The most important resource carries no barcode

Social sustainability is not a feel-good topic

When it comes to sustainability, many companies first think of energy consumption, packaging or supply chains. For pharmacies, however, there is one resource whose availability decides business success more directly: qualified staff.

Without pharmacists and pharmaceutical specialists, opening hours cannot be maintained, new services cannot be offered and additional customers cannot be advised. A staff shortage therefore quickly becomes an operational and economic problem.

It is precisely here that social sustainability begins. It does not mean occasionally organising a team evening or putting fruit in the staff room. Rather, it asks whether working conditions, leadership and development opportunities are designed in such a way that employees can stay healthy, motivated and with the company over the long term.

For pharmacy managers this is increasingly a core entrepreneurial task.

More tasks meet limited staffing resources

The scale becomes clear when looking at the Swiss pharmacy landscape. Around 24,000 specialists work today in some 1,800 Swiss pharmacies. On average a pharmacy employs 12.7 people, which corresponds to roughly nine full-time positions.[1]

At the same time, pharmaSuisse points out that the workload has risen markedly more in recent years than the staffing resources. Added to this are retirements, long opening hours, higher expectations regarding the reconciliation of work and private life as well as additional tasks within primary medical care.[1][2]

This makes the skills shortage more than a recruitment problem.

Anyone who cannot fill vacancies first distributes the work among the existing team. This can give rise to additional strain, overtime and less time for counselling. If this state of affairs persists, the risk of losing further employees rises in turn.

A staffing bottleneck can thus reinforce itself.

Employee retention becomes an economic factor

Many pharmacies still focus their personnel strategy heavily on the question of how new employees can be found. At least as important, however, is another question: why should good employees stay?

A resignation does not only mean the loss of a worker. With an experienced employee, customer relationships, expertise, well-rehearsed procedures and frequently also informal knowledge about the business disappear.

Added to this are recruitment, onboarding and the additional burden on the remaining team.

Employee retention is therefore not a purely HR metric. It influences productivity, quality of counselling, customer loyalty and ultimately the profitability of a pharmacy.

Smaller and owner-managed pharmacies in particular can have an advantage here. They can often respond more quickly to individual needs, create areas of responsibility and offer employees development opportunities that are not necessarily tied to rigid hierarchies.

Leadership is decided in everyday life

Whether employees enjoy working in a pharmacy is rarely decided by a single big programme. Corporate culture arises instead in many small situations.

How does the manager react to a mistake? Are problems addressed or avoided? Does an employee find out when a customer particularly praised their advice? Are duty rosters treated as a purely organisational necessity, or drawn up jointly as far as possible? Does the team know why certain decisions are taken?

Particularly in a working environment with high customer frequency and many interruptions, leadership quickly becomes visible.

Appreciation does not mean permanent agreement. Good leadership creates orientation, formulates expectations clearly and gives regular feedback. Employees should know what is expected of them, where they are strong and where they can develop further.

Conflicts are part of this too. A sustainable team culture is not characterised by the absence of conflict, but by conflicts being addressed early and constructively.

Development is more than a continuing education obligation

Another underestimated factor is prospects.

If, after several years, an employee is still performing exactly the same tasks as on the first day, the danger of professional stagnation rises. At the same time, new fields of activity are constantly emerging in pharmacies.

Vaccinations, prevention services, medication management, dermocosmetics, digital services, care-home supply, quality management or business administration tasks all enable specialisations that can create attractive development prospects even within a community pharmacy.

Not every employee wants to take on a management position. Development can therefore equally mean receiving professional responsibility for a particular area, building up new services, training colleagues or taking responsibility for processes.

This creates an important change of perspective: continuing education is not only necessary in order to meet regulatory requirements. It can be an instrument of employee retention.

Flexibility needs good organisation

Flexible working models are becoming ever more relevant in the competition for skilled staff. At the same time, a pharmacy’s opening hours cannot be made flexible at will.

The solution therefore does not necessarily lie in maximum freedom, but in intelligent organisation.

Part-time models, reliable duty rosters, weekend duties known well in advance, job sharing or individually agreed working time models can considerably increase a business’s attractiveness. The prerequisite, however, is that the additional flexibility does not come at the expense of other employees.

Social sustainability therefore also means organising processes in such a way that flexibility becomes possible.

A pharmacy with clear responsibilities, good handovers, standardised procedures and sufficiently documented knowledge is less dependent on individual people. Employees and the company benefit simultaneously.

Good working conditions are also a prerequisite for good care

The significance of this question extends beyond the individual pharmacy.

Pharmacies are among the particularly easily accessible institutions of Swiss primary care. At the end of 2024, 1,830 pharmacies were available to the population.[1]

Just how relevant their advisory function has become is shown by the “Primary Healthcare Monitoring 2025” of the Sotomo research institute. In the representative survey of 1,724 people, 30 per cent stated that within one year they had refrained at least once from visiting a doctor because of advice received in a pharmacy.[3] Two thirds of respondents would additionally make use of medical triage in the pharmacy if it were offered.[3]

The role of the pharmacy is thus developing further.

But every additional service requires time and qualified employees. The expansion of pharmaceutical primary care therefore only works sustainably if the working conditions of those providing these services are also taken into account.

Social sustainability thus ultimately becomes a question of security of supply.

Social responsibility begins on your own doorstep

A pharmacy’s community engagement is also part of social sustainability. Many pharmacies work closely with nursing homes, home care organisations, doctors, schools or local associations. They run prevention campaigns, advise vulnerable population groups and are, for many people, a familiar first port of call for health questions.

Such engagement strengthens a pharmacy’s local roots.

What matters, however, is the order. A company appears hardly credible if it communicates social responsibility outwardly while its own team is permanently overloaded.

Social sustainability therefore begins in one’s own business and radiates outwards from there.

Diverse teams can be an advantage

The Swiss population is linguistically, culturally and demographically diverse. This diversity is also reflected in pharmacies’ clientele.

A team with different language skills, experiences and age groups can therefore have a concrete benefit for care. One employee may speak a customer’s language, another knows the needs of older patients particularly well, yet another has in-depth knowledge of digital health services or new offerings.

What matters is less diversity as an abstract corporate goal than the ability actually to make use of different competences within the team.

That too is a leadership task.

What pharmacy managers should actually measure

What is strategically important should not be managed exclusively by gut feeling.

Alongside turnover, margin and inventory turnover, it is therefore also worth looking at personnel indicators. How high is staff turnover? How long do positions remain vacant? How much overtime accrues? How often are employees absent due to illness? Are continuing education opportunities actually taken up? Are there employees who take on additional responsibility? How often do structured staff appraisals take place?

No single metric provides the complete answer.

Taken together, however, such figures can show early on whether a team is stable or whether problems are developing – long before another resignation lands on the desk.

Social sustainability thus turns from an abstract term into a controllable component of pharmacy management.

The most important investment is already standing behind the counter

Digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence will change many processes in pharmacies. They can reduce administrative tasks, improve goods flows and support counselling.

They do not, however, replace trust between people.

A pharmacy’s real capital therefore consists not only of stock, location or technical infrastructure. It consists equally of expertise, experience, relationships and the team’s willingness to take responsibility for customers and patients every day.

Anyone who takes this resource for granted risks losing it.

Anyone who instead understands good leadership, development opportunities, flexible working conditions and a robust corporate culture as an investment creates a competitive advantage that a competitor cannot simply order in.

A pharmacy’s most important resource does not, after all, carry a barcode.

Practical impulse: the decisive question for pharmacy managers

Perhaps social sustainability begins with a surprisingly simple question: if one of my best employees received a job offer from another pharmacy today, what convincing reasons would they have to stay with us?

Anyone who cannot find a clear answer to that may have just identified their company’s most important strategic need for action.