Background
The client is a global pharmaceutical company that creates innovative medicines, vaccines, biological therapies,
and medical devices. As a highly structured, mature organization well-established in the life sciences industry,
the client values traditional business etiquette and employees who work collaboratively within their matrix
teams. The client partnered with VGS to provide functional service provider (FSP) employees for its clinical trials
globally.
Challenge
The challenge was to ensure that the newly hired VGS employees quickly adapted to the client’s culture,
protocols, and processes, and contributed to a team-building environment. The job roles included Global Trial
Leaders (GTL), Site Managers, and Local Trial Managers. The client expected these VGS employees to exercise
their relational leadership skills, proactively problem solve independently, and swiftly grasp the standard
operating procedures (SOPs) and responsibilities for their job functions.
Solution
VGS’s solution was to conduct a job role assessment which involved gathering information about the training
and tasks for each role to better understand the employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and competencies related
to executing the work assignments. The role assessment involved the following steps:
Identifying the key competencies and skills required for each role.
Administering a questionnaire to the employees to determine their performance on each task, training, and
system proficiency.
Analyzing the data and the anecdotal feedback from the respondents.
Providing a report and recommendations based on the findings.
Results
The job role assessment offered important understanding of existing employees’ performance, future hiring
strategies, and areas needing enhancement and growth. The psychologist Bruce Tuckman originated the
“Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing” model, which is designed to help new teams effectively work
together. The results showed that during the “storming” phase of employee development, challenges can arise
as people’s true technical capabilities and soft skills start to emerge and they start to push against boundaries.
During the “storming” phase, we found that VGS employees needed more guidance and support from their VGS
functional leads during this time of their assignments, especially in understanding and following the client’s
protocols and processes.
Delving into specific job functions:
Global Trial Leaders thrived through project management skills and adeptness at managing superiors.
Site Managers prospered by fostering strong ties with principal investigators and coordinators, coupled with
superb communication and effective administration.
Local Trial Managers swiftly concluded their training and became experts in their designated roles. Those
surpassing early performance targets had knowledgeable mentors, were skilled in relevant technology, and
exhibited outstanding social skills.
Conclusion
Ultimately, job role assessments enabled VGS to enhance client relations and deliver top-notch staff and
services for clinical research. Additionally, the assessments offered valuable feedback and coaching to VGS’s
staff, fostering better performance and job contentmen
