Culture tours and
the new mindset

Creating an inclusive vibe must be a pharma vision we all share

It’s no secret that diversity is a key driver of innovation.

There has been an abundance of research demonstrating that organisations benefit from diversity of thought. Diverse teams are better at making innovative ideas happen, as groups of people with different life experiences are better able to recognise challenges and offer up creative solutions.

But for pharmaceutical companies looking to unleash their organisation’s pioneering potential, diversity is only one piece of the puzzle. For a team to truly achieve its potential, leaders must strive to foster a culture that’s not just diverse, but also inclusive.

The benefits of an inclusive culture go beyond innovation – inclusion is a strategic asset that gives pharma companies the opportunity to unlock individual potential, accelerate team performance, attract top talent and drive innovation.

This culture is one that reflects the diversity of the patient populations they serve, while inclusion also provides intrinsic motivation, giving employees the motivation that they can make a difference for patients.

To be conscious of inclusion, organisations need to take intentional and deliberate steps to ensure that everyone’s unique perspectives, experiences and contributions are recognised, respected and valued. It involves creating a workplace environment where everyone feels they belong – where they can fully participate and reach their potential.

Recognition alone is not enough, however – we need to make sure we’re approaching this in an equitable and accessible way. One way to do this is by encouraging peer-to-peer recognition, rather than relying on a top-down approach.

I’ve seen first-hand how our peer-to-peer recognition programme provides a positive platform for employees to build connections across organisational boundaries and geographies, helping to ensure people feel appreciated, valued and ‘seen’ for the difference they make.

Experience has shown me that people feel most empowered to speak their minds, suggest alternative ideas, challenge the status quo and express their point of view when they are working in a team that is not only diverse, but also inclusive.

While diversity creates the potential for different opinions and ideas, it is inclusion that allows for that potential to be realised. However, this is only possible when people feel psychologically safe and accepted as their authentic selves.

The concept of psychological safety is essential to support the feeling of belonging.  When people feel like they belong, it creates a foundation of trust. It is the responsibility of leaders to foster an environment where every team member is treated equitably.

Creating psychological safety requires us to build healthy habits around conscious inclusion, whether it be fostering collaboration, recognising people who promote inclusive behaviours, or engaging in forward-looking coaching conversations, creating space for people to connect with one another and most importantly grow both as individuals and as teams.

At AstraZeneca, we have 20 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) – communities that we support with a framework and funding, for colleagues who have shared characteristics or life experiences, such as AZPride, our ERG for LGBTQIA+ employees and allies, TH!NK for neurodiversity, embRACE to ensure racial equity and the Network of Women.

These communities not only enable people to connect and find support on topics that are meaningful to them, but also create networks for development and support.

Inclusive leaders set the conditions so that an inclusive culture can flourish. Inclusive leadership at AstraZeneca is about valuing, seeking out and leveraging our differences to achieve our company goals. It’s how we expect everyone to behave, no matter our job role, level of seniority or location.

It’s about demonstrating open minds, active listening and transparent decision-making to create an environment where people feel safe to show up as their authentic selves.

Research shows that leaders who are seen as fair and respectful, encourage collaboration, and value different ideas and opinions are 2.5 times more likely to have effective employees on their teams.

Inclusive leaders help people from underrepresented backgrounds understand that they have the power to take ownership of their own careers, equipping them with the specific insights, strategies and tools they need to drive their development forward.

Over the last three years we have updated our approach to performance development by removing once-yearly reviews and numerical ratings.

Supported by a psychologically safe and trusting environment, we now focus on quarterly check-ins, founded on continuous coaching and feedforward conversations (looking at developments for the future, rather than back at past performance) to support our people in identifying their opportunities for growth.

And the approach is working, as reflected in our latest employee engagement survey, where 85% of employees said their manager gives them regular coaching to improve the contribution they make.

Creating an inclusive culture enables pharmaceutical organisations to attract, develop and retain the best talent in every country and at every level. For a company to be diverse, people must be able to ‘see’ themselves in the organisation, particularly in leadership roles.

This takes intentional and deliberate action and involves identifying and attracting external talent from wider sources, as well as reassessing talent pipelines and succession plans to identify and fast-track an appropriately diverse mix of top talent internally.

For example, this might be making sure your company’s commitment to Inclusion & Diversity appears on every job advert as standard, using a range of job boards to ensure you reach candidates from a range of communities, or considering non-graduate programmes to encourage talent from underrepresented socio-economic backgrounds.

There’s no doubt that diverse teams are better positioned to unlock innovation. At AstraZeneca our 83,500 employees come from 177 countries, speaking hundreds of different languages and we support gender diversity through initiatives aimed at increasing the number of women in our senior and leadership roles.

As a result, just over 50% of our workforce are women and 48.1% of our senior middle management roles are filled by women.

Having a range of backgrounds, cultures, experiences and perspectives not only promotes innovation, but it also helps to create an equitable working environment, where we use our diversity as a competitive advantage enabling us to push the boundaries of science and deliver life-changing medicines to patients.

We know that unlocking innovation starts with a diverse workplace and a culture that embraces and celebrates differences. But fostering workplace inclusion and belonging doesn’t just happen, and conscious inclusion is more than leaders endorsing initiatives designed to change behaviours.

To make a long-lasting difference, we must deliver sustainable change to make things better for those who come after us. I recently heard a phrase that stuck with me and it’s something I’ve started to bring into my every day.

As a leader in an organisation, you are the custodian of that role for the time you hold it. It’s your job to uphold its integrity and leave that role, and the teams who depend on it, in a better state than that in which you found it. That means making a commitment to continuous improvement and intentional and deliberate action.

While recognising that our digital-first world is accelerating, I still find that nothing quite replaces human connection. Ultimately humans need other humans – arguably, even more so whilst we ride the wave of new and disruptive technologies.

There’s always more than can be done to bring about change but creating a culture of inclusion, connection and care is a good place to start.

Rebekah Martin, SVP of Reward, Inclusion & Talent Acquisition at AstraZeneca. Go to astrazeneca.co.uk