AstraZeneca China planned to lay off 10,000 employees, but the plan was stopped due to the high proportion of layoffs

01 The attrition message transmits a stress signal

In terms of local pharmaceutical companies, according to incomplete statistics, as of April 19, the total number of employees of about 50 of the nearly 200 listed pharmaceutical companies in China has declined
to varying degrees.

According to iFinD data from Flush, among the 442 listed pharmaceutical companies in the past year, 116 pharmaceutical companies have reduced the number of employees, with a cumulative reduction of 39,650 people, accounting for 26.
2% of the total number of listed pharmaceutical companies, and most of them are head enterprises
.

Among them, the top two with the largest number of attritions are Dongguang and Hengrui, with 4841 and 4412 layoffs respectively
.
A total of 9 companies with more than 1,000 employees were reduced; There are 18 companies
with more than 500 people.

02 Performance is under pressure, and domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies are constantly adjusting

The reasons behind the shrinking of corporate teams are diverse – performance is under pressure, for the sake of cost reduction and efficiency increase; After the restructuring, the resource input is redistributed, followed by the adjustment of personnel; Attrition due to failed R&D projects or product sales that did not meet expectations
.

At present, China has become one of the important sources of revenue for AstraZeneca, and in 2021, AstraZeneca China achieved revenue of US$6.
011 billion, an increase of 12%
year-on-year.
However, due to the pressure of medical insurance negotiations and price reductions, AstraZeneca China's performance growth has slowed down
.

In the face of this challenge, since the second half of last year, AstraZeneca has been continuously adjusting its structure, such as the establishment of the Respiratory, Digestive and Autoimmune Division; Established Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolic Divisions; Adjust the county team - and the county cancer business into the tumor business department, and the county non-tumor business separately become the county chronic disease business department; Established the Rare Disease Division
.

It can be seen that the merger of mature business pipelines, the addition of rare diseases and innovative drugs with higher technical content is a major adjustment trend, and this is also the common choice
of many multinational pharmaceutical companies with similar situations.

Among the local pharmaceutical companies, Hengrui's performance has been greatly affected due to the decline in the revenue of generic drug collection and procurement, the amount of innovative drugs does not meet expectations, and the green and yellow are not connected
.
At the same time as the performance declined, Hengrui's sales staff was optimized from 17,138 at the beginning of 2021 to 13,208, with an optimization scale of nearly 4,000 people
.

In addition to marketers, scientific research teams are often linked to the research and development capabilities of enterprises, and adjustments have attracted much attention
.

Coron also disclosed in its annual report that there will be 2588 R&D personnel in 2021, a decrease of 627 compared
with 2020.
The relevant person in charge told Cyberland that the work of the relevant personnel was mainly responsible for the consistency evaluation of generic drugs, and the phased task has been completed
.
In addition, in the face of the impact of the industry environment, Coren has carried out a strategic contraction, and the situation of large-scale experiments in the past will no longer be available, and the corresponding personnel have also been adjusted
.

03 Phased adjustment under the "shrinking" of the business

In recent years, with the deepening of the medical reform policy, the pharmaceutical industry is in the midst
of major changes towards high-quality development.
With the promotion of medical insurance cost control policies such as volume procurement, the price advantage of the original drugs of multinational pharmaceutical companies is no longer there, the original profit model of local pharmaceutical companies has been challenged, and bio-innovative pharmaceutical companies have ushered in rapid development
.

When there is a change, it will naturally be accompanied by a large number of people.

Generally speaking, the sales team is more staffed and costly
.
Companies often start by making team adjustments
.

However, not all pharmaceutical companies are reducing sales staff, and a sales director of a large domestic pharmaceutical company that is inconvenient to name said that his company has not reduced its sales team and is still subdividing the sales team
.
Moreover, in the current situation of more product upgrading, it will continue to maintain the model of intensive cultivation, and the overall performance of the subdivision team is good
.

In addition, Yang Jie, a hospital project marketing expert, once told Cyberland, "The optimization of personnel in some enterprises may be imperative, after all, in the context of the new pharmaceutical reform, the marketing team cannot keep up with strategic development, and the replacement or improvement of professional awareness may open up a glimmer of vitality
.
" ”

Similarly, the adjustment of scientific researchers is also the coexistence
of downsizing and expansion.

According to statistics (as of April 6, 2022), in 2021, among the Top20 pharmaceutical companies with an increase in the number of A-share and H-share employees, there are 6 CXOs, an increase of 18,300 people, accounting for more than half (51.
6%)
of the total number of 35,489 people in the Top20.
WuXi AppTec topped the list of 8501 new personnel, of which 6899 R&D personnel (82%) were added, and CXO increased its staff
.

The largest increase in staff is in BeiGene, which added 2,822 people in 2021, and by the end of 2021, the number of R&D and marketing personnel has reached 2,949 and 3,383, respectively
.
Even Hengrui, which has reduced its workforce by 4,412 people, has increased its research and development personnel by 16%.

On the whole, domestic and foreign enterprises to reduce the team is mainly to adapt to the new market environment, with the development of innovative drug products to maturity, enterprises in the market to find their own position, related companies in the future may have room for
team expansion.
The current adjustment is more about throwing away the "baggage" and going light
.