Upskilling Your Workforce to Stay Ahead of Labor Needs

Keeping today’s medtech workforce well skilled can be a monumental task. After all, the pace of product development is accelerating, and many companies are implementing digitalization that significantly transforms their business models. Because of these market forces, the skills most in demand for the sector are shifting as companies try to keep up with rapid-fire changes. It’s a challenge, however, that device makers must tackle head on for several reasons.

The most pressing reason, of course, is ensuring innovation. Without new products and services, manufacturers risk losing market share and falling behind in growing specialties. It’s estimated the FDA cleared more than 1,000 PMA applications last year,¹ and the number of 510(k) products expected to be approved reached a 10-year high.² Developments in remote and home care, robotics, patient journey, and other areas of focus are leading many companies to reassess how and where they source and acquire talent.

With talent scarcity and the skills gap growing, medtech businesses have prioritized a number of ways to secure the people and skills they need. According to Randstad Enterprise’s 2023 Talent Trends research, companies are broadening the scope of their talent acquisition (TA) function.³ In fact, 88% of C-suite and human capital leaders in life sciences say aside from recruiting new people into the company, talent acquisition leaders are expected to think about mobility, development, career pathways, and skilling for new hires. This is in line with additional findings that show a spike in learning and development investments: Forty-two percent say they are leveraging skilling to address talent scarcity, significantly higher than the 30% from the year before.

An Urgency for New Skills
Why are life sciences companies so focused on skilling? The vast majority (88%) report that empowering people to develop additional skills and move into new roles is seen as an effective way to combat chronic scarcity. More than two-thirds (68%) say they have increased their budget for training and development in the past year.

Skilling in all forms is viewed as an effective way to raise workforce engagement, productivity, and retention. HR market analyst Aptitude Research found that skills development is the most important trend for companies, with 82% naming learning and development as a priority.⁴

For some device makers, such as Edwards Lifesciences, reinforcing training and development for workers of all skill levels, including those assembling Class III devices, is an absolute necessity.⁵ Others such as J&J are focused on helping early-career engineers learn about R&D, lifecycle management, supply chain, operations, and manufacturing while on the job.⁶ Whatever their needs are, medtech manufacturers increasingly are building on their learning and development in conjunction with internal talent pools to meet current and future workforce needs.

And it’s not just hard skills such as engineering that device makers are looking to build. Two of the driving healthcare trends affecting the sector is the rise of remote care and consumer patients, according to a recent report released by Advamed and Accenture.⁷ As people take more charge of their own care, device makers need to consider the implications of this trend. The user experience, care pathways, and educational resources for consumers are all becoming more prominent in the selection of devices. These choices, of course, will continue to be made with physician input, but patients will have a greater say in the products that affect their lives. This means how device makers build, market, and sell will need greater input from users and soft skills to create better buying experiences. So even though digital competencies are in high demand across the industry, traditional soft skills will also be important.

With demand across the board for different skills, medtech makers will need a robust talent strategy that includes professional development as a critical component. By providing a variety of resources to empower personal and professional growth, employers enhance loyalty, stimulate innovation and, most of all, people’s ability to achieve more in their jobs and careers. Combined with an effective approach to talent acquisition, skilling and development can overcome many talent scarcity challenges an organization faces.

Focus on Career Pathway

There are, however, important considerations when building a sound skilling strategy for today’s dynamic medical device market. Learning and development should be closely aligned with career pathways to optimize outcomes. For example, when building academies for orthopedics, a holistic curriculum that includes advanced materials, biologics, robotic surgery, and product design can help people acquire a fundamental understanding of the specialty and develop agile core skills that can be adapted.

Human capital leaders should also focus on creating a skills taxonomy that helps identify adjacent skills clusters. Doing so gives organizations visibility into which internal candidates are suited for open roles and how much training they will need to move internally. While this can be a time-consuming exercise, the return on investment is vast; redeploying existing workers can be a more expeditious and cost-effective way of filling roles.

Finally, investments in content, platforms, and tools must be a priority for human capital leaders. Medtech companies today have more options than ever when it comes to training and development. The maturity of learning experience platforms, learning management systems, microlearning, skilling analytics, and other important components of an overall strategy requires careful selection and deployment to ensure successful outcomes. For instance, because so much learning is informal and on the job, how can employers track the competencies of their workers who are constantly improving their knowledge and skills? Choosing the right platform or rolling out a well-considered tool can help.

Conclusion

As the medical device industry further transforms due to major shifts in healthcare, the need for new and unique skills is rising. Hiring more specialists is one way to address the talent gap, but to holistically mitigate the looming crisis ahead, companies must strike a healthy balance of buying, borrowing, and building human capital. The benefits of building—higher engagement, lower fill costs, and faster access to talent—are plentiful, but execution will hinge on identifying where the gaps are and making the appropriate investments to address them. 

References

1. bit.ly/mpo230721
2. go.ey.com/3QD3pUh
3. bit.ly/mpo230793
4. bit.ly/mpo230723
5. bit.ly/mpo230724
6. bit.ly/mpo230725
7. bit.ly/mpo230726

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Tania de Decker is the managing director of global strategic accounts for Randstad Enterprise Group. She works with Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement processes that improve and drive recruitment and retention solutions. de Decker has more than 28 years of recruitment experience and has worked over 18 years with life sciences companies. The emphasis has always been improving the quality of her clients’ talent acquisition.