A pharmaceutical company can lose technical depth without losing the person who holds it. The employee remains on the payroll, receives a promotion and begins spending most of the week supervising others. The organisation records a successful internal appointment. The work that made the person valuable is now done less often, sometimes by people who still need their close attention. There are colleagues who welcome that change and become excellent managers. The problem begins when it is the only credible route to progression.
I first noticed this in conversations with experienced formulation and analytical colleagues. They did not all want the same career. Some wanted responsibility for a team, some wanted harder technical questions, and some wanted both at different points. Our employment structure recognised the managerial move more readily than the deeper specialist contribution. We responded with individual exceptions until the exceptions themselves became difficult to explain. A retention payment could keep someone for a time, but it did not establish what their future work would be.
The work must precede the grade
I do not think the answer begins by inventing a senior-sounding title. It begins with a question for the technical leadership: what contribution does this business need that is more demanding than the current role but different from line management? The answer may include resolving more complex problems, reviewing difficult evidence, improving methods or developing the judgement of other specialists. Each possibility needs a concrete description. Otherwise, the people function is being asked to price an aspiration that nobody has defined.
At the fictional Anvethra Pharmaceuticals, our 2021 review covered eighty-four formulation and analytical colleagues. We worked with technical leaders on the responsibilities and evidence for specialist grades. My function could examine consistency, job structure and pay consequences. It could not decide whether a scientific contribution met the required standard. That boundary was important. A career framework should make technical judgement accountable and explainable, not replace it with a general competency conversation conducted by someone without the relevant expertise.
The framework also had to clarify what a specialist appointment did not mean. A more senior grade did not automatically authorise every technical activity or make the employee the manager of nearby colleagues. Responsibilities for particular decisions remained defined through the relevant functional arrangements. Without that clarity, a second career path could create confusion about authority just as easily as it could create opportunity. A good appointment describes both the contribution expected and the decisions that remain elsewhere.
Finance raised a reasonable concern about cost. Once a company describes another progression route, employees may expect many promotions. Our answer was not to promise that the structure would pay for itself through an unverified retention benefit. We proposed a bounded assessment and showed the actual pay effect. Eighteen colleagues entered specialist grades, adding ₹1.26 Cr to annual pay cost. The executive team approved that expenditure because it wanted those roles and contributions, not because we had assigned a speculative financial value to every possible departure avoided.
Assessment needs an answer for the unsuccessful colleague
The more difficult work concerned the sixty-six colleagues who did not enter a new grade. An organisation often prepares extensively for announcing the successful appointments and much less carefully for explaining the rest. We were not immune to that tendency. Some feedback initially described the standard in terms too broad to help a colleague understand the decision. Saying that a person needed to demonstrate greater impact was not enough if nobody could explain what evidence would be relevant in their actual work.
We improved the feedback by asking technical reviewers to connect the decision to the proposed responsibility. Was the evidence incomplete? Was the contribution valuable but still within the current role? Had the colleague been denied an opportunity to demonstrate the work? Those are different situations. They may require further evidence, a different assignment or a reconsideration of the role itself. A development conversation becomes unhelpful when every unsuccessful result is described as a personal shortcoming regardless of the opportunities available.
There must also be a way to challenge an assessment without turning every disagreement into a negotiation over pay. Review criteria, the people responsible for applying them and the route for reconsideration should be known. That does not mean every employee will agree with the outcome. It means the company can explain how the conclusion was reached and correct an error where one is found. A process that cannot tolerate a reasoned challenge is unlikely to command confidence merely because its title includes the word specialist.
Managers have concerns of their own. A senior specialist may earn more than someone who supervises a larger team. The company needs to be willing to explain why different forms of contribution can justify different rewards. If leadership continues to treat the number of direct reports as the ultimate evidence of seniority, the technical path will remain a secondary route whatever the policy says. The change therefore requires a management conversation about value, not just a revised set of grade descriptions.
A second ladder can repeat the first ladder’s mistakes
After the appointments, the work must still exist. A colleague cannot sustain a specialist contribution if every week is filled with tasks from the previous role. The manager and technical leadership should agree what changes in the assignment, how time will be used and what evidence will be reviewed. Otherwise the company has purchased a more expensive title without making room for the responsibility that justified it. The employee may then be criticised for not demonstrating a contribution they were never given the opportunity to make.
This is why my current review looks at twelve specialist appointments made over the previous two years. Nine have written evidence of the contribution expected at their grade; three need clearer role definitions. I do not want to respond by expanding the framework again before resolving those three cases. The issue may be the role, the allocation of work or the original assessment. Each possibility should be examined. Treating every difficulty as a need for another training course would avoid the organisational decision.
A specialist structure is also not a permanent classification of a person’s ambition. Someone may later choose management, or a manager may return to deeper technical work. The employment framework should make those choices discussable without presenting one as advancement and the other as retreat. What matters is the responsibility being undertaken and the evidence of readiness for it. A career can become more valuable through depth, breadth or a change of focus; the company should be precise about which contribution it needs.
The practical test is therefore modest but demanding. Can the organisation describe a senior technical role, assess it credibly, pay for it and provide the work through which it will be exercised? If it can, the specialist has a real choice. If it cannot, a second ladder may simply decorate the original problem: expertise is praised in speeches while progression still requires the person to spend less time using it.