HUMAN CAPITAL PULSE: LIFE SCIENCES · ISSUE 1 · JANUARY 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
January set the shape of the year: Takeda cut a US field force while creating new commercial roles, Eli Lilly committed to 850 jobs in Pennsylvania and AstraZeneca planned to take its China workforce beyond 20,000. Restructuring and growth are running side by side. The sector starts 2026 with slightly better sentiment, but Career Progression is the topic to watch as people move between roles.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
The month in three
1. Takeda cuts a field force and opens 400 new roles
What happened: Takeda is cutting 243 US field-based roles in its neuroscience business as its depression drug Trintellix approaches loss of exclusivity. It is also shifting resources to potential US launches that it says are generating more than 400 new commercial field roles, and is encouraging affected employees to look at those.
The Deltabase lens: Workforce: Commercial exposure varies widely: Sales roles make up 21.2% of AbbVie's workforce and 15.5% of Eli Lilly's, against 9.3% at AstraZeneca and 5.4% at Novartis. Culture: Redeployment depends on internal mobility. Median Career Progression NSS across ten Life Sciences Top 100 companies improved from −42.0% to −36.0% in 2025, but it was negative at all ten.
So what: Publish internal routes before announcing moves; career sentiment is improving, but from a low base.
2. Eli Lilly commits to 850 jobs in Pennsylvania
What happened: Eli Lilly announced a $3.5bn plant in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley to make injectable medicines and devices, its fourth new US manufacturing site. The state governor said it would create at least 850 jobs; construction is due to start in 2026, with the plant operational in 2031.
The Deltabase lens: Workforce: Lilly's headcount rose +11.8% between December 2024 and December 2025, and Engineering & Maintenance roles make up 7.2% of its workforce, with Manufacturing a further 4.0%. Talent: 21.3% of Lilly's people list quality skills. Culture: overall NSS rose from +5.4% to +8.4% in 2025 (574 reviews).
So what: A 2031 plant is a five-year talent plan; quality and engineering pipelines need to start now.
3. AstraZeneca plans to take its China workforce beyond 20,000
What happened: On 29 January, during the UK Prime Minister's visit to Beijing, AstraZeneca announced a $15bn investment in medicines manufacturing and R&D in China through 2030. It already has more than 17,000 staff in China and expects the investment to grow that workforce to beyond 20,000.
The Deltabase lens: Talent: Rapid hiring changes the skills mix. At AstraZeneca, 10.2% of employees with less than a year's tenure list AI skills, against 4.5% across the whole workforce. Culture: AstraZeneca's overall NSS rose from +7.2% to +10.4% in 2025 (1,034 reviews).
So what: Growth spreads culture thin; benchmark sentiment and skills by region.
Stat of the month
+11.0%: median overall NSS across ten Life Sciences Top 100 companies in 2025, up from +10.3% in 2024, with six of the ten improving.
| Company | Culture: overall NSS 2025 (change) | Culture: Career Progression NSS 2025 | Talent: % with L&D skills |
|---|
| Sanofi | +21.4% (+4.2 pts) | −35.1% | 15.6% |
| Novartis | +14.9% (+0.2 pts) | −43.1% | 16.4% |
| Johnson & Johnson | +12.0% (−1.5 pts) | −31.9% | 7.1% |
| Pfizer | +11.6% (+5.6 pts) | −54.8% | 15.1% |
| Eli Lilly | +8.4% (+3.0 pts) | −35.7% | 26.4% |
| Bristol Myers Squibb | +3.1% (−3.4 pts) | −60.8% | 22.8% |
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 Talent data, share of workforce listing learning & development skills.
Spotlight: AstraZeneca vs GSK
The UK's two largest drugmakers diverged in 2025. On Culture, AstraZeneca rose from +7.2% to +10.4% (1,034 reviews), with Career Progression up 26.0 pts to −32.7%; GSK fell from +15.5% to +9.5% (1,111 reviews), with Career Progression down 17.0 pts to −50.8%. On Workforce, GSK is larger (93,500 people against 81,500) and more manufacturing-heavy (3.5% against 1.9%), and its people stay longer: median tenure is 6.4 years against 4.9, with average monthly turnover of 0.8% in 2025 against 1.0%. On Talent, 4.5% of AstraZeneca's workforce lists AI skills, against 3.5% at GSK.
For your People team
- Map loss-of-exclusivity exposure by function now, and agree redeployment routes before any announcement.
- Make Career Progression a 2026 people KPI: it was negative at every one of the ten sector peers in 2025.
- For new sites and markets, start quality and engineering pipelines early and track whether new joiners' skills are used.
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: Fierce Pharma (January 2026); Allwork.Space (30 January 2026); AstraZeneca, Form 6-K (29 January 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.