Skills shortage in pharmacies: A challenge for the healthcare system
The shortage of skilled workers in pharmacies poses difficulties. Galenica has taken appropriate measures. Virginie Pache Jeschka, Head of the Pharmacies Service Unit, explains the circumstances and the measures taken by Galenica.
What does the skills shortage mean for Galenica?
The shortage of skilled workers is a major challenge in many sectors, including our own. First of all, there is a shortage of qualified employees, particularly in IT professions and pharmacies. Without employees, we will no longer be able to fully meet the needs of our customers and fulfil our customer promise. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, if not earlier, the important role of pharmacies as the first point of contact for health-related matters has become apparent. The shortage of skilled workers not only threatens the way in which pharmacies operate, but also puts pressure on the entire healthcare system.
How has Galenica addressed the problem?
An interdisciplinary working group from all areas worked intensively on measures and exchanged views with experts from pharmacies and sales. Firstly, this has allowed us to decide on long-term measures. Secondly, we have succeeded in finding at short notice, creative and unconventional ways to at least ease the current situation.
What are these solutions specifically?
For example, measures to make pharmacy careers more attractive. This will allow us to expand the skills of pharmacy employees and thus offer more development prospects. We are also developing a retraining programme for trained pharmacy staff.
In the short term, we have stepped up our university marketing activities and have organised events directly with pharmacy students in order to find talented young people. At the Women’s Run in Bern, we also carried out a guerrilla recruitment campaign to draw attention to the exciting working environments in our pharmacies.
The new ideas are now being implemented gradually, whereby we regularly evaluate how successful these have been and develop the measures accordingly.
Just as important are the creative ideas put forward by our employees in the pharmacies. A selection of these can be found in the «Shortage of skilled workers: Together we are stronger» feature.