Our employees

With nearly 63,000 employees worldwide, we value the diverse skills and capabilities that a global workforce brings to our business.

We work continuously to align these skills and capabilities with strategic and operational needs, whilst maintaining high levels of employee engagement and commitment. The integration of responsible business thinking across all our activities is also a top priority.

Ours is a dynamic and challenging business environment - and a demanding one. We want our people to feel positive and enthusiastic about what they are doing, with a clear sense of purpose and confidence in their ability to meet the challenges. This means providing them with effective leadership, clear targets, open lines of communication, excellent learning and development opportunities and a healthy, safe and energising workplace - within a culture in which diversity is valued and individual success depends solely on personal merit and performance.

As well as our global Code of Conduct, we have a range of policies that underpin our commitment to our employees, including our global People, and Safety Health and Environment Policies.

A strategic approach to workforce planning

Our business strategy drives our approach to managing human resources across AstraZeneca. Identifying and building skills and capabilities for the long term is critical if we are to deliver our strategic objectives. To that end we have been developing our strategic workforce planning (SWP).

SWP generally takes a longer-term view of five to seven years and is designed to ensure we have the right capabilities in the right location at the right time. SWP also addresses issues such as ensuring a diverse workforce and the challenges of attracting and retaining talent globally. In 2009 we piloted the approach in Asia because of the importance of this region to our business strategy.

Managing the impact of business change

Our continuing strategic drive to improve efficiency and effectiveness through our previously announced re-structuring programmes has resulted in a gross reduction of 12,600 positions between 2007 and 2009. New business re-shaping activities may involve up to an additional 10,400 job reductions. To ensure that a consistent approach, based on our core values, was and continues to be adopted throughout the programme, we provide specific guidance for HR and line managers throughout the organisation.

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. Nevertheless, the global guidance aims to ensure that the same or similar elements are included in local implementation. These include, 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. It was therefore encouraging that the engagement scores in our annual global employee survey continued to improve despite business change that involved headcount reduction.

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At 09-Sep-2010 08:15  GMT