Human Capital Pulse: Life Sciences | April 2026: Fewer layoffs, an AI hub in London and the contract hiring surge
April 2026 for Life Sciences HR: fewer but bigger layoffs, Boehringer's London AI hub, contract hiring and Agility & Bureaucracy benchmarks across peers.
HUMAN CAPITAL PULSE: LIFE SCIENCES · ISSUE 4 · APRIL 2026
A monthly Human Capital benchmark for HR and People leaders in Life Sciences: the sector's talking points and how culture, workforce and talent compare across your peers, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
Editor's note
April's numbers told a two-sided restructuring story. Fewer biopharmas cut jobs in the first quarter, but more people were affected, as a handful of large programmes did the damage. At the same time, Boehringer Ingelheim opened an AI centre in London and contract hiring surged. For People teams, the question is no longer whether to reshape, but how to do it without deepening the sector's biggest culture problem: bureaucracy.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
The month in three
1. Fewer companies cut, but more people affected
What happened: BioSpace counted 35 biopharmas making or planning layoffs in Q1 2026, down from 74 a year earlier. Yet 6,593 employees were affected, up from 5,926, mostly because Viatris plans to cut up to 10% of its global workforce, about 3,000 roles, over three years. Job postings rose 5% year over year in February and 7% in March.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Agility & Bureaucracy is the sector's most negative topic, with a median NSS of −65.7% in 2025 across ten Life Sciences Top 100 companies, and only three improved. Workforce: The teams that run change are small: across the five peers with Workforce data, Transformation roles make up between 1.9% (AbbVie) and 2.5% (Novartis) of the workforce.
So what: Big programmes are run by small teams; resource change management properly before the first announcement.
2. Boehringer Ingelheim opens an AI centre in London
What happened: Boehringer Ingelheim opened its fourth AI and machine learning centre in London, after sites in Austria, Germany and the US, and is recruiting AI scientists, machine learning engineers and MLOps engineers.
The Deltabase lens: Talent: AI skills remain scarce in the UK-listed majors too: 4.5% of AstraZeneca's people and 3.5% of GSK's list AI skills, against 9.8% at Eli Lilly.
So what: Specialist AI hubs compete for the same small talent pool; know where your AI capability sits before you try to hire more.
3. Contract hiring surges
What happened: BioSpace's Q1 2026 job market report found job postings had risen, contract roles had surged and M&A and IPO activity was strong, which it read as early signs of recovery and a shift in hiring strategy.
The Deltabase lens: Workforce: Permanent workforces are stable. Average monthly turnover in Q1 2026 was 0.7% at AstraZeneca (0.9% in Q1 2025), 0.7% at GSK (0.7%) and 0.6% at Novartis (0.8%), and median tenure ranges from 4.7 years at Eli Lilly to 6.8 years at Boehringer Ingelheim.
So what: Contractors bring speed but not memory; plan knowledge transfer and conversion routes from day one.
Stat of the month
−65.7%: median Agility & Bureaucracy NSS across ten Life Sciences Top 100 companies in 2025, the most negative of the 12 culture topics, with only three of the ten improving.
| Company | Culture: Agility & Bureaucracy NSS 2025 (change) | Workforce: % in Transformation roles | Talent: % with transformation skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eli Lilly | −58.8% (+7.9 pts) | 2.2% | 3.9% |
| Novartis | −61.3% (+6.4 pts) | 2.5% | 3.7% |
| GSK | −63.6% (−6.1 pts) | 2.4% | 2.9% |
| AstraZeneca | −72.4% (−9.9 pts) | 2.4% | 3.4% |
| AbbVie | −89.2% (−28.0 pts) | 1.9% | 2.9% |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), 2024–2025; sector median of AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi. Deltabase Workforce data, share of workforce in Transformation roles; Deltabase Talent data, share of workforce listing transformation skills.
Spotlight: Eli Lilly vs AbbVie
Two R&D-heavy US companies with different shapes. On Workforce, R&D makes up 19.6% of Lilly's workforce and 17.5% of AbbVie's, but AbbVie is more commercial, with 21.2% in Sales against 15.5%. Lilly is growing faster: headcount rose +15.0% between December 2024 and March 2026, against +7.5% at AbbVie, with average monthly turnover in Q1 2026 of 0.6% and 0.7% and median tenure of 4.7 and 6.1 years. On Culture, both improved in 2025, Lilly to +8.4% (574 reviews) and AbbVie to +6.6% (592), but AbbVie's Agility & Bureaucracy fell to −89.2% and its Tech in Workplace score to −76.5%. On Talent, 9.8% of Lilly's people list AI skills, against 2.9% at AbbVie.
For your People team
- Run a bureaucracy audit alongside any restructure: name the approvals and steps that will disappear.
- Track turnover monthly by function for six months after any announcement, starting with the roles you most need to keep.
- Set rules for contractors on knowledge capture and conversion before they start.
See how your Human Capital compares with your Life Sciences peers. Book a 30-minute benchmark walkthrough across culture, workforce and talent. Book a walkthrough →
Sources: BioSpace (16 April 2026); Reuters (20 April 2026), as reported by IntuitionLabs; BioSpace (9 April 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.