Stakeholder engagement

For decades Novo Nordisk has systematically been engaging with cross-sectional stakeholders to address key areas of corporate responsibility. Reaching out to stakeholders helps reconcile dilemmas and find common ground for more sustainable solutions. It also helps in monitoring trends that can affect its future business.

Stakeholder engagement is an integrated part of Novo Nordisk's business philosophy. We have long-standing engagements with doctors, nurses, patients, NGOs, neighbours, governmental regulators and other key stakeholders. These relations are vital for building trust and understanding in a variety of issues. By involving stakeholders in the decision-making processes, decisions are better founded and solutions more likely to succeed.

Novo Nordisk holds itself accountable to its shareholders and other stakeholders. Stakeholders are defined as any individual or group that may affect or may be affected by the company's activities. This very broad definition makes virtually anyone a stakeholder. Novo Nordisk recognises that relations with stakeholders may be active, dormant or passive, and that stakeholder relations are never a constant, nor a given.

For instance, any given shareholder may have several different roles vis-à-vis Novo Nordisk (an employee may also be a shareholder, a supplier may also be a neighbour etc), and stakeholders may form coalitions around shared interests.

In defining the nature of engagement, we will (although not as the result of a systematic box-ticking approach) consider the stakeholders' power to influence the company, the legitimacy of the stakeholder's relationship with the company, and the urgency with which the stakeholder brings forward his or her claim on the company. Such criteria help determine the salience of stakeholder demands and how they should be prioritised. In such considerations, short-term and long-term business interests, including reputation, are taken into consideration.

Ongoing interactions with stakeholders, trendspotting, business monitoring and the integrated systematic risk management process are tools to identify the issues that are material to Novo Nordisk's business. In turn, our response to current and emergent business and societal challenges is shaped in a closer dialogue with representatives of the stakeholders affected by the issue. As a result of this process, we can frame our strategic response and define targets. We regularly review key priorities to ensure that they reflect current agendas and report on progress in relation to performance targets.

See examples of how Novo Nordisk creates results with stakeholders.

The rationale for Novo Nordisk's stakeholder engagement is that collaborative efforts are the best way to co-create innovative solutions for the benefit of both parties involved. For instance, products and services are developed to satisfy customer and societal needs. Throughout the value chain, from discovery to distribution, engagement with stakeholders informs goal-setting and decision-making.

Novo Nordisk's key stakeholders include customers - ie public healthcare providers - people with diabetes and others whose healthcare needs we serve, employees, investors, suppliers and other business partners, and society at large.

In the economic footprint model, we account for Novo Nordisk's economic stakeholders, ie stakeholders on whom the company's activities are seen to have an economic impact:

• Employees 
• Suppliers 
• Customers 
• Investors/funders 
• Public sector 
• Society

For Novo Nordisk, the person with diabetes (or any other persons whose healthcare needs can be served by Novo Nordisk's products) is at the centre. These persons are the ultimate customers to whom the company must hold itself accountable. See Novo Nordisk's approach to quality, product responsibility and customer service.

Over the years Novo Nordisk has increasingly moved from stakeholder dialogue to building partnerships across traditional sectors. It takes time and commitment to build a successful partnership. But, once established, a partnership is a way to exploit opportunities and together share risks and responsibilities on the way to achieving common goals.

Below are examples of programmes and initiatives to illustrate the types of partnership that Novo Nordisk is engaged in.

Novo Nordisk has an ambitious vision to defeat diabetes. As such a global challenge cannot be solved alone, we have engaged in a number of partnerships to help raise awareness of the disease and ultimately defeat it.

One of those partnerships is the Oxford Health Alliance. It is dedicated to the cause of preventing the forecasted pandemic growth of chronic diseases. The Oxford Health Alliance was founded in 2003 by the University of Oxford and Novo Nordisk in support of the World Health Organization's strategy to combat chronic diseases.

Today there are more than 50 founding members representing government and public health, corporations, NGOs, international agencies, youth and patient groups, media and universities. With this shared momentum for change, the aim of the Oxford Health Alliance is to spur innovative approaches to health promotion and disease prevention.

In 2005 Novo Nordisk launched the National Changing Diabetes Programme in the US to promote better diabetes care. Over the next five years Novo Nordisk will make a massive investment to help bring about meaningful change and foster collaboration among all parties in the healthcare system. Through this programme, we will work to remove barriers to chronic disease management, create new incentives for better diabetes care, and enhance medical training for diabetes chronic care, and help people with diabetes manage the condition more effectively.

Novo Nordisk is actively supporting a patient-centred approach to diabetes care through collaboration with healthcare professionals. The Novo Nordisk-initiated DAWN programme (Diabetes Attitudes Wishes and Needs) is based on the largest study ever conducted into the psychosocial aspects of diabetes. The 2001 study was carried out in collaboration with the International Diabetes Federation  (IDF) and revealed, among other things, that there are significant psychosocial barriers to improving diabetes treatment and that improvements can be achieved through a patient-centred approach among healthcare professionals and healthcare systems around the world. Read more about DAWN.

Novo Nordisk also partners with the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in a project focusing on low-income minorities in the developed and middle-income countries. The project follows the rationale and recommendations of the 2003 'Empowerment - priorities for action' workshop, which was another joint initiative of Novo Nordisk and IDF.

The 'Changing Diabetes Dialogue' workshop aims to identify specific obstacles for access to diabetes care in subgroups of a given population and then come up with solutions for how to overcome these obstacles.

The increase in people with diabetes is not the only change that the world will see in a twenty-year scenario. With ample evidence that the climate is also changing, there is a strong case for global leaders to form partnerships and take action.

In 2005 Novo Nordisk became the 10th company to be part of the Climate Savers programme. This business programme, organised by WWF, aims to set examples in order to convince political and corporate decision-makers that reducing CO2 emissions is not only necessary but also makes good business sense.

Novo Nordisk also engages with stakeholders through the range of organisations of which the company is a member. See a list of memberships.

Novo Nordisk's corporate website has information for stakeholders with specific information needs such as shareholders, job seekers, media, healthcare professionals and patients.

In addition to these corporate services, individual affiliates have established web communities for patients and healthcare professional. For instance, Novo Nordisk set up the first Chinese-language website with information about diabetes.

At Novo Nordisk, stakeholder engagement is not an annual event, but rather daily activities throughout the organisation. While some formal stakeholder consultations do take place, these are not reported in terms of frequency or outcomes. Nor is there any one single department or unit responsible for such engagement activities; instead 'stakeholder relations' is seen to be part and parcel of everyone's work.

However, in some units building and maintaining stakeholder relations is the core business. Hence, Corporate Health Partnerships, by way of example, drives activities to promote access to health such as the National Diabetes Programme and DAWN. See contact persons for individual areas or programmes.

Formal stakeholder consultations can take the form of neighbour meetings at the production sites, round-table discussions on emerging issues, conferences, seminars and workshops, customer satisfaction surveys, or shareholder meetings.

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.