Click here for Part 1 of Worldwide Clinical Trials President Peter Benton’s Q&A.
Q: Do you think Worldwide’s culture of open communication helps the company stand out?
Peter Benton: Absolutely. When anyone at Worldwide is facing frustration, we encourage an open line of communication directly to their managers, HR partners and senior leaders – including me – so that we can remove the barriers that could be standing in the way of allowing them to reach their full potential. We want our employees to have everything they need, from a manager who’s willing to support career growth or help solve an issue, to access to training and a comfortable workplace environment. If our employees need more sunlight and better coffee, I want to know about it. Especially the coffee!
It’s also important that our work has meaning and makes us proud, considering that we spend as much time at work as we do at home with our families. As a contract research organization (CRO), Worldwide’s work is very meaningful—the clinical research we do touches our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, family, and friends—who may face a range of illnesses that could be helped by the treatments we explore. This includes cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory disorders such as arthritis and psoriasis, and central nervous system (CNS) disorders, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
The special camaraderie that we have at Worldwide is born of that shared purpose and is something people strive for in their work life. I want our employees to tell every relative and friend, “Get a job at Worldwide Clinical Trials.” And if we’re falling short of being the employer that they want to recommend to their friends and family, we want our employees to know that the door is always open, and that they should share their concerns with the leaders of the company so we can better meet their expectations.
Q: What else makes Worldwide different?
Peter Benton: Even though Worldwide’s history includes the merging of many smaller clinical research organizations around the world, there’s unity of culture and spirit throughout the entire company, given the strong patient and site focus that characterized these organizations. We’re one culture, one team, and one vision—we’re Worldwide Clinical Trials whether we’re in Russia, in the EU, in the U.S., in Asia Pacific, or in South America. We’re a unified brand.
We’re big enough to matter—we’ve got global thinking and global capabilities that are crucial for clinical research programs today—yet we’re small enough to care and to be entrepreneurial in our approaches to our sponsor’s challenges, regardless of the size of the program or the company providing sponsorship. Customers choose us because they want our full, undivided attention, but they also need to have that global capability, where together we can exploit the globalization of research that has been ubiquitous over the last decade. I talk about Goldilocks a lot—we’re not too big, not too small; we’re just the right fit for our customers around the world.
Q: What future do you see for CRO companies?
Peter Benton: I advise everyone to consider working at a CRO company as an exciting career opportunity. The guaranteed fact is that people are receiving more medical treatments and taking more pharmaceutical products today than their parents and grandparents did. The better our healthcare, the longer we live and the more potential contributions to society we can make; the longer we live, the more healthcare we will need. This business is going to grow for a long time, while at the same time becoming increasingly sophisticated in the service platforms that must be delivered. And there’s a tremendous amount of research left to be done as to how to improve the quality of life for so many people and eliminate or reduce the impact of as many diseases and ailments as possible. Every day at Worldwide, we are privileged to work on the front lines of medical discovery at a time when it’s needed the most, and the contributions potentially are transformative. The market is strong and the future is bright, especially for a CRO company like Worldwide Clinical Trials.
