Equal opportunities means not discriminating against staff, suppliers and customers on the basis of race/ethnicity, gender, culture, ability/disability, sexual orientation or social status. The promotion of equality and diversity embraces an even broader definition: that everyone has a contribution to make and that a business can be strengthened by harnessing the skills and contributions of all sectors of the workforce and society.
Corporations are becoming more global, reflecting growing diversity within society, the workforce, the marketplace and the economy. Ensuring diversity and equal opportunities in business - in addition to being an important expression of social responsibility - is increasingly being seen as a way to improve productivity and remain competitive, to better meet the needs of a diverse customer base, to enhance teamwork among employees expected to work across cultures and geographic borders, and, last but certainly not least, as a way to unleash innovation. Companies who see the issue as more than fulfilling a legal obligation can reap many benefits.
Novo Nordisk’s approach
Novo Nordisk is committed to ensuring equal opportunities and promoting diversity. The company's guide is the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. People seeking employment with Novo Nordisk, or those already employed with the company, are not discriminated against because of their background in respect of gender, sexual orientation, age, ability/disability, marital status, religion, colour, race, ethnic origin or political orientation. Novo Nordisk works to ensure equal opportunities throughout the employee lifecycle, ie in the conditions at work, with regard to remuneration, training and promotion, termination of employment and recruitment.
Novo Nordisk has an Equal Opportunities and Diversity Strategy. Its objective is to strengthen the company's position for sustained international growth by reinforcing the organisation's ability to benefit from the opportunities of increasingly diverse societies.
Benefits of Novo Nordisk’s diversity strategy
better understand customer needs
attract and retain talented people
operate more effectively in an international business environment
foster an international mindset among employees
work cross-culturally
expand into new markets
better understand the society in which it operates
Implementation of Novo Nordisk’s diversity strategy
Every business area has an action plan to promote equal opportunities and diversity. Action plans are evaluated and updated annually.
Diversity training for managers as part of their overall management training based on the company-wide Equal Opportunities Guidelines. The guidelines are published as a booklet supported by a web-enabled toolbox.
An internet-based equal opportunities toolbox aims to raise awareness of equal opportunities issues among all employees.
All managers have received equal oppportunities guidelines.
There is an equal opportunities code of conduct for all employees.
Performance 2005
For the past few years, Novo Nordisk has been working with three key focus areas within equal opportunities and diversity. These are:
Removing barriers to managerial positions for women
Attracting and retaining ethnic minorities in Denmark and other countries
Raising awareness of the importance of preventing discrimination and living up to local legislation.
Equal opportunities are included in the company's Balanced Scorecards. All senior vice presidents must develop an action plan for identifying and addressing equal opportunites issues relevant to their part of the organisation. Action plans are reviewed and challenged by Corporate People and Organisation, which is the formal owner of the programme. These plans are also considered as part of the company's annual Organisational Audit process.
Performance in 2005 for these areas is examined below.
Women in management
There are a range of initiatives to encourage more women into management. These include a Sounding Board of women to discuss issues and coordinate activities relating to women into management, women's networks, and a mentoring programme.
While the company won awards for its effort and commitment to equal opportunities in 2005, results are yet to transpire into solid data. However, there is increased awareness among managers of the benefits of diversity and they are actively encouraged to ensure more diversity in their teams. As a result, numbers are moving in the right direction. In the company's talent pool for senior managers, more women were recruited in 2005, which means it is likely that more women will be ready to move into senior management positions in coming years. The company does not favour quotas, but seeks to nurture the best talent for any job.
Novo Nordisk received two employer awards in Denmark in 2005 in the area of equal opportunities and diversity. The MIA Prize for diversity, established by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, with support from the EU, was awarded to Novo Nordisk. The prize for equal opportunities was awarded by the Great Place to Work Insititute based on a survey of 100 Danish companies. Novo Nordisk was recognised for its guidelines on equal opportunities and the inclusion of diversity and equal opportunities in the company's Balanced Scorecard.
In addition, in 2005 Novo Nordisk in Brazil was named as one of the 50 best workplaces for women in the country by the Great Place to Work Insititute.
Attracting ethnic minorities
These were some of the initiatives in 2005:
The Novo Nordisk Quality area in Denmark is developing a two-year trainee programme for people with academic degrees from ethnic minority backgrounds focusing on education and hands-on experience.
In some Novo Nordisk affiliates, jobs posted in job banks are geared toward diverse populations. All job advertisements follow the company-wide Equal Opportunities Guidelines.
In the US there are greater efforts to recruit graduates who have a racial or ethnic minority background. This is done through job board partnerships such as monster.com and yahoohotjobs.com. A pilot programme was conducted with latpro.com and hirediversity.com. Sales jobs are posted on seven different diversity websites managed by the US Sales Expansion vendor partner.
At Novo Nordisk in the US, employees have set up mentoring relationships with minority high school and college students and offered scholarships for university study for minorities.
Raising awareness of discrimination
In 2005 there was continued encouragement for employees to take advantage of existing awareness-raising tools available on the intranet or through publications, such as:
In the 2005 annual employee survey of the working climate, eVoice, participants responded with an average score of 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest score), indicating their level of agreement with the statement 'People from diverse backgrounds have equal opportunities (eg hiring, promotion, training etc) at Novo Nordisk, regardless of gender, race, way of thinking etc'.
This page has been assessed by PricewaterhouseCoopers as part of its assessment of Novo Nordisk’s statement that it reports ‘in accordance’ with GRI. Please refer to Audit and assurance for a full description of the nature of assurance offered.
