How a global pharma company leveraged skills data for learning & talent strategy

1. About the customer

A global biopharmaceutical organization, this company focuses on developing vaccines, specialty medicines, and general pharmaceuticals. 

They strongly emphasize R&D, innovation, and global health impact, competing with other major pharmaceutical companies in drug development and distribution.

This company chose TechWolf as a strategic skills partner to improve employee growth and skill development.

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2. The challenge

The COVID-19 crisis completely shook up the life sciences industry, with a surging need for rapid vaccine development. Coming out of the crisis, this pharmaceutical company realized it needed a more agile structure to deal with radical changes like these.

The business needed to reorganize the workforce to be more adaptable to unpredictable changes in clinical trials, which were moving slower or faster than expected.

At the same time, HR identified the company’s overreliance on external hiring, with a minority of hires being sourced internally.

The annual company-wide survey echoed that, with other challenges regarding employee engagement starting to show:

• Lack of individualized training
• An unintuitive digital experience
• Little time and space for learning and development

There was a clear burning platform for a learning transformation from a business and HR perspective, yet HR leadership lacked data to make a clear business case. 

They looked for a vendor that could get them the skills data needed to show strategic skills gaps, boost the digital employee experience, and push the talent agenda to the board level.

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3. The TechWolf solution: building a HUB where skills are the common language

TechWolf was selected as the vendor to provide the organization with the necessary skills foundation.

More specifically, this first collaboration focused on:

• Creating a first-ever skills data foundation
• Providing HR and business leaders with the right tools to maintain that foundation
• Ensuring skills data is translated consistently across the (HR)tech stack

3.1. Skills data foundation

No good learning transformation without an understanding of skills gaps.

No skills gaps without skills supply & demand data.

As a result, TechWolf provided the organization with :

• A tailor-made skills taxonomy, mapped across the entire organization.
• A job-to-skills mapping overview for all jobs.
• A real-time view of employee skill profiles across 70k+ employees.

3.2. Skill governance

Governance was critical for this organization, as they found skills in the wider industry changing faster than ever driven by the Gen-AI revolution.

Hence, TechWolf did not only deliver a skills foundation but also the tools to maintain it over time.

Both for the skills taxonomy as for skills aligned to jobs, TechWolf provides a suite of products to add, modify, and delete skills, thus maintaining a living, breathing skills database.

3.3. Integrations

Lastly, skills data should be available and visible on every platform that needs it. 

TechWolf is built to integrate well with HR and business systems, so connections were made with the primary platforms within the organization:

• The core HCM
• The learning experience platform
• The dashboard platform for people analytics
• Ticket management system
• Additional R&D-focused data sources

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4. The results

4.1. Enterprise-wide skills infrastructure in 6 months

Within just 6 months, the pharmaceutical organization successfully implemented a company-wide skills infrastructure, significantly accelerating a process that traditionally takes 12-18 months if done manually. TechWolf powered this rapid transformation, ensuring accuracy and seamless integration with existing HR systems.

Below is a breakdown of key achievements:

• Job-to-Skill Mapping: Structured skill data was created for 3k+ job roles, providing a clear understanding of required capabilities across the workforce.
• Employee Skill Mapping: AI-driven skills mapping for 70k+ employees, ensuring a granular and validated understanding of skill distribution.
• Business Validated Skills: Key business stakeholders are aligned on required skills per job, providing transparency and control across the organization.
• Unified Skill Profile: A consistent skills data flow across the HRtech ecosystem.

4.2. Understanding the enterprise-wide skills gap

Following the establishment of a structured skills foundation, the company uncovered significant insights into its workforce:

• Overall Skills Gap: 75% of employees in scope met or exceeded the skill requirements of their roles, while the remainder have the potential to upskill and enhance their impact through targeted development initiatives.
• Skills Match Calculation: A robust methodology comparing individual skill profiles with job-to-skill mapping identified precise skills gaps.

This equipped HR leadership to bring concrete data points to the board level, backing up the case for a learning transformation.

4.3. First Impact: Optimized learning & development

The organization now embeds skills into its Learning & Development (L&D) initiatives.

Key outcomes include:

• Reduction in Time to Competency: Targeting a 20% faster upskilling process for employees, allowing them to reach proficiency quicker.
• Streamlined Learning & Development Portfolio: Skills data added to the E2E L&D initiatives to reduce learning vendor costs by optimizing for existing skills gaps.
• Increased Skill Proficiency: A 25% increase in skill levels across critical roles, driving stronger workforce capabilities.
• Reduction in External Hiring Needs: Skills data to identify a hiring pool of people eligible for internal mobility, given targeted up- and re-skilling initiatives.

The estimated business impact for the current scope spans tens of millions in cost savings due to the reduced external content spend, accelerated time to competency, increased proficiency in key roles, and lowered external hiring costs by leveraging internal talent mobility.

5. What’s Next?

While still deeply engaged in implementing the Learning & Development use case, the organization already envisions the next phases of its skills-driven transformation. 

Based on common TechWolf customer cases, the next wave of initiatives will likely focus on one of the below:

• Strategic workforce planning – Future-proofing workforce capabilities:
  
  • Providing visibility into skills gaps across departments to inform long-term workforce planning.
  • Empowering each function to identify and develop the critical skills needed to stay competitive.
  • Supporting upskilling, reskilling, and internal mobility to optimize workforce agility.
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• Talent acquisition – Enhancing hiring efficiency and quality:
  
  • Greater clarity on the skills required for each role to improve hiring decisions.
  • Reducing the time-to-hire and ensuring new hires have the necessary skills to succeed faster.
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• Career mobility – Unlocking internal growth opportunities:
  
  • Enabling employees to discover career paths based on skills and aspirations.
  • Supporting continuous development through upskilling and reskilling, ensuring employees grow alongside business needs.

Beyond these, the pharmaceutical organization anticipates further embedding skills data into key HR processes such as onboarding and succession planning, ensuring a holistic and data-driven approach to talent management.

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