In this in-person episode of The TechWolf Podcast, we sit down with Ben Wein, Director of Workforce Skills Enablement at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), live from the Flanders House in New York City.

Ben shares the inside story of how one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is becoming a skills-based organization—starting with a business-critical talent shortage in cell therapy manufacturing. He explains how BMS uses skills data to drive faster hiring, smarter workforce planning, and ultimately, patient impact.

💡 Final Takeaway: In pharma, solving the right talent problem isn’t a nice-to-have—it can literally save lives. Skills data is how BMS gets there.

Ben shares:
✔ Why time-to-fill became a life-or-death metric at BMS
✔ How skills helped solve a manufacturing talent crisis in cell therapy
✔ What not to focus on in your first year of becoming skill-based
✔ Why AI and task-level data will define the next wave of skills strategy
✔ What pharma gets right about workforce planning—and what others can learn

Time stamps:

[00:00] Meet Ben Wein, live from NYC
[03:33] What is a skills-based organization anyway?

[06:45] How a talent shortage in cell therapy became a catalyst
[09:09] Why BMS started with talent acquisition—not L&D
[11:34] How they built up skills data from zero
[13:28] Managing business expectations with imperfect data
[15:09] What language to use when speaking to the business vs HR
[16:15] What the BMS skills team looks like (and why it moved out of Talent)
[18:50] Their North Star: Time-to-fill and internal mobility
[20:41] Why tasks, roles, and skills must be treated as one system
[24:28] How they built employee trust—from podcasts to pilot rollouts
[28:52] The future of skills-based workforce planning in pharma
[31:08] Where Ben learns: forums, whiteboards, and peer networks
[33:02] Ben’s question for our next guest: “What if we’re wrong about skills?”