Communication & dialogue

Positive employee engagement is key to the promotion of a working environment that enables people to maximise their talents and contribution to our business.

Our goal is to drive upper quartile industry levels of employee engagement, which we believe is essential to our long-term success.

As part of this, we aim to provide an inclusive environment that encourages open discussion and debate at all levels and in all parts of the Company.  As well as line manager briefings and team meetings, we use a wide range of electronic and printed media to communicate regularly with our employees around the world. Feedback opportunities are integrated into our internal communication programmes and, in addition, our Code of Conduct outlines the procedures for employees to raise integrity concerns, including a confidential helpline.

GLOBAL EMPLOYEE SURVEY

We also use a global employee survey (FOCUS) to track employee opinion across a range of key topic areas. The surveys are conducted anonymously and with the help of an external specialist agency who also analyse the results, which we then communicate to all our employees.  The surveys provide valuable insights for business leaders and managers about what we are doing well and where improvements need to be made, and these insights are used to inform strategic planning across the business.

In 2008, our Senior Executive Team took the decision to run FOCUS annually, rather than every two years, to support our strategic goal of promoting high levels of employee engagement. Questions in our regular ‘Snapshot Surveys’, which were used to take a high-level pulse view of progress between global surveys, have now been included in FOCUS to ensure we can track trends effectively.  MedImmune will begin participating in the FOCUS surveys in 2009.

86% of our employees participated in the FOCUS 2008 survey – reflecting their continued confidence in this feedback mechanism.  Results showed that employee engagement scores were very strong and we continue to out perform other pharmaceutical companies in this area. The results also indicated that people were seeing increased levels of cooperation between senior leaders, enabling more effective global and cross-functional working. The survey also identified some key areas that continue to require attention, in particular the need for improved communication from leaders about AstraZeneca’s strategic direction and the need to strengthen further our change management capabilities whilst continuing to invest in the development of our people. Our leaders take this feedback very seriously. New targets that address these issues have been included in the SET business performance management framework for 2009. These targets are focused on maintaining the already high levels of employee engagement, and improvements to the clarity of direction by senior leaders.

SET DIALOGUE SESSIONS

Visible and accessible leadership is core to the effective management of business change and sustained employee engagement levels.  During 2008, members of our Senior Executive Team held dialogue sessions with employees at a number of AstraZeneca locations, to discuss in detail our strategy for managing the challenges and opportunities our business currently faces.  These sessions took place in China, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, UK, Sweden, US and Canada and involved over 1,700 employees from all disciplines. Some of the sessions were also web-streamed on our intranet, making them available to all employees.

A wide range of issues were covered during the Q&A sessions at the various events, but common themes that emerged included discussion of the major changes taking place internally; how our strategy might further evolve in response to the rapidly-changing business environment and the need to maintain our commitment to our core values during these challenging times.  Feedback after the meetings showed that people welcomed the opportunity to interact with SET members and understand better the role everyone can play in driving future success.

The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2009.