Let's face it, executive turnover in the life sciences industry is a conundrum. Companies are offering competitive compensation, fostering positive work cultures, and providing opportunities to contribute to meaningful work, yet many executives continue to leave. In our intriguing dialogue with the insightful Federico Grayeb, we delve into why this is happening and how job embeddedness could be a key factor in predicting retention. Grayeb's perspective brings to light the deeper dynamics at play in the industry, such as the abundance of job offers executives receive and the high level of isomorphism, making it easier for them to switch roles within the industry.
But there's more to the story than just job offers and industry dynamics. Federico shares thought-provoking insights into how external events – even positive ones like pregnancy or acceptance into a prestigious school – can lead to a departure, regardless of job satisfaction. He also discusses the concept of job embeddedness, a measure of an individual’s connection to their job and outside life, and its significant role in forecasting retention. We also explore Grayeb's fascinating work on a tool that assesses job embeddedness and his approach to hiring based on psychological fit. So, join us as we navigate this complex terrain and uncover transformative ideas to tackle executive turnover in the life sciences industry. You wouldn't want to miss it!
Reach out to Federico Grayeb via LinkedIn
________
Reach out to Sam Parnell and Ivanna Rosendal
Join the conversation on our LinkedIn page
Let's face it, executive turnover in the life sciences industry is a conundrum. Companies are offering competitive compensation, fostering positive work cultures, and providing opportunities to contribute to meaningful work, yet many executives continue to leave. In our intriguing dialogue with the insightful Federico Grayeb, we delve into why this is happening and how job embeddedness could be a key factor in predicting retention. Grayeb's perspective brings to light the deeper dynamics at play in the industry, such as the abundance of job offers executives receive and the high level of isomorphism, making it easier for them to switch roles within the industry.
But there's more to the story than just job offers and industry dynamics. Federico shares thought-provoking insights into how external events – even positive ones like pregnancy or acceptance into a prestigious school – can lead to a departure, regardless of job satisfaction. He also discusses the concept of job embeddedness, a measure of an individual’s connection to their job and outside life, and its significant role in forecasting retention. We also explore Grayeb's fascinating work on a tool that assesses job embeddedness and his approach to hiring based on psychological fit. So, join us as we navigate this complex terrain and uncover transformative ideas to tackle executive turnover in the life sciences industry. You wouldn't want to miss it!
Reach out to Federico Grayeb via LinkedIn
________
Reach out to Sam Parnell and Ivanna Rosendal
Join the conversation on our LinkedIn page
You're listening to Transformation in Trials. Welcome to Transformation in Trials. This is a podcast exploring all things transformational in clinical trials. Everything is off limits on the show and we will have guests from the whole spectrum of the clinical trials community and we're your hosts, Ivana and Sam. Welcome to another episode of Transformation in Trials. Today in the studio with us, I have Federico Graep. Hello, Federico.
Federico Grayeb:Hello Ivana, how are you?
Ivanna Rosendal:I am very well and happy to be here with you.
Federico Grayeb:Thanks for having me, thank you.
Ivanna Rosendal:And Federico is currently doing research into the topic of why executives are leaving life sciences, and that is exactly what we're going to focus on today during this episode. So, federico, just to set the stage for us, can you tell us more about the retention patterns for executives in life sciences?
Federico Grayeb:Sure, so by patterns you mean the strategies and the processes that human resources are used to retain talent In our industry. I mean we share similar strategies with the rest of industries, with just one major difference. So, first, what's the goal? Overall, the goal is always to increase the level of job satisfaction so that you retain talent, and the way most industries do that is by offering competitive compensation, benefits package and engage in positive culture, healthy work-life balance particularly for executives, career growth or career development opportunities and also some levels of autonomy, of participation in decision-making processes. So those are the most common traits that we share with the rest of industries.
Federico Grayeb:The main difference in our industry is that the ability that we have to offer an inspiring and compelling mission, because we can offer a job through which people can contribute to either increase the quality of life of patients or sometimes even save lives or at least alleviate human suffering. So that's a major plus and major difference. But despite of this, turnover rates in our industry are among the highest. Actually, after IT, information technology, we have the highest turnover rates and they are rising Even at, for instance, at a global level, the attrition rate, which is the number of people that leave a job every year is at a managerial level in our industry is 10%, and then on top of that you need to add the pandemic effect, and here it's still unclear how it's going to play out in the coming years on this effect, because in our specific case we have two opposing forces.
Federico Grayeb:One is that we share with the rest of the industries is that, as you know, the pandemic has led to a shift in working conditions, increase in virtual collaborations, decrease in employee engagement. As a result, many people of this, many people, started to question and to reevaluate work life priorities and some people left the jobs. That's something that we share with the rest of industries, but there's an opposing force in our specific case, and that is because we play such a critical role in addressing this pandemic. Many people felt that they were actually making a positive contribution to society, so that increased the level of job satisfaction. So I'm not I cannot show you yet what the main effect is going to be. What I can tell you is that job satisfaction is not a good predictor of turnover, and I'll be happy to discuss that later on in our discussion.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah, that is a very interesting point. I do want to dive into a couple of things that you said already. So we are the industry with the highest turnover rates for executives, and that's rising. That is a shocking factor to me, especially when you mentioned that we are such a mission-driven business area where it's easy to find purpose. I wonder what are some of the dynamics that contribute to people leaving.
Federico Grayeb:Yeah well, it's not counterintuitive, actually, because there are two elements here that are at play. One is that we're talking about executives, right? So in our industry you need extremely highly talented people with a high level concentration of knowledge across a broad range of disciplines. You not only need technical knowledge, but you also need to know about medical affairs, production you name it but also the complexity of the health care systems, the number of critical stakeholders. You also need talented people that can deal with the magnitude of the potential reputational and financial risk that our industry has. So you need extremely talented people, and we all know that these talented people usually get more offers, job offers, so usually they tend to experience higher turnover rates. But also there is a second element in our industry and that is the high level of isomorphism.
Ivanna Rosendal:Isomorphism. Tell me more about that.
Federico Grayeb:You like that word, so that's. What it means is that companies tend to look alike, so companies tend to have similar organizational structures, practices, strategies. The roles are very similar and this is particularly salient within specific clusters by medical affairs or ultra rare disease companies or biotechnology companies. So within those clusters, job hopping is easy because there's a high level of isomorphism. When you change your job, the organizational culture doesn't change that much and your role is not that different, so it's easy to move around.
Ivanna Rosendal:So those two elements. That contributes to that it's easier for people to change roles because they can have something very familiar in another company because of this phenomenon.
Federico Grayeb:Yeah, and that's why job embeddedness comes into play in this discussion, but yeah.
Ivanna Rosendal:OK, job embeddedness. I like the terms that you use there. They sound so definitive.
Federico Grayeb:So we have two already isomorphism and job embeddedness.
Ivanna Rosendal:I love it Tell me more about job embeddedness.
Federico Grayeb:Sure. So in plain terms, it's the extent of a person's stuckness or enmeshing within a wider social system. It's job embeddedness is like job satisfactory is like we call them constructs. So it's a construct and it's defined by a broad constellation of factors that influence retention. And the word is three American researchers that came up with this breakthrough concept at the beginning of the century and they studied job embeddedness in the retail industry and insurance. And now what I'm doing is I'm adapting that concept to our specific case of executives, working and life science company. So that's in a nutshell, but I need to give you some first, some background why job embeddedness is a better predictor than maybe other more commonly used concepts such as job satisfaction.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah, I am curious about job satisfaction. Why is that not a good indication of attrition?
Federico Grayeb:It is up to a certain extent.
Federico Grayeb:So for the past 50 plus years, the academic literature has used two concepts or constructs to determine turnover, and those are job satisfaction and job alternatives.
Federico Grayeb:So, in essence, people who are satisfied with a job will stay, those who are not leave. And then, given the same level of dissatisfaction, people who get more offers will be more likely to leave than those with fewer ones. So that's pretty intuitive and the research has confirmed this. These two concepts are the two most widely used and also what the academic research has also done during these 50 years is that they added other things like organizational commitment, perceived organizational supports, and some others also studied some individual predictors or personality predictors of turnover, like, for instance, the level of unchangeance, counter violations and its influence in turnover. So there are many different concepts, but even if you add all them up, you're only able to, according to the literature, to determine 25% of the reason why people leave. So if companies and human resources the responsible for human resources on the act on increasing, for instance, the level of job satisfaction, that will still be experiencing a lot of people leaving the company because there are many other reasons besides job indebtedness and besides job satisfaction why people leave a company.
Ivanna Rosendal:I would love the three main ones.
Federico Grayeb:Okay. So these three are not caused by job satisfaction, but by external events. I'll give you an example for each one of them. So the first one, it will be you leave following a plan that you're already having in place. So say, for instance, that you or your spouse gets pregnant, or your spouse gets relocated, or let's take those two cases. Or you want to study and you get accepted into a famous business school. So that's the external event that is not tied to job satisfaction. So what happens is that you're pretty much satisfied with where you work and the type of culture where you work, but all of a sudden this happens. Then this external event happens. You call up the plan and then you leave, so it's not tied to job satisfaction.
Federico Grayeb:The second path that can unfold over time is that you leave, but without following a plan. So in this case also, you're pretty satisfied with what you're doing, but all of a sudden you notice that, say, a colleague of yours is being mistreated by your spouse, or, of a sudden, your company is asking you to do something against your beliefs, or you're passed over for a promotion. So what happens then? That's a negative effect, and what happens then is some negative emotions start to come into play here, and there's an anger and distrust against the organization, and in many cases people leave the job even without following the off given advice of never leave your job without another one hand.
Federico Grayeb:So here job alternatives do not play a major role. So it's not only job, so you might leave even without having something else in hand. And the third path that you can take that is caused by these external events is that you leave for something better. So again, you're satisfied with what you do, but all of a sudden you receive an unsolicited job offer that that that event triggers some mild dissatisfaction, because then you start to make comparisons between what you have or what you could have, and then perhaps, after a long, more complex process, you might be so at the end of the day, what I want to say is that there, these external events that are not initially tied to job satisfaction, can make people leave their jobs. So there's something else that the companies need to do if they want to retain their talent, and that is where job embedding comes into play.
Ivanna Rosendal:But can I just ask? So the 25 percent is what the company can. What can be linked to job satisfaction? Do the external events, the three types that you just mentioned, do they account for the other 75?
Federico Grayeb:Yeah, actually there are other reasons, but what? These three are major ones. So I tell you that these three represent the 75 percent, but what I can tell you and what not me, but research, and what research can tell you is that job and betterness is a much better predictor than job satisfaction, received organizational support and job alternatives combined. That's really interesting. What I mean by that is that I'm sure that there will always be cases where you cannot control, but if, instead of focusing on job satisfaction, you look at a broader picture, which is job and betterness and I can elaborate on that You'll have more chances that your turnover rates are going to decrease instead of increase.
Ivanna Rosendal:Well, I would be curious to hear what can a company do to make sure that people stay?
Federico Grayeb:OK, so just first, so the theory behind job and betterness, for that first. So I can tell you what companies can do is that think of imagine a person's life like a web. Your life is like a web, and in the middle of this web it's your job. And then around this, your job, you have objects, or we call them nodes, and then there are attachments to these objects. So the number of and these objects can be people, institutions, groups and explain that, but the number and strength of these attachments can vary. The overall connectedness of this web can vary, but it is this web, like quality, that retain people in their job. And the factors that retain them can are both factors that are related to the job, but also what we call off the job, things that are happening outside the office that retain people in their jobs.
Federico Grayeb:So many times people do not change jobs because they want to preserve the status quo, and what government veterans represents is the number of attachments people have in the office but also outside, like, for instance, non-work friends, relatives, participation in different social groups, even churches, whatever it is. Also, the second dimension is the sense of fit that people feel inside the office. It'll be with the organizational culture, but also the sense of fit that you feel with your community, how well you fit within the local community. And the third factor is called sacrifice, which is what is it that you will need to give up if you leave your job? On the job, sacrifices would be okay, it's pretty easy. I mean the money and perks and benefits. But also outside job, it'll be many routines that you already have on other items. So what is it that a company can do? Because usually many companies only focus on the on the job factors.
Federico Grayeb:But so in the case of number of attachments, if you want a person to be highly embedded, they have to have a lot of attachments, right? So if you focus on the job, it would be okay this let's assign this person a mentor, let's strengthen the internal network of this person, let's have this person participate in different teams. So it'll be increasing the level of attachments on the job. But then outside the job, the number of attachments have to do with non-work friends, relatives, but also they are also created by the number of activities, of hobbies that you pursue. So as a company, if you have some company-based company support programs, or even if you sponsor a sports scheme, or the point is that recreational activities, which is through which you develop these attachments, and interpersonal responsibilities like, for instance, say, you have an alien parent that you need to care for, you have a soccer practice of your son after school that you need to attend to these two things are much better fulfilled if a person can decide or has a saying on where and when to work.
Federico Grayeb:Believe what it boils down to is that companies should try to integrate the personal and the work life. So the better the fit between the person's private life and work life is, the higher the chances that they're highly embedded and therefore they remain in their jobs. And what research tells us is that job embeddedness acts as a sort of buffer against these different shocks. So people, when they're highly embedded, they have fewer thoughts about leaving and even when an unexpected event happens, they are less likely to leave. And also, highly embedded people, as a consequence, are more motivated, are better performance and have experienced high levels of job satisfaction. So the question is try to look at the person in a more holistic way. That that will be the final.
Ivanna Rosendal:I'm interested to maybe have a more philosophical angle on this, because it makes complete sense what you're saying, that if companies start thinking more about the holistic person, they can also design or maybe even remove the barriers for the person to have the full life and thereby also embeddedness. But is it the role of the company to go into that sphere? And also, can you design a way of working that will fit all the different kinds of lives that people live?
Federico Grayeb:Well, actually yes, I know it'll be that simple. I'm not sure the answer, the longer one would be. First, it's a very expensive strategy. First you need to decide which is your target group, so it's not a joint strategy. It's not something that you can design for everybody. So say, for instance, you will be designing it for people with high technical knowledge that you cannot afford to do, or some senior executives. The second thing is that there's a tool and that's what I'm developing to assess the level of job embeddedness, and through this tool you will be able to identify which are the most important factors. So first you decide which your target group is. Secondly is that you have this group go through this tool so that you can understand which factors are the most important for these people, and then, as a company, you decide which programs are the best to tackle these decisions. But it's an outstanding strategy. It's not something that you can do for everybody and there's no way you will be able to know what every single person needs Right.
Ivanna Rosendal:And what makes it expensive there you?
Federico Grayeb:go. What makes it expensive? As I said, if, for instance, you want to minimize relocation, it's always more expensive to have a person not in the place where what this person should be. Or if you want a person to pursue some hobbies, or if you want to dedicate some funds to finance their professional growth, that's an expensive thing to do, so it's something on top of what you usually would do. Even if you want to fund a sports team that can participate in a local team, I mean or some community activities, these are things that are usually not in the human resources budget. That's what I mean by expensive.
Ivanna Rosendal:Oh, I see Now. Are there any ways to create a job in business to the broader type of roles you have in an organization?
Federico Grayeb:And by broader you would mean.
Ivanna Rosendal:Not those specific ones that may be scarce, like technical talent or executives.
Federico Grayeb:Well, one thing that you can do for starters is that the way you recruit people right. If one of the major drivers of job in business is the sense of fit, then make sure you hire based on psychological fit with companies who have values. So that'll be one thing that you can do and you can do it for everybody. And also this, well, the possibility of remote work and have people have some saying in where and when they work, so they can take some time off for the personal errands or responsibilities. That'll be something that you can do for everybody. But then there are other special things that you need to do for your special target group.
Ivanna Rosendal:I would be curious to learn how did you get interested in this specific area of research?
Federico Grayeb:So I'm a former business executive, so I was always in the operational part of business, leading subsidiaries, international subsidiaries of multinationals, of multinational companies at a single and multi-country level, and I was always intrigued by the fact that people with similar backgrounds and responsibilities and roles would stay much longer than others. And I always wonder what is it that makes people go through this job hopping and what makes people just stay so long? So that was my concern and that was what interested me. And even though I was always in operations, I was always interested in the human aspect of business and actually I wrote a book on conscious leadership and what I said is that my work purpose is to help elevate the level of self-awareness in business, and I do that through. Well, I quit my corporate job because I wanted to dedicate this to my passion, which is elevate the level of self-awareness in business, and I do that through coaching in executives. So that's how I came with this type of topic.
Ivanna Rosendal:I am kind of curious. Maybe you don't have to answer this if you don't want to. If you do, coach executives within the life sciences space, what are some of the things that you see are in common between the people you coach?
Federico Grayeb:What do I see?
Ivanna Rosendal:Are there any concerns that they share in general about life sciences?
Federico Grayeb:There's one major thing I would say, and that is without giving out a lot of information, is the concern in regards to the level of authenticity, and I can explain why.
Federico Grayeb:So, without referring to the individual executives, you know that as an industry, we don't have a very nice reputation, Even though we say that we have the four worst reputations after the tobacco industry, which makes sense oil and gas. They pollute financial services because of financial crisis, and then it is us and because there is this perception that, well, this is more in the US, but not only of high prices, but also not very transparent research activities or some very aggressive money efforts. So, the level of authenticity I remember one executive recently told me that he felt like an imposter because he couldn't say out loud what most of his peers said, which was that his work was patient-centric, that his priority was improving the quality of life of patients. So I would say that that's the level of authenticity and actually that is something that I would like to contribute to change, and that is a better alignment between what one thinks, says and does. So I think that's one of the major things.
Ivanna Rosendal:And that makes sense also that it will make it easier to be the person that you are in your job if you can maintain that level of alignment.
Federico Grayeb:Yeah, and you'll stay longer in that job if you feel that you can be yourself.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah.
Federico Grayeb:Right, and that's the kind of thing.
Ivanna Rosendal:Well, federico, as we draw to the end of this episode, we always ask our guests the same question, and that is if we gave you a magic wand so that you could change one thing in our industry, what would that be?
Federico Grayeb:Well, I think what we just discussed, I would say, increased the level of authenticity by getting a better alignment between what you think and say and do. So that will be the magic wand and I think that's the has to do. It's an individual thing, I mean, it's not a magic wand, but it's something that has to happen at individual level and has to do with well, first you need to find your work purpose and then be consistent with that and even though sometimes in the short term, it might be even detrimental to your career. So, yeah, but that's the change I would like to see, and that has to happen at an individual level.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah, oh, I have to take it.
Federico Grayeb:So no magic wand, it's just individual responsibility. Yeah.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah, and I think your mission of elevating the level of self-awareness in business would really help achieve that goal.
Federico Grayeb:Yeah, mildly contributing, a small contribution, but yeah, that's my aim, that's where I would like to focus my attention and I'm trying to.
Ivanna Rosendal:Federico, this was a really interesting conversation. I would love to read the results of your research once it comes to a conclusion.
Federico Grayeb:I will let you have them show the report and that was. It's been very interesting really. Many thanks.
Ivanna Rosendal:Thank you so much and wait, wait, before we draw your clothes. If our listeners have any further follow up questions or to get in touch with you, where can they find you?
Federico Grayeb:I think it's the easiest way is through LinkedIn, right? So yeah, they can do that. I think that that will be the easiest way.
Ivanna Rosendal:Yeah, great, we'll include that in the show notes. Thank you so much.
Federico Grayeb:Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, I enjoyed it.
Ivanna Rosendal:You're listening to transformation in trials. If you have a suggestion for a guest for our show, reach out to Sam Parnell or Ivana Rosendale on LinkedIn. You can find more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or in any other player. Remember to subscribe and get the episodes hot off the editor.