A contract pharmaceutical manufacturer makes medicines for other companies' brands. Operators, analysts and quality staff work to written procedures in gowned areas, and every client audit tests how well people follow them.
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Share your requirementsA contract pharmaceutical manufacturer produces tablets, capsules, liquids, ointments or injectables for brand owners. The same plant may run many clients' products in a year, each with its own specifications, change rules and audit cycle. Production operators work in gowned, controlled areas and fill in batch records line by line. Quality control analysts test samples, quality assurance staff review records and release batches, and engineering teams keep the clean air systems and machines in order. Records are the proof of the work, so a missing training entry or a late signature can matter as much as a machine fault. Client audits arrive often, and the staff who answer inspectors need to be well prepared. Related reading: HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in contract pharmaceutical manufacturers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Procedures change often to suit clients, and staff are asked to run a process before their read-and-understood entry is complete.
Full gowns in warm areas tire people, and shortcuts at the changing room are tempting when output is behind.
Operators fill entries after the step, not during it, and corrections, overwriting and late signatures become audit observations.
A line changes between products with different checks, and staff mix up one client's instruction with another's.
Client and authority audits send quality and production into a scramble, and the staff who rarely speak to inspectors are put in front of them.
Experienced analysts and reviewers are in demand across the industry, and a competitor or a client can offer a better title.
Packing and cleaning are often done by short-term hands who have had little training in the rules of the area.
Output targets push one way, release decisions pull the other, and people in each team feel unfairly judged.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Policies, Compliance and Governance; Onboarding and Probation. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a contract pharmaceutical manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A matrix showing which role must be trained on which procedure, with a rule that no one works a step before their sign-off.
A matrix showing which role must be trained on which procedure, with a rule that no one works a step before their sign-off. The learning and development process supports this.
Rest breaks after set periods, spare gowns, clear changing room steps and a supervisor present at shift start to coach and not only to scold.
Rest breaks after set periods, spare gowns, clear changing room steps and a supervisor present at shift start to coach and not only to scold.
A short session with real examples of good and poor batch entries, a buddy check in the first month and a clear, blame-light way to correct an entry.
A short session with real examples of good and poor batch entries, a buddy check in the first month and a clear, blame-light way to correct an entry.
A simple briefing for staff who may meet auditors: be honest, answer only what is asked, show the procedure.
A simple briefing for staff who may meet auditors: be honest, answer only what is asked, show the procedure. A calm routine, not a rehearsal of answers.
A career path for analysts and reviewers with named grades, mentors and pay checked against the market.
A career path for analysts and reviewers with named grades, mentors and pay checked against the market. See compensation benchmarking.
A short induction on hygiene, area rules and what not to touch, with a record and a named supervisor.
A short induction on hygiene, area rules and what not to touch, with a record and a named supervisor. Use the employee onboarding process.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A training matrix and sign-off routine tied to procedures and roles.
Clean role descriptions, training files and record habits that hold up in an audit.
A view of pay for scarce quality and engineering skills against the market.
A clear induction for new and contract staff entering controlled areas.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
7 min readRead article
A first-week plan for bringing in an outside specialist: what access to give, how to protect client data, and the confidentiality steps to settle on day one.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Use a matrix by role and procedure, review it weekly and block work on a step until the sign-off is done. Link it to the document change process so new versions trigger new training.
Teach with real examples, require entries at the time of the step, use buddy checks in the first month and make correction simple and free of blame.
Brief them on how audits work, tell them to be honest and show the procedure, and keep the same people available. Avoid last-minute rewriting of documents.
Show a career path, check pay against the market, give them training and recognise their role in release. Repeated late-night firefighting drives exits.
Share one set of goals, hold a joint weekly review of deviations and let each team see the pressure the other faces.
We would sample training files against the procedures in use, watch gowning at shift change and ask how contract hands are inducted. A good opening job is a role and training matrix. GullyHR does not give regulatory advice, so that stays with your qualified advisers. Scope and fee are agreed in writing.
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