Our Employees: Our Greatest Asset
We offer our employees demanding and challenging tasks. Boehringer Ingelheim needs employees who innovate – the future of our company depends directly on its innovative capability.
Our employees are the guarantors of this capability and our most important corporate asset. They form the core of our corporate culture as a family-owned company that lives out its responsibility and builds on mutual respect and fairness.
Responsibility for Employees
Our company’s social responsibility has always been expressed in its core business and social benefits have always been an important part of the culture of the family-owned company Boehringer Ingelheim.
During our company’s early years, founder Albert Boehringer introduced remarkably progressive and generous social measures for his employees. The first works health insurance scheme was established in 1902. A 14-day holiday with subsidised travel, graded according to years of service, was introduced in 1910. And in 1912 a company pension scheme was added for all employees after 20 years’ service.
The company pension scheme steadily expanded and now includes a company-financed pension and employee-financed, or partially employee-financed, pension.
Boehringer Ingelheim actively contributes to statutory pension insurance and private provisions; its benefits support the social system. A very special corporate culture and working environment have developed on the basis of mutual respect and fairness – values constantly fostered by Boehringer Ingelheim during its 130-year history.
Learn more about our benefits on our Career Website.
Change Management: a Competitive Workforce as a Key Success Factor
The external environment of the pharmaceutical market is changing rapidly. The company has therefore defined securing a competitive workforce as one of a number of key success factors and a corporate strategic topic of top priority.
It has therefore successfully implemented a systematic approach to manage change at the company. This well-structured change process will help and support all employees to better understand the common Boehringer Ingelheim culture, values and the overall corporate vision.
Change management encompasses both organisational change management processes and individual change management models, which together are used to manage the people side of change.
This involves:
- analysis and planning of change
- communicating change
- winning acceptance of new behaviours
- changing from the status quo to the desired situation
- consolidating and institutionalising the new situation
Our FOCUS: Your Growth. Our Growth.
The success of Boehringer Ingelheim depends on the success of our people. Our FOCUS builds on this. It helps us to define who we are, how we work and what we want to achieve. AAI stands for Accountability, Agility and Intrapreneurship, three behaviours that together form one pillar of Our FOCUS.
They acknowledge that in today’s fast-moving markets, we need to consider not just what we are working on, but also how. Learning to embrace and embody AAI behaviours will help us rally behind common goals, look to the future and grow as a company.
AAI is a set of behaviours that each of us must make second nature in all aspects of our work. AAI does more than just help us work more efficiently. By embracing AAI, we are also opening ourselves more fully to effective collaboration and growth.
Accountability: Even in ambiguous circumstances, we always demonstrate ownership for our decisions and actions.
Agility: We quickly act with an open mind to face internal and external transformation.
Intrapreneurship: Together with our customers, we create innovative ideas to respond to changing markets.
Driving Transformation
Our goals are clear. To reach Ambition 2025, we must
- Improve our Accountability, Agility and Intrapreneurship.
- Empower our people to develop and reward their achievements.
- Retain our key capabilities and support our talent.
Starting at the Top
When a company’s culture is undergoing transformation, its managers are responsible for guiding their employees. For the changes to take hold, the company must nurture an environment where AAI behaviours, and the people who embrace them, can thrive professionally.
To achieve these goals, we are introducing several harmonised elements to promote communal accountability, foster agile decision making and establish a continuous learning culture.
These elements are split into two distinct categories: People Growth and Reward.
People Growth
Let’s discuss WHAT we have accomplished and HOW we’ll master the challenges ahead, both individually and as a team.
This starts with a shifted focus for the Employee-Manager Dialogue (MAG) and the Team Development Discussion (TDD). The MAG will now be conducted on an ongoing basis, with a constant eye toward building skills and developing careers. The TDD gives managers valuable time to focus on development measures and composing effective teams. This includes consideration of key talent and succession planning to keep teams strong for now and the future. BI’s learning environment (LEARN) empowers employees to drive their own development through an individually tailored mix of experiences on-the-job (70 %), social learning (20 %) and courses (10 %).
Reward
Our revised reward system ensures that employees who live AAI will benefit professionally as well as financially.
Starting in 2018, the Variable Performance Related Reward (VPR) will be based exclusively on collective goals. This revised incentive system reinforces the urgency and importance of thinking about the company as a functional whole, not just in terms of one’s own individual area.
Other tools such as the Senior Executive Program (SEP) and the Senior Management Program (SMP) are in place to ensure that executives, senior managers and employees with critical expertise stay engaged at BI. This is an effective way to build and hold momentum throughout the transformation.
The message is clear: We work together and we benefit together!
Leadership Development
In a time of transformation, leaders play a crucial role in guiding employees and creating the right environment for success. To deliver on OUR FOCUS, our leaders must understand how to leverage employees as our greatest asset. This requires leaders committed to developing and coaching employees and focusing on identifying, growing and developing future leaders.
Our leadership development philosophy is based upon self-awareness as the crucial foundation for leaders to deliver results and build the Boehringer Ingelheim of the future.
In 2017, various global leadership development programs for two target groups were offered:
- CONNECTIVITY for current international leaders with already abundant leadership experience and responsibilities
- EXPOSURE for future international leaders who are currently leading others and are demonstrating potential to become future international leaders
Building on our global social entrepreneurial initiative Making More Health, we offer experiential learning opportunities that drive Our FOCUS further:
- Making More Health Insights that takes current and future international leaders into rural India where through experiential learning and self-reflection.
- Making More Health Executive in Residence offers one individual the opportunity to step out of the work place in order to work alongside a leading social entrepreneur on a specific project.
All programmes are based on Our FOCUS, vision and values as well as the global strategy of Boehringer Ingelheim and are also complemented by local skill building and leadership offerings for first time mangers.
Links
