Culture Drives Employee Engagement, Supports Business Growth

In early 2017, Alexion Pharmaceuticals was at an inflection point. With a new executive committee in place, the company embarked on an ambitious plan to transform the organization and help more patients with rare diseases. Alexion refocused its strategy, aiming to expand its existing medicines into new indications and diversify its rare disease portfolio through a commitment to our internal research and development efforts and an aggressive business development strategy. To tackle such a sweeping agenda and drive the company’s trajectory, the new Alexion leadership team recognized the need to prioritize the corporate culture.

Alexion’s culture transformation story, like its approach to breakthrough science, is a bit unorthodox. Rather than relying on a top-down approach or a directive from the Human Resources department, Alexion established a Culture team that reported directly to the CEO, sending an organization-wide message that culture would be a key enabler to achieving the goals of sustainable business performance while also delivering a meaningful difference for patients, team members and communities.

As part of this, Alexion reshaped its work environment to emphasize the innate and powerful connection between the employee and patient experience. This included embedding Alexion’s values in its business and talent processes, systems, policies, governance and decision making, as well as realigning the company’s rewards and recognition programs and communication strategy to tie back to its culture values and reinforce positive behavior change.

The broad-based transformation strategy worked. In three years, Alexion’s employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), a key measure of employee engagement, and likelihood to recommend Alexion as a great place to work, increased 62.5 points. The company simultaneously expanded its pipeline of medicines in development and its portfolio of approved medicines, allowing it to serve even more patients.

Here’s how Alexion got there.

More than 400 Alexion employees at all levels of the organization, roughly 15% of the company at the time, participated in the process of defining Alexion’s aspirational culture and values. Patient centricity quickly emerged as the common thread that tied together all aspects of Alexion’s business.

“People living with rare diseases and devastating conditions are our inspiration, our purpose and our Guiding Star,” said Sonia Singhvi, Head of Culture. “Hearing hundreds of team members express a sense passion for the purpose-driven work we do really united us under a shared goal in our culture transformation journey.”

Born from a common desire to change lives for the better, Alexion established four key culture values to guide its business: serve patients, empower people, act with integrity and innovate for solutions.  

“We live the core values. Colleagues are empowered and recognized for their contributions. Patients are truly at the center of everything we do.” – Employee quote from Alexion’s Culture Survey

With a cultural framework in hand, Alexion set out to build world-class leadership and innovation capabilities that reflected, activated and strengthened its new set of culture values.

Alexion equipped leaders with robust tools, resources, best-practice sharing platforms and accountability mechanisms to ensure that every business decision tied back to the company’s values.

To date, the company has empowered more than 300 culture champions to embed a people-centric innovation and integrity mindset. Each year, Alexion’s Global Culture FORUM brings together employees who are culture champions and connectors from around the world to share ideas, inspire one another and gain new insights on how to advance the company’s culture.

 

Focusing on culture has decisively paid off for Alexion. Since starting on its culture transformation journey, Alexion has seen an influx of positive business outcomes that can be connected back to its culture values. Serve Patients: The development of LEAP (Learn, Evolve, Activate and deliver for Patients), an experiential learning platform designed to immerse team members in the patient journey from diverse stakeholder perspectives within the rare disease ecosystem, has led to a deeper understanding of the patient experience and the opportunity to identify and prioritize value-added solutions. Act with Integrity: Alexion established an annual Integrity Matters Week – a series of programming that engages employees on the importance of maintaining standards for quality, compliance, ethics, and integrity at the highest possible levels. Empower People: Alexion created “Speak Up” and psychological safety exercises and resources to cultivate an environment where every employee could speak candidly, feel heard and valued, and share their diverse perspectives and ideas, driving a sense of belonging and a culture of innovation. Innovate for Solutions: A strong culture has supported Alexion’s success in expanding its pipeline to include more than 20 clinical stage development programs.

 

“Alexion’s culture transformation has been an amazing journey,” said Rana Strellis, Senior Vice President, Global Culture and Corporate Social Responsibility. “With our focus on employee and patient experience and our purpose-driven performance culture, our future is brighter than ever as we enter our company’s next chapter.”

To learn more about Alexion’s unique corporate culture, visit: https://alexion.com/your-career/working-here/culture.