Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company founded in 1923 and headquartered in Denmark. Our purpose is to drive change to defeat diabetes and other serious chronic diseases such as obesity, and rare blood and endocrine diseases. We do so by continuously working on scientific innovations, expanding access to our medicine to vulnerable patients and engaging into preventing and ultimately cure the diseases that we treat. We are committed to be a sustainable and socially responsible business that brings health and wellbeing to people and communities, while operating at zero environmental impact. We believe in making a difference and we always put our patients first in everything we do. Our purpose and sustainability focussed culture make Novo Nordisk a fantastic organisation and a great place to work.
Here, Jacob Oerting Joergensen, discusses corporate culture, coronavirus support and how the company is following an unconventional corporate structure.
Our culture is strong and we are proud of our Triple Bottom Line (TBL) philosophy. TBL means that we as a company is Financial Responsible, Socially Responsible and Environmentally Responsible. TBL is the lens we look through to make the right decisions. Through our TBL we aim to become a truly sustainable company. Engrained in our culture is also our Novo Nordisk Way (NNWay) NNWay is primarily focused on our values and how we do business / work together; who we are & what we want to do is more described by our purpose To help us describe the NNWay, we have established 10 Essentials which are 10 statements describing our values.
Essential number 7 of NNWay says: “We focus on personal performance and development” Continuous learning is part of our DNA and we offer a wide variety of personal learning and development opportunities across Novo Nordisk. We have a companywide Graduate program taking young talents through three rotations of 12 months different places in the organisation for the to get a good understanding of the company value chain. We also have a wide array of leadership programs, project management programs etc. On our internal platform called Degreed, which is our go-to platform for development and learning our employees can set up their profiles after their interests and get nudged with everything from articles to online and face2face training. As Novo Nordisk is a global company, we also ensure opportunities such as job swaps, talent rotation, stretched assignments, on-the-job learning focus, talent hub concepts, working in agile teams etc. is made possible to the benefit of our employees and our business. We also have a strong focus on Inclusion & Diversity. We believe in the power of “Diversity of Thought” and have 11 nationalities at our regional office in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. We discuss, share perspectives, challenge each other and execute to the benefit of our patients and our business.
Before the COVID 19 pandemic struck the world and us, we had already established our “Flex-Able” framework, which describes a number of different possibilities within flex-time, flexible work-place etc. Of course this framework got catapulted into the organisation with help from COVID 19 and is now an integrated part of how we work in the new normal. Across South-East Asia, we have also ensured our employees have access to Covid vaccines, ART tests, masks, sanitizer and for our colleagues in some of the countries who were hit the hardest, we ensured access to Oxygen Concentrators. NN is participating in Covax program to strive to bring vaccine equality by raising funds/donations. The biggest side effect of pandemic has been on mental health, and to address that our Employer Assistant Program (EAP) gives all employees in Novo Nordisk including the nearest family, access to coaches, phycologists and other professionals who can support in these uncertain times – all free of cost. We have also ensured a more frequent check-in with our employees, and we also created an internal web site, where people share their good ideas and can learn from others on how to cope in a pandemic.
If you are excited about driving change for our patients, ambitious and curious, go check out our website and career-site. We have open positions across South-East Asia so if you want a life-changing career, Novo Nordisk is truly the place to work. We support the lives of millions of patients across the globe who live with diabetes, obesity and other chronic or rare diseases. We embrace strategic thinking whilst having an operational mind-set. We drive change.
