The Fight for Workers Intensifies in Life Sciences

All of the money flowing into the life sciences sector is driving strong growth. With growth comes competition for top talent.

To attract new workers, firms are offering higher wages and several perks, including highly amenitized offices, according to Roger Humphrey, divisional president, Life Sciences, JLL in a recent post. While the bulk of life sciences work is done in the lab, companies have become more flexible about letting them do administrative and individual work remotely,

When workers do come in, the level of services they’re receiving has skyrocketed. Life sciences firms are offering convenience stores, dry cleaning, childcare and medical care on the corporate campus. Humphrey says companies are making it easier for employees to run errands that they otherwise might have had to do over weekends. In some special cases, firms are offering mobile dental services and hairstylists, massage therapists, their own bus lines and ferries to bring people to work.

Life sciences companies are outsourcing these functions, like childcare, so that they can focus on their core businesses, according to JLL. “We help recommend the amenities to clients that will be most impactful, and we also have concierge programs where we manage those amenities for them,” Humphrey says. “Outsourcing facilities management allows companies to focus on the critical work at hand while we handle the workspace reservation systems, amenities programs and all the little details that make the day run more smoothly.”

Lab space is also getting a facelift. Companies are adding collaboration spaces and even looking at hub-and-spoke models with additional workplaces near where people live. As they think about space, these firms are also moving behind the core life sciences hubs to up-and-coming new areas. For instance, JLL says new developments around the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Chicago, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle are gaining interest. These places offer lower prices than the traditional hubs of San Francisco and Boston, according to Humphrey.

Even last year, at the height of the pandemic, investment in life sciences was pushing the sector into new markets.

“It is exploding beyond even the three major markets here in the US,” Nicole Riley, a counsel in Goodwin’s Business Law Department and a member of its Real Estate Industry group, told GlobeSt.com in an earlier interview. “We’re seeing more than half a dozen clusters pop up in the secondary markets.”

Land costs in the traditional hubs are one reason life sciences firms are branching out, but it’s not the only driver. They are also seeking markets where land is available for their facilities, according to Riley.

“Developers are looking into changing office towers to labs, but that has its unique issues associated with it given the chemical storage and zoning requirements,” Riley says. “So I think to the extent that there’s no available land in an existing cluster in the Boston, San Diego and San Francisco universe, people are definitely looking towards these secondary markets.”