Call For Life Sciences Roles To Go On Critical Jobs List

The UK has big ambitions in the area of life sciences, but there have been calls from within the industry for the government to do more to help attract highly skilled life sciences workers.

Pharma Times highlighted the findings of a report from the Migration Advisory Commission (MAC), which recommended that a number of research roles within the field of life sciences should be added to the critical jobs list.

According to its report, jobs including biological scientists and biochemists should be added to this list. The news provider added that the current migration system in the UK is restricting businesses in the UK, who struggle to compete for life sciences workers with the most sought-after skills.

There are also concerns within the industry that Brexit will make the skills shortage even worse. All of this is at odds with the government’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, which was published in November 2017.

The publication also pointed out that the skills shortage in the UK’s life sciences industry is being made worse by the lack of young people who are taking qualifications in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects.

The skills people learn by studying STEM subjects are important for innovation in a host of sectors, not just in the area of life sciences.

Pharma Times suggested that life sciences firms need to take a new approach to finding and retaining talent in the sector, which means going beyond simple job postings and using a more marketing-minded approach to finding new employees.

This means engaging on social media, and taking an employee-centric approach to recruitment. Organisations need to effectively communicate what the life sciences sector can offer people, both on a personal and professional level.

The news provider also pointed out that the life sciences sector makes the skills shortage worse for itself because it “relies heavily on recruiting people with highly technical knowledge and direct role experience”. According to the publication, “talent leaders need to think more broadly, otherwise they will miss the opportunity to hire talented people”.

There’s a lot going on in the UK’s life sciences industry at the moment. The government launched its latest Industrial Strategy challenge earlier this year, which placed a focus on disease detection.

Under the new challenge, businesses and charities are expected to donate money and work together on the Accelerating Detection of Disease programme.

As part of this programme, the government plans to recruit five million healthy people who will share their health data to help scientists and researchers invent new ways to detect diseases like cancer, dementia and heart disease.

The hope is that researchers will be able to find ways to detect these diseases before any symptoms present. By identifying them early, the hope is that they will also be able to find treatments that could prevent the diseases from developing.

Professor John Ball, leader of the programme, commented: “The ability to identify people at risk or suffering from early forms of disease with greater precision will have a profound impact on how we develop diagnostics and new ways to treat disease.”

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