ECO was adopted to initiate a global analysis to identify key areas of focus for the client's early careers strategic overhaul, ensuring all needs were heard and aligned across the business.
In 2022, following the divestment of its consumer healthcare business, this global pharmaceutical company entered a period of significant transformation — strategically reshaping itself as a biopharma-led organisation.
Against this backdrop, the client recognised the need to rethink its Early Careers strategy to better support the goals of the new organisation. Key challenges included:
ECO enabled the client to take a data-driven approach to reimagining its Early Careers strategy. Through a global analysis spanning internal feedback and external benchmarking, the business built a unified view of Early Careers across its four major business divisions.
Insights were gathered from 403 apprentices, graduates, and interns, alongside programme managers and senior stakeholders, creating a shared understanding of strengths, gaps and strategic opportunities.
The data gathered during the ECO project — and subsequent benchmarking — informed a global data dashboard that has since guided two years of strategic implementation, helping the client align resources, elevate Early Careers within the business and embed a future-focused approach to talent across the organisation.
It's massively helpful to see the data as to what's not working. Being able to point to a global data dashboard is what helped secure permission to kickstart change in the business — it took a lot of stakeholders, and without that, I don't think we'd have been able to get that green light to revisit our strategy principles.
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