Background :
Covid-19 outbreak in early March 2020 resulted in our country going into a lockdown mode since March 23, 2020. It has been virtually 50 odd days of living a life in a restricted mode. The whole country is experiencing restrictions imposed for a safe and secure outcome. Naturally, this has impacted the economy in terms of plunging GDP growth, huge migration of unorganized labour and shutting down of all services, transportation, public places except essential ones. The Indian pharmaceutical industry has also been impacted by this series of events. This labour-intensive industry has had to stop all operations, pull out sales forces from the markets, curtail mfg and stop HCP visits. Supply chain disruption has had a big fallout as well. Marketing has had to change the entire planning and delivery of promotion in less than 3 weeks via the digital route. All Indians are forced to adopt to a new way of working – WFH (Work from Home). While WFH is relatively new concept for our country, it has had several challenges in terms of transition, execution and stabilization for the pharma industry.
Intellectus Consulting wanted to study the qualitative impact of the 2-month lockdown on the front-line marketing personnel of our industry – the Product Management Teams. It is estimated that around 3000+ odd colleagues work as Product Executives, Product Managers, GPMs, Marketing Heads and like in our industry. It is these people who are the driving force of the marketing function, bringing life to the brands/portfolios, servicing stakeholders like Line Managers, Sales, HCPs and work silently away to keep the operations going. Many feel that Product Management has a tinge of glamour attached to it. Nothing can be farther than the truth. Especially in today’s times. These unsung heros are the critical backbone of our industry who put in long hours to keep the operations ongoing without disruption. Tremendous sacrifices are being made on personal time and relationships. With immense workload comes immense pressure to perform and this results in many undesirable consequences. Intellectus Consulting wanted to capture the first-hand experiences of these unsung heros in these times and look at ways to build recommendations for the industry leadership in terms of affirmative action.
Intellectus Consulting (IC) conducted two webinars over last Fri (15/5) and Sat (16/5). 32 Product Management colleagues participated in the webinars. Each webinar lasted over two hours. We had participants from:
Webinar 1: Roche, Mylan, Hetero, Dr. Reddy’s, Zydus, Biological E, Eris and Biocon.
Webinar 2: Eris, Biocon, Abbott, Curatio, Bharat Serums, Lundbeck, Zydus, Allergan, Exeltis, Lupin, Sun Pharma, Straumann, Boiron and Glenmark.
Discussions revolved around:
1. The personal and professional experiences of the 50-days lockdown and how they have managed to meet multiple, conflicting demands at work and home.
2. The fears, insecurities as well as hopes and aspirations arising from this situation and what they expected of their employers to support them at this time.
3. How has life become extremely hectic on most days with little emerging productivity?
4. How do they see the future emerging as the lockdown tapers to a close?
Data was also shared with the participants on the 5 big Future domains:
A. Future of Work
B. Future of Employment
C. Future of Learning
D. Future of Skills Demand
D. Future of Hiring
We divide this blog into two parts: Part A focuses on capturing the insights of the webinars gained by interacting with the participants and Part B (to be published later) will deal with the future, emerging trends of importance for the brand management function of our industry. Detailed trends were shared with the participants.
Part A [The Present Situation]
Introduction:
Product Management folks are at the very forefront of marketing operations. They bear the brunt of expectations of their line managers, sales colleagues, customers and support functions. The very nature of their job makes them a service function to all stakeholders concerned and therefore it comes as no surprise that while expectations from them to deliver are sky high, very little attempt if any is made to understand to listen to them. Very little effort is made to understand their real-time issues (resolution is still some way off), their fears, insecurities and addressal of the same. PMT folks feel that more than a dose of empathy would be welcome from their managements in these times. They seek assurance on many important issues related to their job security, wages, fair treatment and objectivity in assessing their performance despite WFH. The webinars uncovered some of these powerful insights which are to be addressed on a war footing.
The Webinars took up the issues through an “interactive-mode” of listening on Zoom video call. Questions were posed to the audience and their first-hand impressions were recorded. Subsequently, the recordings were transcripted and studied to arrive at the key insights and pointers for future action.