Accelerating team growth to match client demand

One of ICON’s long-standing clients, with a partnership spanning over a decade, encountered an unexpected surge in Trial Master File (TMF) documentation workload, necessitating a swift expansion in team capacity. With the project duration limited to six months and no long-term commitment, attracting experienced professionals became challenging. To address this short-term demand efficiently and maintain quality and regulatory compliance, ICON needed to onboard new team members quickly and ensure immediate productivity. This case study shows the effectiveness of this agile and forward-thinking approach to workforce scaling under time-sensitive conditions.

India is a hub of highly skilled professionals; however, for experienced hires, the average time from posting a job to onboarding a candidate can extend up to five months. The hiring cycle typically involves a month-long screening and interview process, followed by a standard two to three-month notice period that candidates serve with their current employers. Onboarding itself takes an additional three to four weeks. Furthermore, adhering to this conventional hiring timeline posed a significant operational risk. With hiring scheduled to commence in March and a strict deadline to clear a growing document backlog by the end of 2024, this delay has led to increased pressure on existing resources and the potential for non-compliance.
 

Other challenges included:

• Extended hiring cycle limiting the ability to scale resources in a timely manner to meet high volume deliverables.
• Pending backlog: Risk of compounding backlog during the hiring and onboarding phase.
• Limited flexibility in fast tracking onboarding due to established notice period norms and onboarding.
• Increase in workload for existing team members: Strain on current team members expected to manage both existing workload and interim support for new hires.
   

ICON ‘s Operations, Talent Acquisition and Human Resources teams designed an internship program to speed up the hiring and onboarding process while ensuring that interns had the skills and support they needed.

To address the challenges, ICON provided expertise to develop custom, responsive solutions including:

• Rapid-hiring strategies: 20 interns were hired within two weeks of receiving an offer.
• Customised onboarding: A three-week onboarding training program was designed to equip interns with the necessary skills and knowledge to make them productive as soon as possible.
• Mentorship framework: Each intern had a mentor for guidance, support and oversight.
• Progressive responsibilities: Interns assumed greater responsibilities as they grew more confident and skilled.
• Compliance-focused training: ICON provided comprehensive training on regulatory requirements, ensuring new hires understood the importance of compliance in TMF documentation and adhering to client’s SOPs and processes.

ICON’s internship program achieved remarkable results: 

• Cross-departmental collaboration: ICON’s operations team, talent acquisition and HR teams worked together to design and deliver the program.
• Reduced hiring and onboarding time: From five months to three weeks.
• Successful documents processing: Approximately 44,000 documents were processed, and the client was highly satisfied with the overall quality rating of 96%.
• Intern satisfaction 96% overall satisfaction rate among interns.
• Talent pipeline: 18 interns remained with ICON, with nine joining the ICON TMF team and nine joining the client’s TMF team.

The internship program was a resounding success, delivering high-quality results and meeting the client’s needs. This case study showcases ICON’s ability to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to complex challenges, reported high customer satisfaction, reflecting our strong collaboration and commitment to operational excellence.