Addressing the UK’s Scientific Skills Gap

A key pledge from the new government during the leadership elections in August was to make the UK a ‘Scientific Superpower’, providing opportunity and spreading prosperity in every part of the UK. A great ambition, but in practical terms, what does this mean? The two building blocks of becoming a ‘Scientific Superpower’ are infrastructure and skill set. The physical, real estate, and various scientific infrastructure that sits alongside it is crucial, and something that we are of course very focussed on at Kadans. But today I want to talk about the second piece of the puzzle – the workforce that occupy these buildings and whose skills set ultimately drives the industry forward.

With the growth of an industry inevitably comes the demand for skills. Research predicts that with Science and Innovation continuing to grow, the skills demand for 2026 will increase to 10,000 bioprocessing jobs, a staggering growth of 151% from 2021. For this sector to continue to expand, and for the UK to reach its ultimate goal of becoming a global leader in the Scientific Community, then a prioritisation of skills provision is paramount.

However, this may be easier said than done. A third of a company’s workforce is usually made up of graduates – often described as the engine room of Life Sciences businesses. A PhD student 10-15 years ago could either stay in academia or start working for a big pharma company. The top PhD students are now in demand in every sector with job offers from the likes of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Deloitte, KPMG and more. Furthermore, even within the Life Sciences, it’s expected that many companies will be attempting to expand their workforce at once. With only a finite number of trained professionals available and limited access to suitable alternative talent pools, this will inevitably present a challenge.

This is coupled with the inflation of salaries due to increased competition – something which ‘newly hatched’ UK companies, recently out of the incubation stage, can find hard to keep up with. So, how can this skills shortage be addressed, and how can small Biotech companies differentiate themselves from large corporations?

Increasingly a beg, borrow, or steal attitude is taking hold of recruitment with companies looking to poach talent from declining sectors, assessing transferable skills and upskilling individuals. Programmes such as Advanced Therapies Apprenticeship Community (ATAC) can be fantastic ways for companies to engage new recruits, and licences such as the Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network (ATSTN) Online Training Platform (OTP) are becoming more popular. 41% of companies that were asked in a recent survey said that they had the licence or were aware of it.

The ATAC and ATSTN national initiatives have made big strides in assisting companies with their growth strategies. But they can only take it so far. There is now an urgent need to not only upskill existing science workforces, but also to find new methods of attracting talent from outside the sector.

In a relatively short space of time, the Life Sciences industry, has evolved from a small molecule, one-size fits all scattergun to a targeted, precision science - driven by data. Meaning companies are having to take very different research, regulatory, and manufacturing approaches. But take manufacturing for example, there are only a handful of cell and gene therapies in the world that are commercially manufactured meaning there is no history of a skill set within this area. Companies are therefore starting to look elsewhere for workers that can easily be retrained. For example, automotive manufacturing requires a very similar structured process to Life Sciences. In the same way that you build a car or a process, you build a gene therapy by putting one block on top of the other making it relatively easy to teach.

In a similar vein, we’re seeing companies focusing more and more on location. No manufacturing background in the sciences industry? Not a problem. There is already an existing manufacturing heritage that sits around the North of England with a ready-made skill set that can be repurposed for commercial science. An approach that is particularly poignant in the age of levelling up. One such example is Fujifilm Diosynth, who recently invested £400 million in a new manufacturing plant in Teesside. A case study which will surely be imitated by many others in the coming years.

And when it comes to attracting new graduates, companies must be able to offer the best possible location, taking an increasingly urban approach. Typically, the graduates making up a third of the workforce are aged 25- 35. Many in that age bracket don’t drive anymore and come from universities that have been in urban settings. They don’t want to work in a business park in the middle of nowhere. So, the innovative companies that are wanting to grow quickly need to be in accessible urban locations to attract this engine room of their business. And this is something we see across both the North and South of the UK.

Another factor to consider is creating environments that professionals in that bracket feel comfortable with and excited by. Sometimes that’s from an architectural perspective; using bold colours and quirky designs that people don’t necessarily expect but do appreciate. The clinical white setting typically associated with science is a thing of the past. There is now an imperative to put science on show, proving that it’s no longer just old, white men in white coats. It’s diverse, it’s fun, it’s interesting. As specialist landlords we have a responsibility to help engage the public with the work being done by tenants and break down these barriers. Design can help with this - new buildings such as the recently renovated Sycamore House, often occupy open-plan ground floor spaces, and feature big windows making them seem more accessible. Big, barbed wire fences with more security and cameras than Fort Knox is how science was done. But it shouldn’t be how it’s done anymore.

To reach ‘Superpower’ status we clearly need to do more to address the skills gap in an increasingly competitive environment to keep pace with industry expansion. Upskilling, retraining, location, and environment are all critical aspects of this journey and should not be ignored.