Diversity and Inclusion in UK Biotech

Welcome to the UK BioIndustry Association’s (BIA) first of its kind sector benchmark report on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across innovative life sciences and biotech within the UK, carried out in partnership with Diversio. This report is intended to serve as a benchmark for the broader industry and has provided individual member companies taking part with their specific diversity and inclusion data for their organisation. By publication, the BIA aims to encourage other organisations in the sector to begin tracking their diversity and inclusion objectives as they innovate and scale. The bigger picture can be seen by bringing companies together across the sector and working collaboratively on sustained change. It is only through ongoing measurement and goal-setting that the sector can begin to sustainably move the needle and meaningfully advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

While the data collected through this effort is not a complete census of the entire UK biotech industry, it is a robust, statistically meaningful reflection of the state of our sector. It is also the most comprehensive effort of its kind completed to date. BIA partnered with Diversio because of their expertise in diversity data analytics and their unique methodology for measuring inclusion as a key factor to understanding why diverse talent chooses to remain (or leave) our industry, holding the key to retention and growth.

Over the years, academia has generated a breadth of evidence on the benefits of cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Studies show that ethnically diverse organisations are 36% more likely to outperform their homogenous counterparts¹. Companies with diverse leadership are 45% more likely to report growth in market share and 70% more likely to capture new markets². Not only that, strong DEI mandates are now being demanded by consumers, employees and investors alike. Ninety percent of consumers now require companies to take a stand on diversity and inclusion issues, with 76% conducting follow-up research to ensure the companies are genuinely living their values³. Employees are also casting their votes; in a tight labour market, more than one in three millennials have left their employer to join a more inclusive one⁴ and an additional 42% say they plan to leave their company within two years, for the same reason.

It’s about the ideas…

Innovation is central to addressing some of the largest challenges our world faces today, and the UK boasts one of the the world’s strongest sciences, technology and innovation ecosystems. The UK innovative life sciences and biotech sector responds to these challenges, from developing ideas on climate change and the ageing society to manufacturing vaccines for global pandemics. A diverse and inclusive workforce across our sector increases the opportunity for creativity and innovation. Organisations with more diverse teams are not only more innovative⁵ and lead to higher efficiency in knowledge-intensive industries, they also drive inventions and increase economic growth. A rich diversity of domestic and global talent and skills are needed for world class innovation and our sector can only achieve its goals for innovation⁶ if it draws on talents from all parts of society. Insights from the 2022 UK-wide survey of the Research and Innovation Workforce 2022 show the potential of improving diversity to both increase innovation in teams and help the UK to meet business demand for more research and innovation workers⁷.

Entrepreneurship is a crucial element of a dynamic and successful life sciences and biotech sector in the UK, developing innovations to become new products and services that better meet global needs and drive up national productivity. As part of the UK’s Industrial Strategy, government commissioned the Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship⁸, tapping into huge unrealized economic potential of female entrepreneurs. It is estimated that up to £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as UK men.

British Business Bank examined the profound effects ethnic and economic background, gender and place have on entrepreneurial opportunities and outcomes, concluding that there are persistent disparities for UK business owners from ethnic minority backgrounds⁹. Female entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds experience the biggest disparities and a number of actions are underway with which they intend to make progress for entrepreneurs facing such disadvantage.

It’s about the finance…

The availability of the right skills in an organisation plays a key role in where investors decide to invest and is therefore central to our competitiveness for onshore and offshore investment. Investors are setting high expectations when it comes to diversity and inclusion performance of organisations. In 2022, the Investor Leadership Network (ILN), a consortium of CEOs representing the largest institutional investors globally, partnered with Diversio to publish the Inclusion Playbook¹⁰ setting standards for DEI data collection to measure DEI performance of their portfolio companies. The methodology outlined in the Inclusion Playbook aligns with the methodology implemented in this report.

As a venture capital and private equity industry association, The British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) see diversity and inclusion to be an integral part of their mission, supporting firms to build inclusive environments in which everyone can thrive. Their latest survey in 2021 reported progress made regarding gender since their study on Women in Private Equity, but research still highlights the lack of gender and ethnic diversity in senior roles within the industry¹¹. It is essential to widen access due to the growing body of evidence to support the case for diversity enhancing performance and creating a more successful business.

In 2022, women in the UK launched over 150,000 companies and the number of female-led organisations continues to grow despite challenging economic conditions. Over 190 financial service institutions, including some of the UK’s largest banks, venture capital firms, angel investors, private equity and pension funds have committed to improving access to funding for women. They represent more than £1 trillion in assets under management¹².

For the innovative life sciences and biotech sector in the UK to thrive it needs to attract the most talented innovators from a diverse range of backgrounds, who can access investment to start, scale and grow businesses and retain talent in a highly competitive market.

Diversity and inclusion data gathered in this report demonstrates strong inclusivity and an overall level of diversity in talent working within the innovative life sciences and biotech sector in the UK.

The overall inclusion scores from the UK sector survey participants across all inclusion metrics (inclusive culture, fair management, career development, workplace flexibility and workplace safety), are meaningfully higher than the global biotech industry benchmark. Overall self-identified diversity data points for survey participants are also well balanced when compared to the global benchmark and UK population statistics. These include general parity on gender balance, recognition of racial and ethnic diversity across the sector and an openness in self reporting of sexual orientation, social mobility, physical ability, cognitive learning and mental health across the board.

However, data analysis reveals important diversity gaps across disciplines, management levels and demographic traits which require action at both a company and sector level:

• Representation of women drops significantly from senior leadership to C-suite and CEO positions and is far from parity across biomanufacturing, engineering and computational roles. 
• There is a lack of Black employees and even fewer Black leaders, within our sector. Digital and computational roles reported no Black employees at all.
• Whilst there is openness on self-reporting, some barriers still remain to reporting all personal traits, across all levels within the sector and a want for a more inclusive culture.
• Sector leaders are much more likely to have grown up with a social background of Doctoral-level knowledge, and provided access to valuable networks, than those at a less senior level.

To retain innovative talent within UK life sciences and biotech there is action needed to ensure all are included within the workplace as organisations start, grow and scale. Inclusion scores for workplace safety and workplace flexibility demonstrate secure working environments for the majority of colleagues. Individuals self-reported that the biggest improvement that could be made to sector inclusion was targeted career development, a need for workplace mentors and sponsors to create opportunities and invest in their success.

Key recommendations

In summary, this first of its kind data set highlights key recommendations, that can make a real difference to attracting diverse talent, accessing investment, and retaining the skills needed for a successful innovative life sciences and biotech sector in the UK.

To ensure a representative industry sample, Diversio deployed its proprietary survey across more than 30 self-selecting core biotech BIA member companies, representing variety of sizes, investment stages and locations across the UK. These early adopters are now leading the industry in their data collection and tracking, they include:

Over 1,200 employees across these innovative organisations participated in the data collection effort, anonymously sharing their identities and experiences. Altogether, Diversio collected more than 20,000 data points. The data included self-identified demographics (gender, racial/ethnic background, sexual identity, disability, mental health, cognitive learning), workplace experience metrics, as well as the region, seniority level, tenure and the department of each employee. Additional data was collected on social mobility with an understanding of the highest level of qualification within the individual’s household during formative years.

Diversio assessed inclusion, defined as the intersection of identity and experience, using its proprietary six-part Inclusion Framework. The Framework measures how individuals with different identities experience workplace culture, management, career development, work-life balance and psychological and physical safety. BIA was then able to benchmark the UK against global biotech diversity and inclusion data, comprising of professionals from the biochemistry, immunology and oncology space who are mainly based in North America. Member companies taking part in the BIA survey leverage Diversio’s AI driven recommendation engine, a database of over 1,600 evidence-based programmes, policies and practices proven to address inclusion pain points.

Having analysed the full dataset, BIA extracted eight key takeaways on the current state of diversity and inclusion across UK life sciences and biotech, producing recommendations to support both companies and the sector to take meaningful action.

Over 20,000 data points from individuals across innovative life sciences and biotech in the UK were analysed. Diversity data included self-identified demographics across gender, racial and ethnic background, sexual identity, physical disability, mental health, cognitive learning and social mobility. An inclusive range of options were provided for each demographic to ensure self-identity within the survey. To assure anonymity, answers with less than eight respondents were not reported. Workplace experience metrics, as well as geographical region, seniority level, tenure, and type of department were also included. Intersectionality analysis across data points shows both strengths of the sector and future recommendations which are summarised in this report.

UK life sciences and biotech industry is at general parity when it comes to overall representation of men and women, with women accounting for 51.2% of individual survey respondents. While the proportion of women holds steady at the management level for the organisations who took in the survey, the same representation is not seen at the executive or founder level, where women account for only 32% of C-suite roles and 26% of CEOs. This is an over-representation of that seen across the entire biotech sector – a trend that is consistent with the global biotech industry, based on Diversio’s internal global benchmarking data of companies that are actively measuring their diversity. Similar trends are seen in North America where according to BIO’s Measuring Diversity in the Biotech Industry 2022 report 34% women in senior executive roles decreases to 20% of CEOs¹³ for companies choosing to measure their diversity.

Gender balance across leadership roles

Survey data shows that there is a significant difference in proportions of men and women reported at departmental level. Business functions including finance, IT and Human Resources have the highest proportion of women at a ratio of 60:40 (women to men) and for scientific roles the ratio is 50:50. From survey feedback, team meetings are well balanced, language is unbiased, organisational culture is accepting and workspaces are flexible to meet individual needs. There are less women working in biomanufacturing and engineering occupations (35:65), decreasing further in digital and computational jobs (30:70) across the sector. There is little difference on inclusion scores for men and women in scientific roles; culture is seen as inclusive, management is fair and transparent, and career development is supportive. There is a notable difference in workplace flexibility across responses from men and women, which spans all departments. In engineering and biomanufacturing roles there is a significant difference reported with workplace culture.

Gender balance across departments

The survey data shows that the UK life sciences and biotech industry is as, if not slightly more, racially and ethnically diverse than the broader UK population, with 19.6% of survey respondents identifying with a racial and ethnic minority background vs 15% within the UK population taken in 2021¹⁴. That being said, Black employees are notably under-represented in the biotech industry, hovering at about 1.6% versus 3.5% within the UK population. A drop in representation is seen when it comes to racial and ethnic minorities in senior leadership roles (13%) and C-suite levels (15%). 11% of company CEOs within the survey are men from a racial or ethnic minority backgrounds, however, no women from BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) backgrounds were recorded at CEO level. There was also meaningfully more Black employees noted within engineering and bioprocessing roles (3.4%) and no employees and no Black employees reported in digital and computational roles.

Racial and ethnic diversity across leadership roles

8.2% of survey respondents identified as part of the LGBTQ2+ community, a slightly lower percentage than what is observed in the North American biotech industry, which hovers around 11% and much higher than reported in the England and Wales census of 2021 which reported 3.2%¹⁵. It is important to note that a disproportionally large number of respondents preferred not to answer these questions (8.7%) as within the census data (7.5%). This could suggest that there are likely more LGBTQ2+ individuals in the industry. However, there may be a level of discomfort being ‘out’ in the workplace, their identity may not have been included as an option, or potential concerns over treatment of answers generally across data collection processes. Of note in this analysis for the UK biotech sector is the lack of data at C-suite levels across the organisations surveyed.

Diversity in sexual orientation across leadership roles

Social mobility in STEM is a challenge. According to the Social Mobility Commission¹⁶, just 9% of life sciences professionals, 15% of scientists, 6% of doctors, 19% of tech workers and 21% of engineers come from a working class background. Those from a family with a professional background are two and a half times more likely to end up in a professional role than someone from a lower socio-economic background. The survey data reports that 35% of those in senior leadership roles and 37% of C-suite positions come from a background where a PhD was the highest household qualification compared to 21% of managers and individual contributors. According to Inclusive Boards, roughly a third of Board members and senior executives from tech businesses attended private school, 7% of the UK and 35% of Board members and 26% of senior executive attended Oxbridge¹⁷, compared to less than 1% of the population.

Improving social mobility could have far-reaching consequences for the sector. There is a significant – and growing – supply-demand imbalance in the STEM sector and a shortage of skills across UK biotech research, development and manufacturing positions. Improving social mobility also benefits society and research shows us that organisations that are diverse perform better and think faster¹⁸. Cognitive disparity helps businesses to see challenges and opportunities in new ways, resulting in a competitive edge that companies with heterogenous thinking miss. Differences in socio-economic backgrounds are just one example of how diversity can be improved in the sector.

Social mobility indicators across leadership roles

Physical ability, cognitive learning and mental health

Across participating companies we saw that 32.8% of employees self-identified as having either a physical disability, cognitive learning or mental health condition – meaningfully higher than the government statistic on UK working age adults which currently sits at less than 20%¹⁹. This discrepancy can likely be partially attributed to the stricter definition of the UK government, which requires individuals to have had a physical or mental health condition or illness for more than 12 months to be classified as an individual with a disability.

Physical ability, cognitive learning and mental health reporting across leadership roles

Diversio’s broader dataset shows that the prevalence of adults recognising their mental health has been consistently on the rise over the last several years, with meaningful year-over-year increases. This trend, in combination with the numbers collected from the employees at BIA member organisations shows a willingness to share mental health conditions, however, the numbers self-reporting decrease through seniority levels and levels of ‘prefer not to say’ increase.

Our data across UK biotech shows a steady number of individuals self-reporting a physical disability across levels, ranging from 11% to 7%. Combining this analysis with the inclusion scores shows little difference across those with and those not reporting a physical disability on fair management, career development, or workplace flexibility. There is a difference in measurement of whether the individuals feel like they are a part of a team and can make a meaningful contribution alongside their peers, determined through questions on inclusive culture. When combined with gender it is important to recognise that women in our sector with a physical disability scored workplace safety as the largest pain point.

Intersectional data analysis: Inclusion scores for all employees with and without a physical disability

Intersectional data analysis: Inclusion scores for women with and without a physical disability

Analysis of the data for individuals reporting alternative cognitive or learning abilities, which include a range of conditions such as dyslexia, memory loss, ADHD and autism, show the highest level of self-reporting at C-suite level (13.7%) compared to managers (10.8%) and senior leaders (7.7%). The most significant differences when reviewing responses on inclusion were seen between men and women, with women having a far less inclusive experience than men across all inclusion metrics.

Intersectional data analysis: Inclusion scores across men and women with a cognitive learning condition

Whilst research has shown the impact diverse teams have on innovation and investment, companies should also pay attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. Inclusion is defined here as the sense of belonging, openness and trust within an organisation, it is a measure of how well the sector can retain the incredible talent it has worked so hard to attract.

When it comes to inclusion, the UK biotech industry outperforms the global industry with an inclusion score of 72.7% versus 62.2%, respectively. The largest distinction is that UK companies have been able to better cultivate psychologically and physically safe workplaces as well as offer a greater work-life balance to their employees, relative to their overseas peers. The area where companies could improve when it comes to inclusion, regardless of demographic traits and geographic location within the UK, is targeted career development – ensuring employees feel that someone senior within their organisation is able to create opportunities and is invested in their growth.

What leaders across our sector say and do makes up to a 70% difference as to whether an individual reports feeling included²⁰. This really matters because the more people feel included, the more they speak up, go the extra mile, and collaborate — all of which lifts organisational performance. Data from this survey shows that C-suite executives responded more positively to inclusion metrics across their workplace than those working at other levels in their organisations. The further into the organisation the lower the inclusion scores. There is a role for senior leaders setting the strategy and organisational culture to pay attention to inclusion across the entire organisation.

Overview of inclusion scores across UK Biotech

	Inclusive Culture	Fair Management	Career Development	Workplace/ Flexibility	Workplace Safety
Individual Contributor	7.0	7.0	6.1	7.7	8.0
Management (Supervisor, Assistant Manager, Manager, Team Leader, Etc)	7.3	6.7	6.3	7.5	7.8
Senior Leadership (Director, Senior Director, Etc)	7.8	6.9	6.5	7.7	8.2
C-suite (Vice President, Executive, Etc)	9.2	7.9	7.7	9.1	8.6

	Inclusive Culture	Fair Management	Career Development	Workplace/ Flexibility	Workplace Safety
Individual Contributor	7.0	7.0	6.1	7.7	8.0
Management (Supervisor, Assistant Manager, Manager, Team Leader, Etc)	7.3	6.7	6.3	7.5	7.8
Senior Leadership (Director, Senior Director, Etc)	7.8	6.9	6.5	7.7	8.2
C-suite (Vice President, Executive, Etc)	9.2	7.9	7.7	9.1	8.6

Based on findings from this survey, BIA and Diversio offer recommendation that UK life sciences and biotech companies may want to consider to improve diversity and inclusion in their organisations. BIA also has some guidance on how to support the sector in achieving their diversity and inclusion objectives.