The positive impact individuals have in shaping Canada’s bio-economy is evident. BioTalent Canada is sharing their stories to help others realize the benefits of adopting IDEA into their workplace.
Serving some 600 local life sciences and health technologies organizations in the Greater Montreal area, Montréal InVivo has a unique perspective on the human resources challenges facing firms in its region — which include helping young professionals develop the in-demand skills and forging professional pathways into the life sciences field.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the HR team at Farmers Edge barely missed a beat — embracing remote recruitment and retention to broaden its pool of candidates. A switch to digital HR practices is helping the company find the highly skilled people it needs to grow and develop a common corporate culture to energize its diverse international workforce.
Mediphage Bioceuticals’ made-in-Canada gene therapy platform could revolutionize medical treatments. But with commercialization skills hard to come by in Canada, the Toronto-based company is weighing the question of whether or not to move some operations to the U.S.
What’s the best way to bring new employees up to speed on a vast product portfolio or build a technically knowledgeable team of sales reps in a business undergoing double-digit growth? For Applied Biological Materials of Richmond, BC, the answers come from within. The company has tapped its senior managers to mentor new hires and enlisted its own scientists to head up customer-facing functions.
For Zymeworks, culture is key to innovation. With an HR strategy focused on diversity and rooted in the neuroscience of collaboration, the Vancouver-based pharmaceutical company is demonstrating how businesses can address important social issues in the workplace and generate innovative ideas at the same time.
For Vancouver-based start-up Variational AI, the future of drug discovery is most definitely digital. Its innovative machine-learning platform generates novel and optimized molecules — with the potential to eventually cut preclinical drug discovery times from years to months. The challenge lies in proving that potential to chemists, biologists and clinicians.
The time frame to train new recruits is short for agricultural contract research firm Ag-Quest Inc., with only one field season a year for recent hires to learn new skills, it can take years to develop into fully productive researchers. The company has responded by pairing summer students with senior staff who can bring them up to speed more quickly.
Diversity hiring is on a lot of people’s minds these days. More and more businesses recognize it’s the right thing to do and good for the bottom line. For companies aiming at international markets — such as Fredericton-based anessa — diverse staffing can also be a powerful market wedge.
Immune Biosolutions aims to be Canada’s next anchor company in life sciences — and knows it needs a strong corporate culture to reach that goal. Success hinges on marrying the knowledge and expertise of its senior researchers with the capacity of next-generation recruits to fuel growth at high speed.
Since Resilience acquired its facility in Mississauga last year, the company has been busy expanding production and attracting new customers, including the Government of Canada. But the expansion has highlighted the need for more right-skilled talent to complete the work, an issue affecting all of Canada’s bio-pharmaceutical industry.
