Pharmaceutical in 2025: A Year in Review
What the numbers say about culture across the pharmaceutical sector
The pharmaceutical sector entered 2025 facing a complex mix of opportunity, pressure and transformation. From continued investment in innovation and AI-enabled research, to pricing scrutiny, regulatory expectations, productivity pressures and an increasingly competitive market for specialist talent, pharmaceutical organisations were required to balance scientific progress with operational resilience.
Against this backdrop, workplace culture became an increasingly important factor in attracting, engaging and retaining employees. This report analyses employee sentiment across 12 critical culture and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) dimensions using publicly available employee reviews and feedback, revealing how employees experienced workplace culture throughout 2025 and what those insights mean for the future of the sector.
The analysis is based on a peer set of 10 major pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations:
| AbbVie Inc. | AstraZeneca plc |
| Boehringer Ingelheim | Bristol Myers Squibb |
| Eli Lilly and Company | GSK plc |
| Johnson & Johnson | Novartis AG |
| Pfizer Inc. | Sanofi S.A. |
Source: Deltabase Culture Intelligence, global pharmaceutical peer set benchmark, 2025
Pharmaceutical Culture Matrix
| Culture Zone | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Drivers | Frequently discussed and positively perceived culture strengths. |
| Enablers | Positive supporting themes that strengthen the employee experience. |
| Mixed | Areas with inconsistent or divided employee sentiment. |
| High Risk | Frequently discussed issues with strongly negative sentiment. |
| Low Risk | Lower-frequency concerns that may still indicate deeper structural challenges. |
The Pharmaceutical Culture Matrix: Separating Culture Strengths from Culture Risks
Understanding what employees talk about is only part of the story. To identify the culture issues that deserve the greatest attention, organisations need to understand both the frequency of discussion and the sentiment associated with each theme.
The Deltabase Culture Matrix combines employee sentiment with topic frequency to highlight which aspects of workplace culture are creating positive employee experiences and which may be creating organisational risk.
In the pharmaceutical sector, the matrix reveals a clear divide between the tangible elements of the employee value proposition and the organisational conditions that shape day-to-day work. Pay & Rewards and Learning & Development are the sector’s clearest Drivers — both are widely discussed and rated strongly positively, showing that employees recognise the sector’s investment in compensation and professional growth. Work-Life Balance sits in the Mixed zone: widely discussed, but sentiment is only mildly positive rather than a clear strength.
However, the matrix also highlights several important culture risks. Supportive Leadership and Career Progression sit in High Risk — both frequently discussed, both rated negatively — suggesting many employees do not feel sufficiently supported by managers or leaders, and struggle to see a clear path forward. Agility & Bureaucracy and Progressive culture also show strongly negative sentiment, pointing to frustration around organisational complexity and slow decision-making, though they’re discussed less often and sit in the Low Risk zone.
| Culture Theme | Peer Set NSS | Topic Frequency | Culture Zone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay & Rewards | 52.0% | 45.5% | Driver |
| Work-Life Balance | 15.0% | 24.6% | Mixed |
| Supportive Leadership | -23.0% | 22.4% | High Risk |
| Learning & Development | 58.9% | 11.6% | Driver |
| Career Progression | -42.1% | 9.7% | High Risk |
| Empowered | -32.8% | 6.6% | Low Risk |
| Progressive | -41.6% | 7.3% | Low Risk |
| Agility & Bureaucracy | -69.4% | 6.4% | Low Risk |
| Collaborative | 29.0% | 4.4% | Enabler |
| D&I | 18.1% | 4.7% | Mixed |
| Purpose | -18.4% | 3.6% | Mixed |
| Tech in Workplace | -16.8% | 3.1% | Mixed |
Peer Set NSS (Net Sentiment Score) is the average share of positive employee mentions of a theme minus the share of negative mentions, calculated across the ten benchmarked companies — a positive number means employees were net-positive on that theme, a negative number means net-negative.
Key Takeaways
- Supportive leadership and career progression emerge as the sector’s most significant culture risks, combining high discussion volumes with negative employee sentiment.
- Collaboration and learning & development represent important cultural strengths across the sector.
- Agility and bureaucracy received the lowest sentiment score of any culture theme, highlighting ongoing frustrations with organisational complexity and decision-making processes.
- Technology in the workplace remains a developing opportunity area as organisations continue their digital transformation journeys.
Looking Beyond the Scores: Understanding the Employee Voice
Benchmark scores provide an important view of employee sentiment, but the real insight comes from understanding the experiences behind the data. Deltabase Culture Intelligence allows organisations to drill down into individual employee review extracts, helping HR and People leaders identify the specific factors influencing employee experience across the sector.
Across the pharmaceutical peer set, employee feedback highlights recurring themes around leadership support during restructuring, career development in an increasingly specialised industry, and frustration with the scale and complexity of global matrixed organisations. Analysing verbatim employee reviews alongside benchmark data helps organisations understand not only what employees are saying, but why they are saying it.
| Culture Theme | Common Positive Employee Feedback | Common Negative Employee Feedback |
|---|---|---|
| Supportive | Supportive managers, approachable leadership, strong team culture | Inconsistent management quality, lack of communication, limited support during change |
| Career Progression | Clear promotion pathways, internal mobility, development opportunities | Limited advancement opportunities, unclear progression routes |
| Agility & Bureaucracy | Clear processes, effective governance, structured delivery | Red tape, slow approvals, organisational complexity |
| Learning & Development | Training opportunities, professional accreditation support | Uneven access to development opportunities |
Supportive Leadership Remains a Critical Challenge
Despite being one of the most frequently discussed aspects of workplace culture — appearing in 22.4% of employee reviews — supportive leadership emerged as a significant challenge across the pharmaceutical peer set in 2025. With an Employee Net Sentiment Score (NSS) of -23.0%, employees were considerably more likely to raise concerns about leadership support than to praise it.
This finding lands at a difficult moment for the industry. Large pharmaceutical companies collectively cut more than 22,000 jobs in 2025 alone, as a patent cliff worth an estimated $300bn in branded revenue between 2025 and 2030 — combined with continued pressure from US drug pricing reform under the Inflation Reduction Act — forced widespread restructuring across R&D, manufacturing and commercial functions. Several organisations in the peer set announced significant workforce reductions or reorganisations during the year.
During periods of sustained restructuring, employees look to line managers and senior leaders for clarity, honesty and support. Feedback across the peer set suggests this experience varies considerably by organisation and function. Positive reviews frequently reference approachable managers and strong team-level support, while less favourable feedback centres on inconsistent management quality, limited visibility into restructuring decisions, and a perceived lack of support through repeated waves of change.
For HR and People leaders, the message is clear: leadership capability remains one of the most influential levers available to protect engagement and retention during a period of prolonged industry disruption.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Employee Net Sentiment Score (NSS) | -23.0% |
| Topic Frequency | 22.4% |
| Culture Matrix Classification | High Risk |
What Employees Are Saying
Common themes emerging from employee reviews include:
- Approachable, supportive line managers within R&D and commercial teams
- Strong team culture, particularly in smaller functions and site-based roles
- Inconsistent management quality across global, matrixed structures
- Limited visibility and communication during restructuring and site changes
- Concerns about manager capacity and support following headcount reductions
Career Progression: Pharma’s Retention Risk
If supportive leadership represents one of the sector’s most immediate culture challenges, career progression may be its most significant long-term talent risk.
Career Progression recorded a -42.1% Employee Net Sentiment Score (NSS), one of the lowest-rated culture dimensions across the pharmaceutical peer set, while still ranking among the more frequently discussed topics at 9.7% of reviews.
This finding comes at a pivotal moment for the industry. As companies respond to the patent cliff by restructuring around fewer, larger therapeutic bets, and as AI increasingly reshapes drug discovery and commercial operations, internal mobility and reskilling have become critical to retaining scientific and commercial talent. At the same time, waves of restructuring have narrowed the promotion pipeline in many organisations, even as competition for specialist talent in oncology, immunology and GLP-1/obesity treatments remains intense.
Employee feedback reflects this tension. Positive reviews frequently cite strong scientific training, graduate and early-career development programmes, and opportunities to work across therapeutic areas. Less favourable feedback points to unclear promotion criteria, slow progression into senior and leadership roles, and frustration that restructuring has reduced the number of visible next steps.
For HR and People leaders, the findings suggest that career development is no longer simply a talent management initiative; it has become a strategic workforce issue central to retaining the specialist capability the industry needs to navigate its post-patent-cliff future.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Employee Net Sentiment Score (NSS) | -42.1% |
| Topic Frequency | 9.7% |
| Culture Matrix Classification | High Risk |
What Employees Are Saying
Common themes emerging from employee reviews include:
- Strong scientific and technical training programmes
- Well-regarded graduate and early-career development schemes
- Opportunities for cross-functional and cross-therapeutic-area moves
- Unclear promotion criteria and limited visibility of senior roles
- Slower progression following restructuring and delayering
- Inconsistent development experiences across regions, sites and functions
Why This Matters
With a $300bn wave of patent expiries reshaping portfolios through 2030, and continued investment required in cell & gene therapy, GLP-1 and AI-enabled R&D, retaining experienced scientific, regulatory and commercial talent is a strategic imperative, not just an HR metric. Employees who cannot see a credible path forward are more likely to move to biotech, specialist CROs or adjacent sectors, increasing turnover risk precisely when institutional knowledge is hardest to replace.
What Pharmaceutical HR Leaders Can Learn from External Employee Voice
Traditionally, organisations have relied on employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys and focus groups to understand workplace culture. While these remain valuable tools, they only provide part of the picture.
External employee reviews offer a different perspective. They capture what employees choose to say publicly about their experiences, often providing a more candid view of organisational culture, leadership, career opportunities and day-to-day working life. For HR and People leaders, this creates an opportunity to identify emerging issues, benchmark against competitors and understand how the organisation is perceived by current, former and prospective employees.
The findings from this report highlight the value of looking beyond traditional employee listening channels. Themes such as supportive leadership, career progression and organisational agility may not always emerge as priorities in internal surveys, yet external employee feedback suggests they are having a significant impact on employee experience across the pharmaceutical sector.
| Internal Employee Listening | External Employee Voice |
|---|---|
| Employee surveys | Public employee reviews and feedback |
| Measures employee engagement | Measures employee perception and employer reputation |
| Shows what employees tell the organisation | Shows what employees tell the market |
| Typically limited to internal benchmarking | Enables competitor and sector benchmarking |
| Often conducted periodically | Provides a continuous view of culture trends |
Turning Culture Intelligence into Competitive Advantage
The pharmaceutical sector in 2026 faces many of the same forces that defined 2025: a widening patent cliff, continued drug pricing pressure, restructuring, the race to embed AI across R&D and commercial functions, and intensifying competition for specialist scientific talent.
While these challenges affect almost every organisation in the sector, the ability to attract, engage and retain talent is increasingly becoming a differentiator. Culture is no longer simply an HR issue; it is a business performance issue.
The organisations best positioned for future success will be those that understand how employees genuinely experience the workplace and use those insights to inform decision-making. Whether the focus is strengthening leadership capability through restructuring, improving career development opportunities, reducing organisational friction or building a stronger employee value proposition, the first step is understanding where the greatest opportunities and risks exist.
For pharma HR leaders, the message from this year’s benchmark is clear: employees are looking for supportive leadership through change, meaningful career opportunities, less organisational friction and continued investment in their development. Organisations that respond effectively to these expectations will be better positioned to attract scarce scientific and commercial talent, strengthen retention and build a culture capable of supporting long-term business success.
How Does Your Organisation Compare?
This report highlights the culture trends shaping the global pharmaceutical sector in 2025, but every organisation has its own unique culture strengths, risks and opportunities. Deltabase Culture Intelligence enables HR and People leaders to benchmark their organisation against industry peers, identify emerging workforce risks and uncover the culture themes having the greatest impact on attraction, retention and employee experience.
Request a complimentary culture benchmark and discover how your organisation compares to the sector peer set.
This analysis is based on 8,959 publicly available employee reviews collected across a peer set of 10 major global pharmaceutical organisations during 2025. Deltabase Culture Intelligence uses AI-powered analysis to classify employee comments across 12 culture and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) dimensions, generating benchmark insights into employee sentiment, topic frequency and culture performance.
Leroy Hall
http://deltabase.ioLeroy Hall is a strategy and culture specialist at Deltabase, where he helps organizations unlock insights into leadership, workforce, and cultural dynamics through data-driven intelligence.
