turning to a holistic talent solution during hyper growth, UCB accelerates workforce performance.

January 5, 2026

buoyed by its MSP and RPO partnership, the global biopharmaceutical specialist accelerates its talent strategy and enhances quality of hire

client: UCB

the challenge
During one of the company’s most dynamic periods, the global drugmaker is leaning on a holistic solution to better track and manage its non-permanent workforce. By increasingly integrating its managed services program (MSP) into its overall talent strategy, UCB is realizing its growth ambition.

the solution
With demand for both permanent and contingent talent unabated, UCB has built a highly integrated MSP solution that it believes one day will underpin its goal to redefine the future of work. By embracing an integrated and collaborative approach, the company is adopting an innovative, powerful and future-proof model for resourcing for all of its business needs.

key results

Every program KPI is ahead of targeted levels, indicating the MSP solution is performing beyond expectations.

Cost savings of more than €3 million annually have been achieved.

Satisfaction has risen among stakeholders, with an NPS score of 71 (as of Q3 2025), an increase of 18.3% year over year.

Time to fill is nearly half of the goal the company’s set out to reach, despite rising candidate standards.

Just 1% of all requisitions are older than 75 days, despite the challenges of filling highly technical roles.

a decade of growth accelerated by talent

Anytime a company undergoes robust growth, its talent requirements undoubtedly spike. But what happens when it experiences the most prosperous period in its history? This is what’s occurring with global biotech leader UCB, which since the beginning of 2024, has brought about an unparalleled number of launches. These new products, the culmination of tremendous investments in people, led to double-digit sales gains in 2024 and the first half of 2025. More importantly, according to CEO Jean-Christophe Tellier, they herald an entire decade of growth ahead.

Great outcomes require great people. For UCB, this means a wide range of talent needs, from R&D scientists finding new molecules to regulatory affairs specialists overseeing various stages of product development to sales professionals driving revenue growth. Even as the company’s employee headcount has expanded significantly in the past 18 months, its contingent workforce has similarly grown by double digits. Such rapid growth is creating unique challenges for the Brussels-based drugmaker.

“Every year in UCB’s recruiting history appears to be the biggest year to date — until the next year comes along. Similarly on the contingent side, our activity grows year on year,” says Jonathan Berlan, the company's head of talent acquisition and internal mobility.

Since joining the company in 2019, Berlan has witnessed some of the most dynamic times in the company’s transformative journey, including when the company divested its other businesses in 2004 to focus on drug making and then shifting into the biopharmaceutical space exclusively. Shortly after he joined the pandemic unfolded and deeply disrupted the pharmaceutical industry. Berlan, like so many others, oversaw surging demand that year as the company advanced a dozen new drugs in the pipeline, some of which were on the cusp of launch. All of this was taking place in a highly remote environment, where so many of UCB’s workforce were forced to adapt to remote conditions.

This placed tremendous pressure on talent acquisition. Not only did hires grow significantly, but UCB refused to relax on candidate quality, hiring just 0.5% of all applicants.

“We have always been a very selective company when it comes to incoming talent, and we continue to be more and more discerning,” Berlan adds. “That means new hires get to work with the best people we can attract. We're very proud of that.”

Part of that success, Berlan points out, is attributed to its outsourced talent acquisition program with Randstad Enterprise, delivered by Randstad Sourceright, which has been providing end-to-end support across UCB’s global footprint since 2017. As the company’s total talent needs expanded, it was clear the same high-touch, tech-enabled and data-driven approach that catapulted its hiring achievements was needed for its contingent workforce. Berlan and other talent leaders at UCB believed that reimagining an optimized future of work, one that eschewed traditional hiring practices, would empower the company to fulfill its ambition for a decade of growth ahead.

growing toward an integrated model

At many companies, acquisition of the employee population remains largely separate from that of the contingent workforce. Traditionally, HR oversees permanent hires while procurement manages non-permanent talent, including temporary staffing, contractors, freelancers and, to some degree, services procurement. A small but growing number of organizations, however, are integrating services for all talent under one umbrella, typically led by HR and supported by procurement leaders.

Berlan explains that UCB talent leaders view non-permanent talent as critically important to the company’s people strategy and should be a consideration for any kind of work that needs to be done. Rather than fill a role based on historical practices — whether it’s staff augmentation or a permanent employee — the company eventually wants to help hiring managers make informed resourcing decisions by giving them the most comprehensive data and insights for guidance. A single talent advisor, then, can deliver the right person irrespective of the work arrangement.

“We're bringing these two recruitment capabilities much closer together, to the extent that we could imagine one day that instead of managing headcount, we would manage budgets and then hiring managers decide what proportion of this might be headcount or what proportion might be contingent based on required skills and tasks,” Berlan says. “This would lead to us having a very different kind of talent strategy with greater agility where recruiters become talent architects.”

an MSP that dovetails with perm hiring

To realize this vision, UCB is increasingly integrating its managed services program with its permanent recruitment strategy. The company has partnered with Randstad Enterprise to continuously evolve the program to address current and future growth of its contingent workforce. Bringing process excellence, the latest technological innovation and teams of highly experienced subject matter experts, Randstad Enterprise is focusing on addressing gaps while keeping an eye on building out a future roadmap that supports the company’s long-term mandates.

Among the contingent workforce issues UCB is prioritizing are temporary labor spend control, program visibility and process efficiency — all of which have become more challenging to administer as the company’s talent needs grow more complex. These types of issues are common among growing and highly matrixed companies. Add in the nature of UCB’s business — global, specialized biopharmaceutical products — and it’s easy to see how difficult managing non-permanent workers can become.

To deliver on a more streamlined, transparent and cost-effective program, Randstad Enterprise started by focusing on data and providing powerful insights on everything from headcount to requisitions to spend. This established a foundation for the company’s five main markets for controlling costs, achieving clarity on talent needs and identifying opportunities for improvements. Technological enablements such as AI tools to rank CVs are continually being assessed and introduced into the program. Supplier management and consolidation further created strong partnerships between UCB and its talent vendors, creating mutual benefits for both sides.

Moreover, the MSP solution is enabling UCB to move closer to the goal of utilizing one function to provide the optimal mix of talent for any need. For example, the company recently began construction of a new facility focused on neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation, epilepsy and early-stage development. Berlan says this is an example of a project where various types of skills and work arrangements are needed. Instead of sending the hiring managers to procurement for temporary staff and talent acquisition for permanent roles, one project team is supporting all talent needs.

“Our business gets very excited about being able to collaborate like this. It makes for a richer relationship between talent and the business and it is born out of a true partnership between UCB and Randstad. It’s definitely not an off-the-shelf service,” Berlan points out.

firing on all cylinders

Aside from creating a new way for resourcing, what other milestones has the MSP helped the company achieve? The KPIs are a textbook on how to effectively manage contingent talent even during a period of hyper growth.

Accommodate a surge in volume: As of the first half of 2025, UCB’s contingent talent needs grew by double digits from the year before. There have been no delays in hiring despite higher demand, with fill times at just 17.3 days, nearly half of UCB’s target of 30.
Faster access to better talent: Through talent marketing, expedited procurement processes and a buildout of direct sourcing, the company is excelling its goals for acquiring the right workers. For example, time to shortlist is just 2.7 days, well below its goal of five days and indicative of the program’s ability to attract and source ideal candidates.
A better experience and outcomes: A hallmark of any MSP solution is customer satisfaction, and in the first half of 2025 UCB hiring managers rated its program an average of 8.95 out of 10, well above a target of 7. In fact, since inception, the program has never scored below 8.3.

With most KPIs above target levels, the program is exceeding the expectations of UCB talent leaders. However, these goals are just the beginning. As the company moves toward its ideal state of talent utilization, employing various work arrangements as well as AI-empowered bots, it is on track to accelerate product development and commercialization. With the contingent workforce a cornerstone of this strategy, talent leaders are fulfilling a vision in which temporary resources become a competitive advantage rather than a cost center.

“ If you want an MSP program to really start to add value, you look at cost and compliance, but you also need to look at the skills of the individuals that you're bringing in and how these individuals complement the permanent workforce,” Berlan adds.