-esteem, provide you with new challenges in your job and at the end of each month add a little something to your pay.

But the challenge of how to move your career onwards and upwards continues to exercise minds in the UK pharma industry, as shown by our survey where it was voted, quite naturally, the most popular reason for looking for a new job.

With the link between career progression and retaining employees thus established, whose responsibility is it to ensure employees’ careers progress? Employee responsibilities start with letting your superiors know that you want a more challenging position, whilst companies need to ensure they have systems in place to handle such requests.

There are plenty of small steps that can be taken to enrich an individual’s job and allow them to contribute more to the company before it gets to the stage of changing someone’s job title. Although much can be learnt on the job, a significant step for the individual is to sign up for some formal training to demonstrate you are ready to take on a new challenge.

Those in the pharma industry can congratulate themselves for being a pretty educated bunch. 60% of our survey has a degree level qualification and 44% a higher degree in some form. It might be therefore quite surprising given this  that less than 8% of respondents plan to gain further qualifications over the next 12 months and study for a professional qualification.

Less than a quarter of our survey respondents already had such a qualification, for example that offered by the Chartered Institute of Marketing or the more recently launched PriMe initiative from the PM Society.

With a certain amount of responsibility placed on the shoulders of the individual, what assumptions do they make of their company?

Across all functions and departments, 4% more people believed their company was not doing enough for them than those who thought it was. However, our survey also revealed a surprising split between the sales and marketing and R&D sides of the business in terms of how well they rate their company at helping them along.

More respondents in sales and marketing were satisfied with their companies than weren’t and the difference between the two answers widened to 7% and 8% respectively.

In marked contrast to this (and going further than the survey’s average) were those working in the clinical and pre-clinical sides of R&D.

Nearly two thirds of respondents working in pre-clinical drug discovery and just over half of those in clinical R&D thought their company didn’t do enough to help their career progress. Given the importance of drug development and the job stability usually seen in R&D compared to other pharma  jobs, this might give the companies and their HR departments some pause for thought.

Age also seems to be a factor in how individual’s rated their company.

Our survey found that 52% of those aged 25 and under thought their company was doing enough for their career progression. This youthful enthusiasm wanes between 36 and 45 - the age group had the lowest scores of people who thought their company did enough for their careers.

Our survey also revealed many respondents were actively looking for a new job. 

Nearly a quarter of respondents said they were considering a move to a different employer while over 27% were keeping their eyes and ears open for alternative employers, though many votes were cast via InPharm’s job and recruitment website, which undoubtedly emphasised this underlying trend.

Speaking about his own company’s retention of staff, Jon Hearson, communications director at Boehringer Ingelheim, said its staff turnover was comparatively low, a fact which he attributed to the challenges offered to its employers.

Staff turnover at the company, according to Hearson, is around 8% while its three-year retention rate was between 60-70% - figures which he says compare favourably with its rivals in n the UK pharmaceutical sector as well as other industries.

“You can’t keep everybody happy as there will always be people looking to improve their career and go elsewhere.  If you asked people at Boehringer what their dream job was, I imagine only 60-70% would say it was working here, ” added Hearson.

The key to keeping employees happy in the face of likely increased cost pressures across the industry according to Hearson, is to retain a strong spirit within your company. working here,” added Hearson.

Priorities for a fulfilling job:

1 Challenge of Job / Responsibility

2 Basic Pay

3 Atmosphere / corporate culture and values

4 Contribution recognised and valued

5 Potential for advancement / promotion

6 New challenges

7 Skill development / educational / training opportunities

8 Working with talented peers / management

9 Effective career path planning and support

10 Flexible work schedule incl. working from home