Pharma has a strong story to tell about innovation, but who gets the opportunity, support and influence to take part in it?
AI, genomics and personalised medicine are changing the skills the industry needs. Clinical research is facing greater scrutiny over whose experiences it represents. These developments have implications for patients, but they also raise very immediate questions about work: who gets recruited, whose expertise is recognised, who can access training and who feels able to challenge a decision.
An organisation cannot assume that employing a diverse workforce will automatically produce inclusive research or equitable patient outcomes. But the way it recruits, develops and rewards people helps determine whose knowledge shapes those decisions. Inclusion needs to reach both the workforce and the work it does.
As AI, data science and genomics become more important, employers have choices about how to build capability. They can compete for people who already have the qualifications and connections they value. They can also invest in people whose potential has been overlooked.
Those choices distribute opportunity. A degree requirement might be essential for one role and inherited habit for another. Recruitment through familiar universities and professional networks can keep producing a familiar workforce. An apprenticeship can widen access, but only if its pay, location and entry requirements make it viable for the people it is intended to reach.
HR should also look at who gets to move into emerging roles from inside the organisation. If development depends on a manager nominating their favourites, or employees studying in their own time, access will reflect existing differences in sponsorship, money and caring responsibilities. Reskilling is an inclusion issue because it affects who retains a future in the business.
At FAIRER, we help organisations examine where recruitment and talent practices may be creating unintended barriers. Our work with Volkswagen, for example, included a recruitment audit, employee focus groups and engagement with employee networks, alongside bespoke training on disability, neurodiversity and conscious inclusion. The work identified opportunities to make the recruitment process more accessible and inclusive.
Practical first step: Review the entry requirements for one growing job family with the hiring manager. Separate genuinely essential qualifications from skills that could be developed through paid training, and identify an accessible internal route into that work.
Scientific organisations rightly value expertise. But the ways they recognise it deserve scrutiny. Who gets to lead a high-profile project? Whose contribution is visible to senior leaders? Who receives credit for collaborative work, and who is repeatedly asked to do the supporting work that makes it possible? These decisions shape careers long before a formal promotion panel meets.
The same applies to research culture. A colleague can be present in the meeting without having much influence over it. People who challenge a dominant view may be treated as rigorous thinkers or as difficult, depending on who they are and how they communicate. Hierarchy, professional status and proximity to influential colleagues can determine whose concerns receive attention.
Inclusive approaches mean examining how opportunity and authority are allocated. Sponsorship, project allocation, performance criteria and promotion decisions should make different kinds of contribution visible. Employee networks can help identify patterns, but responsibility for changing those patterns belongs with the people making the decisions.
At FAIRER, we help our clients move from diversity and representation towards true inclusion. Our work with organisations looks at how people experience belonging, fairness and opportunity, as well as the systems and behaviours that shape those experiences. That can include employee listening, inclusion assessments and reviewing how progression and leadership decisions are made.
Practical First Step: Examine who was selected to lead or join the last five career-enhancing projects in one team. Ask how those decisions were made, who was considered and whether access depended on informal sponsorship.
The attraction of AI in Pharma is clear: it can help analyse data and support parts of drug discovery and development. Inside the organisation, technology can also influence recruitment, learning, performance assessment and workforce planning.
HR needs to pay attention to both uses. A tool built around historical employee data may reproduce the organisation's existing preferences. A system that measures output may overlook collaboration, mentoring or accessibility needs. And a new technology can change whose expertise is valued, even when it makes no explicit decision about an employee.
One of the biggest conversations we’re having with clients is how to use AI responsibly within the workplace. As organisations adopt AI across recruitment, workforce planning and performance management, it is important to consider where technology could create new risks, reinforce existing inequalities or produce unintended consequences. We explore some of these challenges in AI at work: What could go wrong – and 7 ways to get it right.
Access to AI skills matters too. If senior or already highly qualified employees receive the most investment, technology can widen the gap between people with influence and those with less. Employees should have a say in how their work changes, alongside opportunities to develop the skills needed to do it.
The wider scientific risk remains relevant: underrepresentation in health and genomic data can affect how well a model serves different populations. HR cannot validate those models, but it can help ensure that the organisation develops the capability, challenge culture and accountability needed to question them. Raising a concern about a model should not put someone's career at risk.
Practical First Step: Choose one AI tool affecting employees and review it with its owner and employee representatives. Establish what decisions it influences, whose needs were considered, how employees can challenge an outcome and who can authorise a change.
An inclusion strategy can look convincing from head office while feeling remote in a laboratory, manufacturing site or field-based role.
Some tasks require physical presence and tightly controlled processes. That does not mean every working arrangement is fixed. There may still be choices about start times, rota predictability, breaks, travel, how instructions are communicated and how adjustments are agreed.
Disabled and neurodivergent employees should not have to rely on an unusually understanding manager to access support. Nor should someone repeatedly disclose personal information because adjustments disappear when they move teams. Managers need clear processes, resources and authority to act, with specialist safety advice where required.
Organisations should distinguish a genuine operational constraint from a convention that nobody has questioned. The same scrutiny applies to progression: if leadership potential is associated with constant availability, extensive travel or one communication style, capable employees can be excluded before anyone calls it discrimination.
Practical first step: Review one laboratory, production or field team with employees and its operational lead. Identify an avoidable barrier in working arrangements or adjustments, agree an owner and trial a change within the relevant safety requirements.
Clinical trial diversity remains one of the sector's most important inclusion issues. Trial locations, appointment times, travel costs, accessible information and eligibility criteria all affect who can participate. The UK's 2026 clinical-trial reforms and the HRA and MHRA's work on inclusion and diversity planning make this a timely conversation.
For an HR audience, the useful connection is how the organisation equips and rewards the people designing that research. Do teams have time and capability to involve communities early? Is inclusive research treated as skilled work? Are employees encouraged to question a recruitment approach that is convenient for the study team but difficult for participants?
These are questions about job responsibilities, development and performance expectations. If community engagement is additional work without resources, or success is judged solely on speed of recruitment, employees receive conflicting signals about what matters.
HR's role is to work with research leaders so that inclusion is reflected in capability and accountability. Decisions about scientific design remain with the appropriate specialists; the people processes should support them to take inclusion seriously.
Practical first step: Meet a clinical research lead and review one relevant role profile and its performance objectives. Check whether responsibility for inclusive participation is explicit and supported by time, training and resources.
We help organisations turn inclusion into practical, measurable change. Our work spans DEI strategy and roadmaps, inclusion and culture assessments, inclusive recruitment, leadership development, employee listening and tailored DEI training.
If you’re looking to understand what the next stage of inclusion should look like in your workplace,get in touch with the FAIRER Consulting team to discuss your priorities and book a complimentary consultation.