Our people, our employees, are the foundation of our business. Precision for Medicine, as a service- oriented clinical research organization (CRO), is effectively powered by the people we employ. Our sponsors (biopharmaceutical organizations) rely on the expertise of our staff to execute complex clinical trials to develop life-changing treatments. Therefore, it is critical that we focus on who we hire, how we hire, how we onboard our people, and how we support them to be successful in their work and their career with Precision for Medicine. With this as our foundation, we make sure that every person on our team gets the support they need to deliver quality studies to the same high standard every time. To accomplish this, Precision for Medicine has developed a learning and career development ecosystem that surrounds them from their first day on the job and through their career progressions with our organization.
In this article, we discuss the support structure offered to team members and how it enables a mixture of expedited onboarding, ongoing role mentoring through Precision University, career development, and living our values. Let’s tackle these one at a time.
Expedited Onboarding
Onboarding new staff effectively and efficiently is mission critical for our business type, but it’s even more important when a new employee is joining our organization and is assigned to a study that is just starting. Ensuring our team members are up to speed on the Precision Way as efficiently as possible allows us to tackle our projects with a consistent level of quality from the beginning. Better onboarding is achieved through oversight from our Line Managers, who are each qualified through our comprehensive leadership curriculum. This curriculum includes such topics as emotional intelligence, communication, feedback, and coaching. The program also ensures that the direct Line Management support offered is NOT simply timesheet and expense approvals but support and guidance at an individual level.
During a new team member’s first 90 days, they are also paired with a Precision Ambassador. This person is a subject-matter expert and peer within that employee’s department and is assigned to help them navigate their first few months at Precision for Medicine. Our approach provides the new team members access to the role-specific expertise needed to tackle questions and queries unique to their roles in as short a time period as possible. The Precision Ambassadors help our team members quickly understand their environment (ie, systems, navigation, expectations), introduce them to critical staff/departments around the organization, and play a unique role in expediting new team members’ learning curves and acclimation to the Precision Way.
Ongoing Role Mentoring Through Precision University
Team members also participate in Precision University, a multiday, instructor-led training program. This offering, combined with access to our SOPs and other instructional information, available through our LMS/QMS and DMS environment, helps our new team members see the HOW behind the WHY. It helps them gain a clearer understanding of real-world applications and shortens the time to full efficiency in their roles.
Career Development
When our team members are ready to advance their careers here at Precision for Medicine, we enroll them in our Mentor Program. Replicating the success of our Ambassador Program, the Mentor Program partners team members with subject-matter experts in their career trajectory, providing clarity on new competence requirements and support along the journey. We also manage our people meaningfully, setting expectations that our workers meet both our functional , as well as our cultural standards. How an employee embodies our core values is a crucial part of the annual review process for individual performance.
Living Our Values
Our values are not just words. Precision for Medicine has a company culture based on a firmly held and shared set of beliefs supported by our strategy and structure. This helps our clients understand that our employees know how top management wants them to respond to any situation, embracing our fundamental Guiding Principles of Client Service, Purpose, Accountability, Mutual Respect, and Collaboration. It also means that Precision for Medicine can provide an unparalleled level of consistency and quality across projects.
By putting our people first, we can offer our clients the quality of services they expect, no matter who works on the project or where study sites are located, and they can have confidence in our consistency.
Precision for Medicine is truly Powered by Our People. Through our comprehensive training and development ecosystem, we retain our employees at an industry-leading rate and are able to offer them an engaging work environment that places them at the heart of our organization.
