Our culture at Novartis: Inspired, curious, unbossed

Our employees are critical to fulfilling our purpose of reimagining medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. We depend on the skills and creativity of our people to develop and produce new medicines, and deliver them to patients. Our aspiration is for every employee to feel inspired by our purpose, be curious about new ideas, and work in an unbossed environment that encourages teamwork, initiative and innovation.

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Health and safety

At Novartis, our purpose to reimagine medicine goes hand in hand with maintaining a healthy, safe and environmentally friendly workplace for our associates, contractors, vendors and visitors. HSE is a fundamental component of the Novartis long-term business strategy and supports achieving our objectives by unleashing the power of our people and building trust with society.

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Other information

  • External certifications of own sites
    • In 2022:
      • 35% of our workers at manufacturing sites (excluding R&D) were covered by an externally certified Health and Safety management system (OSHA 18001 or ISO 45001 certifications)1
      • 44% were operating on sites with a certified environmental management system (ISO 14001 or Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) certification)2
      • 14% were operating on sites with a certified energy management system (ISO 50001)2

Learning and development

We continue our journey to build a culture that stimulates curiosity, for example by providing more learning opportunities and increasing skills in key areas such as data and digital.

All Novartis Group company associates are required to complete ethics, risk and compliance training. Our global e-training curriculum provides relevant information to enable associates to make the right choices in the course of their work and to perform with integrity. It addresses identified and relevant company risks and helps to communicate new and upgraded policies and guidelines across the organization.

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Other information

  • Scope and extent of performance reviews
    • All permanent associates have regular performance check-ins with their managers to discuss progress against objectives as well as career and personal development.
    • Although performance ratings were removed as of January 2021 with the launch of Evolve, all permanent associates are assessed annually and rewarded for their impact based on performance against their objectives, team collaboration and role-modeling of Novartis Values & Behaviors.

People-related practices and policies

Novartis recognizes and commits to respect every associate’s right to freedom of opinion, expression and speech, consistent with our policies and standards of respectful behavior. We value an open and fair workplace and are committed to cultivating an environment where everyone feels comfortable to express opinions and contribute ideas. We communicate with transparency and our associates can make appropriate use of suitable systems for direct communication, including social media.

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Diversity and inclusion

We seek to create a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment that provides equal opportunities for all employees and where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. We do this not only because it is right, but also because it helps to generate new ideas and brings us closer to the diverse perspectives of patients and other stakeholders. We’ve committed to achieving gender balance in management by 2023 and ensuring pay equity and transparency for all of our associates globally. 

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Other information

  • Managerial or board level responsibility for diversity initiatives
    • Executive Committee members have diversity aspirations as part of their individual strategic objectives. Diverse candidate slates and interview panels are required for senior positions and monitored as part of the monthly talent reviews at the executive level.
  • Promoting diversity learning within the workforce
    • Training and guidance regarding diversity:
      • Annual mandatory unconscious bias e-training for recruiters has been assigned to all recruiters.
      • Annual, Novartis-wide mandatory Diversity & Inclusion e-Training was developed throughout 2020 and launched in 2021.
      • We have developed the Listening Dialogues approach throughout 2020 that we rolled out in 2021, to enable all associates and teams have open conversations, foster psychological safety and hone their empathetic listening skills.
  1. Percentage of FTEs working at our manufacturing sites
  2. YoY difference due to the exclusion of 4 sites with no production data reported