Workplace quality

Ensuring workplace quality is not only a serious responsibility for any business, but also a key factor in attracting and retaining a highly qualified workforce. A growing body of research shows the effects of organisational structures and management practices and approaches on workplace productivity, stress and absenteeism. There is an emerging generational gap, with newer members of the workforce having higher expectations for work/life balance. This underscores the importance of creating workplaces that do not contribute to excessively high employee turnover and burnout.

The quality of the workplace is often judged by the amount and quality of training and education offered to employees. Companies face risks when they do not consider major threats to healthy and safe workplaces such as lengths of shifts, job stress, management practices, lack of independence or opportunity to use skills, and the physical attributes of workplaces.

Novo Nordisk values workplace quality as part of its commitment to the Triple Bottom Line, its corporate culture and values, and also as a competitive factor in attracting and retaining talented people.

Novo Nordisk ensures workplace quality in the following ways:

• Health & safety
• Compensation and benefits
• Equal opportunities
• Ethical labour practices
• Employee training & development
• Integrity
• Work/life balance
• Corporate culture
• Impacts of globalisation on employees
• Facilitations
• eVoice (annual climate survey)

The Novo Nordisk People Strategy works to develop key elements of ensuring workplace quality.

These include:
Global remuneration: Novo Nordisk is working to ensure a globally consistent approach to the provision of competitive and performance-driven remuneration. This is seen as a key driver in attracting, motivating and retaining talent globally and enhances flexibility in global deployment and rotation of employees. Part of this activity will seek to achieve more transparent and uniform linkage between remuneration and performance measurement. This will give more flexibility in spotting the right people for the vacant positions across functions and borders.

Health & safety: The company's ambition is to create global standards. In Bagsværd, Denmark, where the company's headquarters are located, there are systematic workplace assessments to limit the number of occupational injuries and improve working conditions. All employees are involved in these assessments in order to make them as effective as possible.

Work/life balance: In Denmark, where the majority of Novo Nordisk's employees are located, many departments other than Production have flexible working hours and many employees have the possibility of working from home. A toolbox on handling work/life balance issues has been created for use by managers and employees and is available on the company intranet. In Denmark there are leisure centres with a café, meeting rooms and sports and fitness facilities. All employees can use the centres for a small fee. Several Novo Nordisk affiliates around the world such as the US and the Netherlands have similar facilities.

Employee development & training: The Novo Nordisk Way of Management requires that all employees must have a career development plan. These are reviewed together with the employee's manager, and relevant education training and courses are offered to increase the employee's skills and knowledge. All programmes at Novo Nordisk for people development are designed to achieve closer alignment between competence development and business goals. The company's talent pools are a priority for prepare tomorrow's leaders and facilitating succession management 

By the end of 2005 Novo Nordisk had 22,007 full-time positions; 12,160 in Denmark; 2,702 in Europe (excluding Denmark), 2,465 in North America, 934 in Japan and Oceania and 3,746 in International Operations.

In 2005 the company's efforts within workplace quality were demonstrated in the following ways:

• H&S: Continued work to develop global health and safety standards for Novo Nordisk's global workforce.
  Performance on the health & safety indicator 'frequency of occupational injuries' was not satisfactory as the frequency increased from 5.6 to 7.3 in 2005, not meeting the target of a continuous decrease. There were no fatalities in 2005. There is a continued high focus on ensuring high health & safety standards for employees in Novo Nordisk. In 2006 a health & safety management system certified according to OHSAS 18001 will be adopted for Novo Nordisk in Denmark and Product Supply globally.
  
• Compensation and benefits: Progress was made on developing more common and global remuneration strategies and systems for Novo Nordisk, including implementation of an IPE system (global job grading system), identifying and describing existing barriers to employee mobility, and analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the current remuneration strategy.
  
  In 2005 Novo Nordisk paid a total of 11,498 million Danish kroner in wages, salaries, pensions, social security contributions and other employee costs. See also the cash value distribution.
  
  Other benefits offered to all Novo Nordisk employees include:
  • Wage compensation during maternity/parental leave
  • Pensions
  • Insurance
  • Employee shares
  Additional benefits vary within the organisation and follow local labour market terms. In Denmark, where 56% of the workforce is located, benefits include holiday homes, employee clubs and associations, annual summer party, Christmas present, social counselling, reimbursement of medical costs (related to Novo Nordisk products only), kindergarten, leisure & sports facilities and canteens.
  Novo Nordisk's remunerations package is considered to be competitive and market-related. In Denmark, base salaries constitute around 80% of the full compensation package.
  
  
• Abseenteism: The rate of absence in 2005 was 3.2, the same as in 2004.
  
  
• Employee turnover: The employee turnover in 2005 increased to 8.0 from 7.3 in 2004, which means that the target of a reduction in turnover was not met.
  
  
• Job satisfaction: The average of respondents' answers to the question 'Does your work give you an opportunity to use and develop your competences/skills?' remained at a high level of 3.8 (on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score) above the target, which is at or above 3.5.
  
  
• Equal opportunities and diversity: The ratios of men and women have changed slightly; at the end of 2005, 51.2% of the employees were men, compared with 50.9% at the end of 2004.
  The average of respondents' answers to the question 'Do people from diverse backgrounds have equal opportunities?' increased from 3.8 to 3.9 (on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score); which is above the target, which is at or above 3.5.
  
  
• Employee training & development In 2005 the annual spending on training, measured as average spend per employee, increased by 10% to 9,899 Danish kroner. The money spent per employee does not fully reflect investments in training in Novo Nordisk, since on-the-job training, internal seminars and other activities are not included.
  
  Novo Nordisk does not record average hours of training per year per employee as this is not deemed to be a meaningful proxy for the level of investments in training.

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.