Among biopharma professionals surveyed by BioSpace, respect remains higher for managers than for CEOs, and unhappiness with company leadership had nearly 1 in 7 people looking to walk away from their employer.
Biopharma professionals are more likely to leave employers over dissatisfaction with company leadership than with management, according to career planning survey findings from BioSpace’s 2026 U.S. Life Sciences Employment Outlook report.
Asked late last year what was motivating them to look for new jobs, 15% of respondents chose “I am unhappy with company leadership,” while 9.1% picked “I am unhappy with my manager.”
Those findings were somewhat surprising to Lucy Georgiades, CEO and co-founder of Elevate Leadership, a company that designs management training programs. Georgiades told BioSpace by email that managers tend to have more of an impact than leadership on employees’ day-to-day happiness.
“Your manager impacts whether you love or hate your job, whether you go home in the evening feeling energised or discouraged,” she explained. “We’ve all had managers we’ve loved and managers who have severely impacted our mental health.”
On the other hand, Georgiades noted, leaders dictate company culture, which also has a huge impact on day-to-day happiness.
“If you’re not aligned with leadership it feels more hopeless and less likely to change, so leaving your job because of that feels like a likely outcome,” she said.
Multiple respondents criticized leaders in survey comments. Those comments included:
- “I don’t trust the leadership at some companies.”
- “Leadership in biopharma doesn’t seem to know what it wants, or act with any agility to rising problems, both of which negatively affect hiring.”
- “I need to leave my company. Senior leadership is really really bad.”
- “I hope we get leadership that put their employees first in their decision making process because our livelihood depends on what we do. When we are let down as employees and let out, other industries are not quick to pick us up. A fair leadership is what we all strive for.”
Respect Remains Higher for Managers Than CEOs
While unhappiness with managers and company leadership motivated some respondents to look for new jobs, most survey participants—over 80%—said they respect their CEO and manager. That said, support remained flat year over year for chief executives while ticking up slightly for management. When asked, “Do you respect your company’s CEO?”, 80.6% of respondents in 2024 and 80.4% in 2025 said yes, while the percentage that respect managers rose from 82.5% to 84.6%.
Overall, the past three career planning surveys have shown a trend of greater respect for managers than for CEOs, and the gap has widened. Last year, 4.2% more participants respected management than chief executives. That gap was 1.9% in 2024 and 0.7% in 2023.
Georgiades wasn’t surprised by this feedback.
“People form a closer relationship to their managers because they interact with them more day to day,” she said. “There are more opportunities for deeper conversations, for feedback which tends to strengthen relationships, and more opportunities to know more about each other’s personal lives.”
Leaders, Managers View Leadership Differently
As to how leaders and managers view leadership, a new Gallup report found that leaders rate themselves more highly across seven core leadership skills. The largest gap between the two groups’ perception was for thinking critically, or making well-thought-out decisions for the organization. Among leaders, 66% rated themselves as exceptional or outstanding, while 37% of managers scored them that way.
Creating accountability—holding everyone responsible for exceptional performance—ranked as the weakest leadership skill, with the lowest percentage of leaders (46%) and managers (30%) rating leaders as exceptional or outstanding.
That finding tracked with Georgiades’ experience, as she said most leaders view themselves as poor in terms of holding teams accountable. She also shared that a common complaint her business hears is that accountability is not held equally across all direct reports, which can be a sore point among peers.
“It’s incredibly frustrating for people to know that some people on the team are held accountable and others are not to the same extent,” Georgiades said.
Swaying Employee Opinion
If biopharma leaders want to improve how employees view them, Georgiades recommended they connect metrics and wins to the company’s mission, regularly ask for and graciously respond to feedback and thoughtfully communicate with their staffs.
“A lot is changing in this industry and clear, empathetic, well thought out communication to the broader company is incredibly important,” she said. “People often don’t notice the things that are communicated well but they most certainly notice when it’s not done well and it erodes trust incredibly fast.”
For example, Georgiades advised that when leaders make decisions quickly, they be transparent about the reason why.
“People don’t mind decisions being made fast but they do mind not understanding the rationale behind the decision.”
