Preventing a health scare
Received wisdom suggests that are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. Without trying to be overly cute, I’d suggest there’s at least one more: that reporting on ‘potential global health scares’ will always top news reels around the world. We live in an age where it seems that more people than ever before are concerned about their health and wellbeing. Therefore, it’s logical that any news on illnesses, with the potential to cause harm to our newly-fascinating bodies, will always catch our attention.
Rightly so. Although reports on the spread of infectious diseases have a tendency to go pandemic before the disease itself has gone epidemic, the grave dangers posed by illnesses as common as the flu are clear. In part, the very-simple reason these reports on diseases resonate with us is because we want to use of every bit of knowledge at our disposal to prevent harming coming to us. And, it is indeed received wisdom that the best medicine is preventative rather than curative.
Therefore, with the future of the talent landscape beset by potential ‘health scares’ – Brexit, legislation and supply chief amongst them – I travelled to Cambridge to speak with Maggie Spong, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at AstraZeneca, to find out what HR can do. The pharmaceutical giant is currently on a business journey which will see tweaks, and sometimes wholesale changes, to their resourcing function – as a kind of preventive medicine against any possible anaemia in the future supply of talent.
Read on to find out more.
Daniel Cave - Head of Content
