Employers need to think young

By Tom Clarke

It is time New Zealand employers took a better look at the business potential of younger people, says 28-year-old Andrew Lane.

Mr Lane has become the New Zealand head of strategy and planning for the pharmaceutical division of the multinational company, Novartis. He is believed to be the youngest executive in the company.

His main job is negotiating with Pharmac, the Government drug-buying and subsidising company.

A qualified accountant, he believes multinationals are generally better than New Zealand companies at picking the people they think will do the job, with little regard to age. New Zealand employers, he says, tend to be reluctant to give senior positions to younger executives.

"Contrary to what New Zealanders think about their business practice, I think they're actually behind the times in the way they think and the way they employ people," he says.

"Someone recently said to me that in New Zealand we employ people on their skills and experience, and we fire them on their attitude and behaviour. But if you follow the theme overseas, they employ people on their attitude and behaviour much more than we do, although obviously skills and experience are still important."

Mr Lane believes one of the reasons for his advancement is the fact that he has financial skills as well as marketing experience.

He joined Sandoz five years ago as financial accountant and was later promoted to head of finance and administration. On the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy to form Novartis, he switched to business development manager and has now become head of strategy and planning.

His experience is unusual, he says, because he came from an accounting background and not through the sales representative/product manager path. He says this helps in looking at strategies from a slightly different angle.

The increasing importance placed on cost in the health field has also been a factor, he says.

"Unfortunately, dollars and cents are playing a much bigger role now in deciding which drugs will get funded, as opposed to the view that if it's a good drug we must have it in our hospitals."

He believes his financial background will "hopefully help us to reach an understanding (with Pharmac) on reimbursing us for our pharmaceutical products."

Mr Lane will also head the company's generics division which handles the sales and marketing of its more established products. He will also look after the company's business development activities in its Pacific regional territories, including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Novartis is based in Switzerland and is one of the world's biggest health-care, agribusiness and consumer health companies, with offices in more than 100 countries. It employs about 82,000 people.

Novartis New Zealand Ltd has an annual turnover of around $45 million and is one of our largest pharmaceutical companies.