What 59% of Life Sciences Leaders Are Missing About AI and Retention

Life sciences is the sector most willing to capture the full upside of AI productivity for itself, and the sector most worried that the next generation of leaders is not ready. Those two findings are not separate problems. They are the same problem at different ends of a career.

When we asked life sciences and healthcare executives in our Q1 2026 Executive Survey Panel how they plan to handle AI-driven productivity gains, 59% said they intend to maintain current compensation while productivity rises. That is the highest figure of any sector in our survey, well above the cross-industry average of 27%. Another 24% said they were still evaluating their compensation philosophy, and only 6% said they planned to share a portion of the productivity gains with employees through adjusted compensation structures. 

 
In the same survey, 29% of life sciences respondents said their potential successors were less prepared for AI challenges despite AI being a daily reality, by far the highest figure of any sector. The cross-industry average was 16%. Life sciences leaders are planning to hold compensation flat in a sector where they already believe the next generation is falling behind. 

The Sector’s Operating Environment

The context in which these decisions are being made is a demanding one for employers. The World Health Organization projects a global shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, with the gap concentrated in low- and lower-middle income countries but felt in every region. The pharmaceutical industry is simultaneously heading into what IQVIA calls Patent Cliff 2.0, with more than $90 billion in global patent losses at net manufacturer prices projected between 2025 and 2029. The affected products span many of life sciences’ largest therapeutic areas, with a mix of small-molecule and biologic drugs facing generic and biosimilar competition. 

The R&D pressure is equally real. Deloitte’s 2026 Life Sciences Outlook found that 78% of surveyed biopharma and medtech executives expect AI to play a central role in driving major change in their organizations, with 29% of biopharma leaders and 31% of medtech leaders planning to use AI tools or training to improve workforce productivity. 

A sector that urgently needs to retain its most specialized talent is counting on AI to deliver productivity gains across R&D and operations, while also planning to keep the compensation for that talent flat as AI raises the returns. The people being asked to adopt AI tools, redesign their workflows, and deliver the productivity gains the sector needs are the same people the sector plans not to share the upside with. 

Who Life Sciences Is Asking to Carry the Transformation

In some sectors, capturing AI productivity gains for the organization is defensible. When the work is transactional and the talent pool is broad, the employer has leverage. Life sciences is not that sector. Writing for the World Economic Forum, Regeneron EVP of Human Resources Sally Paull describes the forces facing the sector as a structural challenge rather than a cyclical one, with demographic shifts, generational leadership turnover, a shrinking global STEM pipeline, and AI disruption arriving together. Paull’s argument is that life sciences is facing a workforce design problem, not a talent acquisition problem, because the supply of specialized scientific talent is tightening at the same moment demand is rising. 

The people at the center of that tightening pool are the ones life sciences cannot easily replace. A principal scientist with machine learning fluency, a clinical operations leader with experience running AI-augmented trials, or a regulatory affairs director who understands how AI changes the submission process is difficult to hire back once they leave. These people have competitors who will pay them more. 

The specific risk is not that every employee will leave. The risk is that the most mobile ones will, and the ones who stay will often be the ones with fewer outside options. That is the opposite of the talent profile life sciences needs to get through Patent Cliff 2.0, a compressed R&D pipeline, and a workforce transformation that the sector itself says its successors are not prepared for. 

How Compensation Becomes a Succession Problem

Compensation decisions made today influence the leadership bench that exists in five and ten years. A life sciences organization that plans to hold pay flat while AI raises productivity is signaling to its best performers that the upside of their effort belongs to someone else. Those people are the ones most likely to leave, and the ones most likely to be offered senior roles at competitors that pay differently. The organization loses them before they reach the point where they could have become its next generation of leaders. 

The leaders who stay are often the ones who were not recruited away, and that selection bias works its way into the succession slate. When the current generation looks at the bench and concludes that the successors are less prepared for AI’s impact on the sector than they were, part of what they are seeing is the consequence of a decade of compensation philosophies that did not retain the most ambitious or the most marketable.  

It is a pipeline problem that was a compensation problem first.

Life sciences has long built leaders through long tenures, cross-functional rotations, and patient investment in scientific and commercial judgment. That development pathway only works if the organization can retain the people it intends to develop. A compensation philosophy that takes the upside of AI productivity for the organization and leaves nothing for the employee makes retention harder, which makes development harder, which makes succession harder still. 

What Life Sciences Boards Should Be Asking

The compensation question and the succession question are usually treated separately. They sit in different committees, get reported against different metrics, and involve different people. The data suggests they are the same question. An organization that plans to keep compensation flat as AI raises productivity will likely struggle to develop, retain, and promote the leaders it needs for the next decade. 

Boards overseeing life sciences organizations should look at three things: 

• Does their compensation philosophy reflect the talent market the organization is competing in, not the one it would prefer to be competing in? 
• Have succession plans been tested against the capability profile the next five years will require, rather than the one the last five years rewarded? 
• Are the CHRO and the Chief Scientific Officer in the room when compensation and succession are discussed together, because they cannot be solved apart? 

Life sciences has built its reputation on scientific rigor and patient trust over decades. Both of those rest on the judgment of the people who do the work. If the sector does not share the upside of AI with those people, it will be harder to hold onto them. And the cost of that will show up in the succession conversation a decade from now, when the bench the organization needs is already working somewhere else. 

About the Authors

Şükran Tümay is a Managing Partner at Stanton Chase London, specialising in senior leadership appointments across the Life Sciences and Healthcare sector. Her work spans pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medtech, diagnostics, and healthcare services, with a strong focus on regulatory complexity, scientific innovation, and the leadership capabilities required to drive progress in highly regulated environments. She brings more than two decades of cross‑border executive search experience across Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, advising global organisations on mission‑critical leadership decisions. 

Her approach is grounded in deep sector knowledge and a nuanced understanding of the talent landscape across R&D, clinical development, regulatory affairs, market access, commercial strategy, and operational leadership. She partners closely with boards and executive teams to identify leaders who can navigate scientific, regulatory, and commercial challenges while shaping sustainable growth.  

Gavin McCartney, a Partner at Stanton Chase London, serves as the Global Sector Leader for the Health and MedTech sector. He brings over two decades of extensive experience managing executive search assignments for clients at global, regional, and local levels, conducting searches across Europe, US, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Gavin’s international executive search expertise includes working with executive teams across the Life Sciences and Healthcare industry, handling mandates for C-suite/executive leadership and board positions, closely partnering to help onboard leadership strength and drive commercial advantage. 

In addition to international corporate organisations, Gavin brings specific knowledge and expertise to support early-mid venture startups and scale-ups, as well as long-standing relationships with PE backed portfolio businesses.