As the head of people and culture procurement within Roche’s global procurement organization, Madelyn Abreu’s scope covers everything related to Roche’s people – from its employees (HR services) to its external workforce.

Roche’s program comprises over 6,000 workers – ranging from light industrial and scientific to IT and commercial – with annual spend of around CHF700 million globally. Recently, Roche established a global template for the management of its contingent workforce programs, with harmonized processes, systems and governance that “thinks global and acts local,” as Abreu describes it, which set the foundations for the next step in the program’s maturity journey: a cross-divisional effort with HR for developing and realizing total talent management.

As total talent management is becoming front and center in contingent worker conversations, says Abreu, one challenge is staying attuned with the changing market to provide stakeholders with state-of-the-art solutions and great experiences. With Roche’s program ensuring access to talent to support serving patients in a timely manner, she says Roche now aims to explore new ways of engaging talent in alignment with the company’s overarching workforce strategy.

Abreu has worked in indirect procurement for 13 years, mostly in professional services. After moving to Switzerland five years ago, she joined her first official contingent workforce program, then moving into managing programs and implementing VMS and MSP before growing into her current role.