UCB’s latest workplace recognition arrives at a consequential moment for the biopharmaceutical company. As it expands its Georgia footprint with a planned $2 billion biologics manufacturing campus, the company is positioning talent—not just facilities and automation—as a critical part of its U.S. growth strategy.
UCB has been named a winner of the 2026 Metro Atlanta Top Workplaces Award by Axios, a recognition based on employee feedback rather than an employer-submitted assessment. The award comes as the biopharmaceutical company prepares for a major expansion of its manufacturing operations in Georgia.
UCB has maintained its U.S. headquarters in the Atlanta metropolitan area for more than three decades and currently employs more than 400 people in Georgia. The company’s workforce strategy is now taking on greater importance as it builds out capabilities that will require specialized scientific, engineering, manufacturing and digital skills.
In March, UCB announced plans to establish a new U.S. biologics manufacturing facility in Gwinnett County. The company expects the project to create more than 330 permanent jobs and generate approximately $5 billion in economic impact. The planned campus will span about 460,000 square feet and use AI, robotics and automation as part of a digital-first manufacturing model.
That combination changes the significance of a workplace award. For UCB, employee experience is increasingly connected to an operational question: can the company attract and retain the people required to run a highly automated biologics manufacturing network?
The 2026 Top Workplaces recognition covers organizations with 159 to 499 employees in the Metro Atlanta market and is based solely on confidential employee feedback collected by third-party workplace research organization Energage. UCB was previously recognized in 2021.
The distinction matters because traditional employer branding can tell prospective candidates what a company wants its workplace to look like. Employee-survey-based recognition offers a different signal: how workers actually perceive the organization.
UCB executives have emphasized collaboration, career development and employee empowerment as elements of the company’s culture. Those priorities will become more consequential as the organization moves from a predominantly headquarters-centered workforce strategy toward a broader life sciences and advanced manufacturing ecosystem.
From HR initiative to infrastructure strategy
The shift is playing out across biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
Modern biologics facilities are increasingly built around automation, connected data, robotics and advanced analytics. UCB says its planned Georgia facility will incorporate AI, robotics and automation, meaning the workforce supporting it will need to combine domain knowledge with increasingly sophisticated digital capabilities.
That creates a challenge for HR and talent leaders. Hiring alone is unlikely to solve the skills equation. Companies also need mechanisms for reskilling existing employees, mapping capabilities against future roles and creating career paths that keep specialized workers inside the organization.
Deloitte research highlights the scale of the issue. Its analysis of biopharma supply-chain workforce trends found that job postings for data engineers in life sciences increased 69% between 2019 and 2024, while demand for data scientists rose 16%. The firm also found that 83% of surveyed biopharma supply-chain leaders saw a need to upskill or reskill a significant portion of their workforce to support digital transformation.
For HR technology teams, that puts workforce analytics, skills management, learning platforms and talent intelligence closer to the center of manufacturing strategy.
The same dynamic is visible beyond biopharma. Deloitte’s 2025 smart manufacturing research found that 92% of surveyed manufacturers believe smart manufacturing will be a major driver of competitiveness over the next three years. Yet workforce capability remains one of the obstacles to implementation.
The enterprise HR technology angle
UCB’s announcement does not represent a new HR software platform, AI recruiting product or workforce analytics deployment. Its importance to the HRTech market is indirect but significant.
As biopharma companies automate production, the definition of a manufacturing employee changes. Operators may need greater digital literacy. Engineers may work alongside robotics and AI systems. Supply-chain teams increasingly require data skills. HR organizations therefore need to understand not simply how many employees they have, but which skills exist across the workforce and which capabilities will be required next.
That puts UCB in the same broader enterprise technology conversation occupied by platforms from Workday, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, although the company’s announcement is about workforce growth and culture rather than a specific HR software implementation.
The competitive question for HR leaders is becoming less about whether to deploy technology and more about whether technology, learning and workforce planning are integrated closely enough to support business transformation.
McKinsey’s research on life sciences talent reinforces that point. Its analysis of nearly one million R&D job listings and survey responses from 705 R&D professionals found that career development, advancement potential, meaningful work and flexibility are important factors for retaining life sciences talent.
That makes UCB’s employee-feedback-based recognition particularly relevant. A company can invest billions in physical infrastructure, but those assets still depend on a workforce capable of operating, maintaining and continually improving them.
What enterprise teams should watch
For HR leaders evaluating similar expansions, UCB’s approach illustrates three areas worth monitoring.
First is skills visibility. Organizations building automated facilities need better ways to identify existing capabilities and forecast future skill requirements.
Second is internal mobility and learning. As automation changes job responsibilities, career development can become a retention mechanism as well as a training function.
Third is employee experience. Workplace recognition is not a substitute for compensation, career progression or effective management, but employee sentiment can provide an early indicator of whether an organization is successfully navigating large-scale transformation.
UCB’s Georgia expansion therefore represents more than another manufacturing investment. It is also a workforce technology and talent-management challenge in waiting.
The company has already committed capital to the facility. The next test will be whether its people strategy can scale at the same pace.
Market Landscape
The HRTech implications of UCB’s expansion sit within a larger shift toward skills-based workforce management. Advanced manufacturing and biopharma increasingly require employees who can combine scientific or operational expertise with data, automation and digital skills.
Deloitte estimates that U.S. manufacturing could require about 3.8 million net new workers between 2024 and 2033, with approximately 1.9 million positions potentially going unfilled if skills and applicant gaps persist.
For enterprise HR teams, that makes traditional recruiting increasingly insufficient. Workforce planning, skills intelligence, learning and development, internal mobility and employee experience are becoming interconnected parts of the technology stack.
The UCB case also demonstrates why HRTech decisions cannot always be separated from operational technology. When AI and robotics enter the factory, the organization’s HR systems need to understand the workforce implications of those technologies.
The next generation of HR platforms will therefore compete not only on payroll, recruiting or employee engagement, but increasingly on their ability to connect people data with business transformation.
Top Insights
- UCB’s Atlanta workplace recognition comes as its $2 billion Georgia expansion increases demand for specialized biopharma, manufacturing, engineering and digital talent.
- The award is based on employee feedback, giving UCB an important workforce signal as it scales advanced manufacturing operations.
- AI, robotics and automation will reshape roles at the planned facility, increasing demand for digital skills alongside traditional biopharmaceutical expertise.
- HR teams supporting manufacturing expansion will increasingly need skills intelligence, workforce analytics, learning platforms and internal mobility capabilities.
- UCB’s expansion reflects a broader HRTech trend: employee experience and talent strategy are becoming operational infrastructure for technology-driven transformation.
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