The Creative, Strategic Talent Attraction and Retention Solutions that Solved A Big Problem and Saved a Lot of Money

The Client

Our customer is among the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, developing and producing therapeutics for a wide range of medical disciplines.

The Challenge

When the company acquired a struggling pharmaceutical company in a remote location, meeting increasing production demands with skilled employees was an urgent priority — testing and quality assurance delays meant a shortage of pharmaceutical therapies available to hospitals and patients.

However, this priority came with significant challenges given how understaffed the site already was, the site’s compromised reputation due to previous ownership, and geographical limitations in accessing talent with niche expertise in pharmaceutical development and production.

The client needed a trusted talent solutions partner with a creative and strategic approach to solve these significant challenges.

The Actalent Solution

Once Actalent was grounded in the company culture, its growth potential, and the improvements underway due to the recent acquisition, they began to develop an employee value proposition. Establishing a clear vision for the future and unique set of benefits employees would receive was a foundational component to the talent attraction strategy.

In addition, Actalent developed a system for managing the hiring and performance of all consultants with a dedicated, on-site project manager responsible for sourcing, screening, selecting, and managing performance. This system freed up the client’s own project managers from hiring responsibilities, allowing them to focus their time and attention on process efficiencies instead.

Using the compelling employee value proposition, combined with the client’s reputable brand, the Actalent Project Manager was able to attract new, highly skilled candidates to the remote location from a 60-mile radius.

The Results

Through a strategic partnership with Actalent and its creative recruitment and performance monitoring, Actalent hired and placed 50 consultants with sciences expertise, resulting in an immediate impact on production goals and product testing without delay. Actalent continues to maintain its onsite presence at this location, with 75 consultants currently supported and engaged in achieving project goals.

In addition to its talent-attraction solutions, Actalent provided a talent-retention solution for the client’s top-level employees. Considering it costs approximately 33 percent of an employee’s salary to hire a replacement, this strategy translated into savings of approximately $300,000 for the client.