AstraZeneca Corporate Responsibility

In today’s demanding world, we believe that if we are to expect people’s continued energy and commitment at work, we must provide the right environment in which they feel positive and enthusiastic about what they are doing, with a clear sense of purpose, confidence in their ability to meet the challenges and pride in their individual contribution to the Company’s success. This means providing inspiring and effective leadership, open lines of communication, excellent learning and development opportunities, a safe and energising workplace and a culture of equal opportunity in which individual success depends solely on personal merit and performance. We also encourage and support a healthy work/life balance that we know is essential to the continued wellbeing of our employees worldwide.

We have a range of policies that underpin our commitment to our employees, including Global Human Resources, Safety Health and Environment and our Code of Conduct. More details can be found in the Policies & principles section of this site.

AstraZeneca’s ongoing strategic drive to improve efficiency and effectiveness resulted in the announcement during 2007 of a planned reduction of the workforce in some areas of our business. To ensure that a consistent approach, based on our core values, was and continues to be adopted throughout the programme, we developed and provided specific guidance for HR and line managers across the company. Our challenge is that there are differences in the legal frameworks and the customary practice in the different geographies which are most affected by the business changes, but the global guidance provided aims to ensure that the same or similar elements are included in local implementation, for example open communication and consultation with employees, face-to-face meetings, re-deployment support and appropriate financial arrangements. In line with our core values, we expect the people affected to be treated with respect, sensitivity, fairness and integrity at all times.

We continue to work to improve our global reporting processes, building on our long-standing systems for local monitoring of compliance with our Human Resources policy and standards. We have made a major investment in this area and are in the process of implementing a global Human Resources information system that will drive consistent people management practices and information standards worldwide. The system was launched in the UK, Sweden and China during 2006 and during 2007, another 12 countries went live, including the US, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. This major initiative means we now have consistent, detailed and integrated people information available at a global level covering over 40,000 employees – 61% of our workforce.

The new system enables us to further align our reporting with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Although we currently don’t have the means to make a meaningful breakdown of our global workforce into different levels of seniority, we can meet some of the required GRI indicators, as shown in the graphics below. Please also note that the indicators below only cover the 15 countries in which the system had been rolled out by the end of 2007, and that we will build on this year-on-year.