Occupational Standards Developed For Bioscience Industry Workers

Workers Author: Karen Young Kreeger Executives and educators associated with bioscience industry labs are enthusiastic about a recently released report outlining skill standards for technicians aspiring to work in the industry. They say the standards will serve as a framework for training programs aimed at giving workers more transferable skills, allowing them to move with more ease within the volatile bioscience job market. The report, released last month and entitled "Gateway to the Future: Skill Standards for the Bioscience Industry," was produced by the Education Development Center, a nonprofit educational organization in Newton, Mass., as part of the Bioscience Industry Skills Standards Project. The project, which started in 1992 and is scheduled to end late this year, is one of 22 skill standards projects in a variety of industries funded by the departments of Education and Labor. The document describes guidelines for job performance by entry- level technical workers in numerous positions in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical laboratories. The report authors say the standards cover the range of occupational skills, background knowledge, and behavioral attributes necessary to accomplish such tasks as preparing reagents, maintaining research animals, and operating technical equipment. "The bioscience standards are a very thorough guide for the industry," remarks Llewellyn Wood Bensfield, education coordinator for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. "Human resources officers and supervisors will find them a valuable tool because they identify a core set of capabilities," adds Bensfield, who also was a member of the bioscience technical advisory committee to the project. Standard User:Baltimore City Community College's Kathleen Norris plans to incorporate some of the report into her biotech techniques class this fall. "I would say there's been a need for [the standards] for a long time," asserts Judy Leff, the project's director. "The impetus at the federal level [for the 22 standards proj-ects] was an increase in foreign competition within the last five to 10 years, a work force that was not trained well enough, and a need to produce higher-quality goods." Feeling the Flux:A flexible work force will be helpful for the volatile bioscience industry, says Integrated Genetics' David Nikka. "The industries involved are in flux, and I think it would help the companies to know there is a flexible work force," maintains David Nikka, vice president of human resources at Integrated Genetics, a publicly held biotech firm in Framingham, Mass. The center is in the midst of disseminating the report and discussing its implementation at a number of industry sites. A guidebook for high school, community college, and workplace educators on how to integrate the standards into their curricula is due out this fall. Timely Initiative Although the bioscience project has been directed primarily at entry-level workers, Leff maintains that the project also has relevance to researchers and managers at higher levels. "Many of those people [will] hire the students coming out of programs [that will teach the standard skills] to run their lab or to perform their assays." With segments of the bioscience industry experiencing downsizing recently, especially biotech and pharmaceutical firms (R. Finn, The Scientist, May 1, 1995, page 1; N. Sankaran, The Scientist, Dec. 12, 1994, page 1), Leff stresses that the standards encourage preparing future workers for a broader type of occupation, enabling them to move from biotech to pharmaceutical to clinical labs as market forces demand. "Right now the pharmaceutical industry is going through layoffs, but not so much at the technician level. The same holds for clinical labs," she reports. "So if you take a broad view of the whole bioscience industry and really look at what jobs are growing and what's declining, and what jobs are anticipated to grow, the picture is really much brighter." Selecting Scenarios The Education Development Center received a grant of more than $1 million from the Department of Education to develop the standards. Overall, nearly 1,000 workers, educators, and staffers at professional organizations contributed to the task. They participated in workshops, responded to surveys, and acted as advisers. To start, center officials talked with bioscience industry workers to assess what they thought was an entry-level position, collecting many definitions of these jobs. Several workshops were held around the U.S. in which participants came up with a list of 14 "job functions"--controlling inventory or maintaining quality assurance, for example--each with a sub-list of tasks. This outline of duties was used to devise a composite job description for the generic entry-level position of a bioscience technical specialist: a person who, under supervision, performs experiments and assays, manufactures products, or assists with research. "It was somewhat experimental for us because we didn't know if we could bring together people from clinical labs who worked in hospitals with people from biotech and pharmaceutical companies, as well as people in manufacturing vs. R&D-type jobs," recalls Leff. "We weren't sure whether they could all agree that, yes, we share this common core of skills, tasks, and knowledge. But it worked out." The center then held a second round of workshops with managers, supervisors, and community college educators to develop a format in which to demonstrate how standards for on-the-job performance can be used. They came up with a set of 34 scenarios that pose real-life work situations, for example: "You are given 25 microliters of DNA in solution for restriction analysis. Explain what you would do." Listed along with each scenario are the relevant skills, industry-related knowledge, and personal attrib-utes--such as reliability and conscientiousness--pertinent to each sce- nario. For example, in the above scenario, industry-related knowledge required to perform the task would include biochemistry, molecular biology, and "quality control and quality assurance practices," as well as familiarity with regulatory standards. Among the duties listed for accomplishing the procedure is the task described in the report as "perform tests/assays: chemical, biological, clinical, environmental, robotic, mechanical." Kathleen Fourre, an analytical technologist and line supervisor at South San Francisco, Calif.-based Genentech Inc., participated in a scenario-building workshop. She suggests that the scenarios are relevant because they are based on "not terribly hypothetical examples; they are situations that we can run into on the job." Several project participants point out that another strength of the scenarios is that most place an equal importance on trouble- shooting skills along with mastering routine procedures. For example: "You perform animal care at your facility according to protocol. Describe these duties. One morning you notice that the test animals are listless and lethargic. You also notice evidence of diarrhea in some of the cages. How do you respond?" The problem-solving abilities listed for dealing with such a scenario include: "follow universal precautions for biological pathogens"; and "maintain separate in-process, quarantine, and release areas." A Flexible Work Force Bioscience technicians, supervisors, and educators see the value of the standards as twofold: They will make classroom learning more relevant to the workplace and train students to acquire a more flexible set of skills that help in job-seeking and career advancement. "I think the biggest value the program will have is creating a broader-skilled work force," says Integrated Genetics' Nikka. "There are a lot of good education programs, particularly in biotech and medical technology, but they tend to be very specific in the training they provide. This project aims to create a diversified person who will be capable of working in a number of disciplines within the bioscience field." Michael Bereski, a senior laboratory technician in pharmaceutical quality control at Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. in Nutley, N.J., who participated in a standards project workshop, recalls what it was like when he started work in quality control 15 years ago. "When I entered the field, I didn't have much of an idea of what to expect or what I should know. It was more or less on-the-job training," he remarks. He has acquired all of his science training through workplace-based education. "These guidelines could now let students who are interested in this field know what to expect." Several programs designed to educate the work force of the future are already in place. One example is an education consortium in Baltimore, which is coordinated among two area high schools, Baltimore City Community College, Morgan State University and the University of Maryland. This program starts early, linking high school students with industry mentors and setting up internships, reports geneticist Kathleen Norris, coordinator of biotechnology education at the community college. The aim of the consortium is to prepare juniors and seniors for a double track: to work in the bioscience field as well as to go on to a community college or baccalaureate degree-granting institution, if they choose. Norris, who participated in one of the bioscience project workshops, says one "wonderful thing that did occur was that it started to link up biotech education throughout the nation. I was floating alone, making up my own course work." She anticipates incorporating some of the scenarios given in the report into the biotechnology techniques and instrumentation course she will teach this fall. Helpful Hints: Ronald Newcomb of Bayer Corp. recommends that students bolster their resumes by learning skills cited in the standards reports. Ronald Newcomb, a production manager at the Bayer Corp. Biotechnology Division (formerly Miles Inc.) site in Berkeley, Calif., notes that for the most part his employees now in entry- level production positions have B.S. degrees with no on-the-job experience. "In the course of the next one to two years, when the local community college [bioscience] program is able to turn out graduates, we fully expect there'll be a transition to [hiring people with] the two-year community college degree" for pharmaceutical-production positions at Bayer, he comments. From a company's perspective, he says, hiring students with two- year associate degrees in bioscience as opposed to those with four-year degrees is more desirable because he anticipates less employee turnover. This is because there will be a closer match between a student's education and the tasks he or she will be performing on the job; those with more advanced degrees might be inclined to move on after a while, he observes. Newcomb, who took part in a scenario-development workshop, says some adoption of the scenarios would be useful to him for interviewing prospective employees or for evaluating current employees for promotion. In fact, education center officials anticipate that several pharmaceutical and biotech firms will use the standards as a hiring, internship-development, and course- design guide sometime later this summer. According to statistics compiled by the Education Development Center, the clinical laboratory segment of the biosciences industry currently employs 258,000 technicians. By the year 2000, the projected demand for these workers will increase to 325,000 to 340,000, exceeding the expected supply by some 100,000. Future demand for other types of technicians--such as those who work in biological and chemical labs in pharmaceutical, biotech, university, and government settings--is harder to pin down, say center officials, because of a lack of data at the national level. But there are some projections for regional hot spots in the biotech field: For example, this year in Massachusetts there are about 16,000 workers at all levels and segments of the biotech industry; the demand for personnel is anticipated to grow to 20,000 by the year 2000. Norris asserts that the future job picture for bioscience employees will be rosier for students with associate and bachelor's degrees because much of the industry downsizing is occurring at the Ph.D. and M.S. levels. "Upscaling is happening at the entry-level positions. From our point of view, that's good." No matter how optimistic the future may be for students coming out of new bioscience programs, Newcomb advises them to pay attention to the skills outlined in the standards project. "From an employee's perspective, I would look at it from the view of: 'What does my resume or set of skills lack?' And then, if I were a [prospective] employee, I would seek the information needed to boost those areas." To obtain a copy of the standards or a directory of current educational programs, contact the Bioscience Skills Standards Project at the Education Development Center Inc., 55 Chapel St., Newton, Mass. 02158-1060; (617) 969-7101, Ext. 2397. Fax: (617) 332-4318. E-mail: mauraO@edc.org. (The Scientist, Vol:9, #12, pg.3, June 12, 1995) (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.) garfield@aurora.cis.upenn.edu 71764.2561@compuserve.com The Scientist, 3600 Market Street, Suite 450, Philadelphia, PA 19104 U.S.A.

Occupational Standards Developed For Bioscience Industry Workers

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