Quintiles is laying off workers again.
The Durham, North Carolina-based clinical research organization (CRO) is reportedly laying off workers in a “small employee action.” Quintiles, a privately held company, isn’t disclosing how many workers were affected, nor will it say where the cuts were made. Quintiles also didn’t say much last May when the company confirmed layoffs throughout the company.
Quintiles is the industry’s largest CRO with annual revenue topping $3 billion and more than 20,000 workers employed wordwide.
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These layoffs shouldn’t set off any alarm bells. Here’s why: CROs are constantly ramping up and scaling down their workforces depending on the contracts they sign with pharmas and the amount of work those contracts require. That’s the nature of running a business that handles outsourced work from the pharmaceutical industry. And to be fair, Quintiles does have job postings listed in several markets, including North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park region.
Still, I’m curious about where the cuts are happening and where that work is going. In 2008, Raleigh-based CRO INC Research announced cuts amounting to 3 percent of its North American workforce. PPD, another CRO headquartered in North Carolina, laid off 270 in 2009. Like INC, those cuts were also confined to the North American operations.
Outsourcing is a way for the pharma industry to trim expenses but even the companies doing the outsourced work need to cut costs. INC and PPD made cuts in North America because it costs them less to do clinical research work overseas. Quintiles may be the largest CRO but it’s not immune to those same industry pressures. Maybe those pressures are starting to become more evident now.
