Diversity and Human Capital Management

We believe that attracting, developing, and retaining human capital is key to our success in developing novel mechanism of action drugs which can make a difference for patients. We are dedicated to ensuring diversity of our workforce, while continuously striving to offer our employees a nurturing and rewarding work environment which facilitates their professional success. With the goal to execute more than 40 clinical trials in 2019, our organization continues to expand and build capability.

Approximately 125 new employees joined us in 2018, an increase of 21% versus 2017. Most new employees started in our Drug Development departments such as Clinical Operations, Biometrics, Medical Science, Clinical Pharmacology, and Project Management, but we also filled key positions in the new Commercial team. The recruitment of new colleagues will enable us to bring our novel product candidates further through development, with the ultimate goal to obtain approval for these therapies for patients as quickly as possible.

We expect that our Drug Development departments will continue to grow rapidly and, in 2019, our Commercial team will expand substantially as well. We continue to invest in Drug Discovery and our Shared Services departments. Expansion of staff is foreseen at all sites, including Basel, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. We seek approximately 130 additional colleagues in 2019 across the business in order to meet our business goals.

Diversity

We aim to develop a balanced workforce across a number of criteria such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, experience level, and disability. Our Executive Committee reviews the diversity of the workforce annually and is committed to creating equal opportunities for inclusion of diverse talent.

Human capital management

We invest in the development of employee knowledge, skills, and competencies to continue to deliver innovative science at our company. Furthermore, we aim to ensure that training of employees takes place on all handling of hazardous materials, laboratory and other safety aspects, and other relevant policies for conducting our business.

We have policies in place to ensure the well-being of our employees, for example, addressing different forms of leave and allowing flexible working. We aim to ensure an inclusive, open, and supportive professional work environment across our international locations. We organize regular engagement meetings for research and development staff to inspire and align the fast growing teams behind our vision and ambition. We hold regular informal lunch meetings with executive committee members for new and other employees at different sites. We organize an all-staff day to reflect upon our core values and last year’s day was reserved for charitable activities.

We use a variety of indicators to measure employee satisfaction, including the rates of absenteeism and turnover among our employees. These and other indicators allow us to consider actions to optimize our work environment or working practices.