Life sciences leases are at the vanguard of the new real estate economy. The highly specific and costly requirements of life sciences leases set them apart from other commercial leases. Therefore, an enhanced understanding of the tenant’s needs and the landlord’s capabilities is critical to a successful life sciences lease.
The Maryland Tech Council (MTC) is solidifying its reach in areas surrounding the state’s most crucial waterways with a new chapter in the Chesapeake Bay region.
How Montgomery County is helping shape the local bio workforce as demand for talent increases Email Share Share Tweet Print Order Reprints
Enlarge
Companies are working with higher education institutions to strengthen the workforce pipeline further.
IN THIS ARTICLE
By Lauren Lawley Head – Contributor
Oct 10, 2022
Montgomery County’s growing life sciences industry is getting a boost from collaborative efforts between businesses, higher education institutions, nonprofits and government agencies.
Life sciences is a top industry in the county. The Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) reports the county’s more than 300 bio companies attracted nearly $8 billion in investments in 2020. At the end of July 2022, Indeed’s job search site listed nearly 750 biotechnology job openings in the county.
Miltenyi Biotech is one of those hiring. In March, the German company announced it was moving its North American headquarters to Gaithersburg and expanding its operations. The company currently has about 40 local job openings on the careers section of its website, including roles in quality assurance, manufacturing and research.
Horizon Therapeutics, which plans to expand into a 192,000-square-foot building in Rockville in 2023, is another growing biotech company in the region. It lists more than 20 openings in…
With so many unknowns and an ever-shifting recruiting landscape, biotech and pharma hiring managers need all the help they can get to find the right people for their respective companies. One of the most important resources for hiring managers are search and staffing firms.
Can setting workforce diversity goals and posting progress reports help companies move the needle on diversity? This approach has spread like wildfire in the last two years. It’s too soon to tell whether the new fad is working, so we turned to past experience of firms that set goals and posted progress as early as the 1970s. That experience suggests that when done right, goals and regular progress reports can boost diversity even among management jobs.
The current wave of posting workforce diversity data began in the early 2010s, with a group of tech firms. Then, in 2020, prompted by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and by growing shareholder pressure to disclose diversity numbers, firms across the economy began to set goals and post data. By September 2021, 55% of Russell 1,000 companies had posted workforce gender, race, and ethnicity data, up from 32% in January. By then, more than 70 big companies had set public gender-diversity targets for 2025 or 2030, including Airbnb, Bank of America, Bloomberg, Coca-Cola, GE, Intel, McKinsey, TaskRabbit, and Xerox.
As more life science companies flock to the region a new challenge arises – how do we create a strong pipeline of local talent to support their needs? This pipeline not only includes the high concentration of experienced talent the BHCR is known for but entry-level employees and people without four-year degrees who can be trained on-the-job.
In this podcast episode, Max and James Ellis of Employer Brand Labs debate the impact of application volumes on recruitment efforts. Listen as they tackle how factors like job descriptions and much more can make or mar the volume and quality of candidates that apply for your vacancies.
Watch the entire episode below.
If you assume marketing helps your sales efforts and you say hiring is one of your biggest needs, why don’t you take employer brand marketing as seriously as your sales marketing?
That’s what Stefan Frank says. He is the talent brand director at Comcast NBCUniversal, which as one of the country’s largest companies brings considerable lessons on what investments bring real results.
“There’s a natural tendency for us as humans to gravitate toward stories. We all appreciate and understand stories,” Frank said. “Anything important should be crafted as a story.”
Life science is one of the industries most affected by the constant pressure put on supply chains. As a highly regulated industry, it is answerable to mandates and evolving customer needs, but must have the flexibility to create innovative solutions in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, health tech, and more. This leaves it vulnerable to changes in supply demand and supply access. Having a plan for overcoming the challenges is essential.
Since the pandemic, some life sciences groups have been able to diversify their vendors, but due to regulations this can’t resolve every need. If a life sciences product is regulated or has been specifically tested through clinical trials, a change could completely alter the impact or open the organization up to additional risk.
To this day, some of my closest friends are people I met at various jobs over the course of my career. Before the pandemic, every day I looked forward to seeing friends at work, going out to lunch, getting coffee, being in meetings together, and having impromptu hallway conversations. These friendships transformed what work meant to me — it wasn’t just work, it was life.
In sociology, the “proximity principle” describes the tendency for people to form interpersonal relationships with those who are nearby. We often become friends with people we encounter regularly, energizing and bringing joy to each other and sharing a smile, an inside joke, or drinks after work.
It turns out these friendships really matter for employee engagement. A now-famous Gallup survey found that employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged at their job. For years prior to the pandemic, companies benefited from the proximity principle. Many leaders further invested in office layouts, micro kitchens, and team events to encourage even more shared moments and were rewarded with a workforce that was highly engaged.
