Viatris 2022 Sustainability Report: Building Foundations To Advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The Chief Human Relations Officer oversees DEI and reports to the CEO. The function provides quarterly updates to the Viatris Board of Directors. While our colleagues represent a multitude of geographies, experiences and cultures, we recognize we are early in our DEI journey. In 2022, we focused on identifying initial actions, building our strategy and setting in place the essential building blocks to advance DEI at Viatris.
As part of our 2022 baseline assessment, we built a roadmap to define our journey, maturity, vision, focus and actions. We also set and communicated our initial companywide DEI goals that will help us drive and measure our progress. As we initiated our first Viatris Voice Survey, DEI was a priority category – setting the stage for continuous listening and seeking to understand the diverse perspectives of colleagues around the world.
In 2022, the Viatris Board of Directors adopted the Board’s Policy on Diversity and Inclusion.
Our Companywide DEI Goals
- Engage at least 90% of employees globally on diversity, equity and inclusion learning by the end of 2023.
- Increase diversity in management:
- Increase women’s representation in senior management globally to at least 35% by the end of 2027.
- At least double Black representation in all management levels in the U.S. by the end of 2027.
- At least double Hispanic/Latinx representation in senior management in the U.S. by the end of 2027.
Our ERGs are important partners in sharing experiences and are building awareness through programs such as Allyship in the Workplace, which was delivered in partnership with the non-profit organization Out & Equal. Throughout the year, our ERGs hosted educational panel discussions, mentor matching, guest speakers and talent spotlights. We began publishing a quarterly Learning & Development blog with DEI topics such as Creating Inclusion and Addressing Bias to build knowledge.
In addition to our voluntary ERG learning events, we will implement in 2023 the first required course in our DEI learning series to help us achieve our goal of engaging at least 90% of employees globally in DEI learning by the end of 2023. The course, Focusing on Inclusion, will be a part of every employee’s learning curriculum.
Achieving this goal is the beginning of a longer term DEI roadmap and strategy. In 2022 and continuing in 2023, we have partnered with experts who are helping us advance DEI learning over the next several years with a focus on next-level complex, intersectional and multi-cultural experiences. In 2023, DEI will also be a vital part of our new Management Coaching Program and Executive Leadership Academy at Harvard Business School.
As part of further building our foundation, we are assessing the experiences of our colleagues and examining our processes, systems, support and programs to further identify actions to progress all our goals. Talent acquisition, talent management, colleague experience and engagement, wellbeing, and compensation and benefits are all key areas in systematically addressing and advancing DEI. In addition, we have invested in partnerships, brought in experienced talent in DEI, and are creating greater awareness through talent data and analytics to understand our baselines and what it will take to advance diverse representation.
Growing Our Employee Resource Groups
Our voluntary ERG networks bring together colleagues and allies with common interests and different experiences. Each of our ERG communities is open to all colleagues, and we encourage membership in multiple ERGs. The groups offer opportunities to develop skills such as committee leadership through formal leadership roles in councils and chair seats, communications support and event planning. Our active and forming ERGs include:
- The VIVID ERG supporting LGBTQ+ colleagues and allies in building an inclusive workplace culture where all colleagues can be their authentic selves.
- The EmpoWer ERG advocating for an ecosystem that empowers women to reach their full potential.
- The Black colleague ERG intends to focus on current and future Black colleagues through advocacy, community service, networking and professional development.
- The Caregivers ERG intends to support all caregivers as they navigate the logistical and emotional challenges of balancing professional and caregiving responsibilities.
In 2023, we will launch our first DEI council – the Global ERG Leadership Alliance. This Alliance is made up of executive sponsors, chairs and support partners for each of our active and forming ERGs and is fully sponsored by top company leaders. The efforts of the Alliance will support our overall DEI objectives and link ERG activities to the overall DEI strategic plan.
We are also building the best practices and infrastructure to grow our ERG communities by adding partnerships and resources to further develop our next ERGs to launch.
Growing Our Talent
We seek to create a work environment that enables colleagues to achieve their aspirations and realize their full potential through the following:
- Goals and objectives setting
- Performance and talent management
- Retention and internal progression
- Talent review and succession planning
- Mapping talent trends
- Talent attraction
- Training, learning and development
Employees are encouraged to set annual goals and objectives, fully enabled via our system-led tools and guiding resources. Viatris provides resources for colleagues and managers to connect, set goals aligned to company priorities, discuss career aspirations and development plans, and track progress throughout the year.
We have a pay-for-performance philosophy and are committed to equitably rewarding colleagues’ achievements at a variety of performance levels. The annual performance review process that fully supports the healthy exchange of feedback between managers and their team members is key to accomplishing this. All employees are encouraged to reflect on their performance, and in 2022 94% of employees completed their performance evaluations.
In 2022, we completed Viatris’ first full cycle of talent review and succession planning. We performed a broad talent assessment focusing on establishing a baseline across the entire enterprise. We also focused on exploring strengths and opportunities for growth, evaluating population characteristics in line with our DEI goals and objectives for gender (globally) and ethnicity (U.S.), aligning support to key talent in the succession pipeline and assessing the readiness of our talent pool. More than 20% of all Viatris colleagues experienced internal career progression in 2022.
Looking forward, we will implement a multi-year talent strategy with four key pillars: building efficient and effective global processes, leveraging talent insights, development planning and deepening our diverse talent pipeline.
As we focus on growing our talent, we continue to engage in mapping talent trends using a variety of external partners and trend data; evolving our internal people insights for deep-level data and analytics expertise; and, aligning our talent and total rewards portfolios to remain robust, competitive, attractive and ahead of market trends.
“We are building a diverse, compelling and inspirational leadership culture via the health of our talent pipeline and a purposeful development focus. We are truly growing our talent for today, tomorrow and for the future.”
— Sheila Muhl
Head of Global Talent and Total Rewards, Viatris
Building interest in our sector, nurturing the talent pipeline and attracting future colleagues are important to our continued success. The following are a few examples in that spirit:
- We hosted approximately 180 interns, apprentices and trainees in more than 10 countries who gained valuable career experience and networking. Nearly a third continued working with Viatris post-internship as fulltime colleagues, student workers or on a contract basis.
- In 2022, Viatris hosted a student from the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Pathways to C-Suite program. The program pairs undergraduate and post-graduate students with some of the nation’s top corporations to provide the students with experience with how public policy is developed. This is the second year Viatris has participated in this program, which seeks to diversify the corporate leadership ranks.
- Students gained insight into how they can make an impact in their future careers through programs such as Viatris Egypt’s Sharpen Up, which introduced more than 20 pharmaceutical students to various functions as part of their career exploration.
- In support of outreach and identifying future talent, we explored partnerships and recruitment opportunities with various organizations focusing on key areas of expertise and advancing DEI. We intend to invest in additional partnerships in 2023.
We are also deploying new Leadership Development Principles to guide our global learning and development portfolio.
Our new Talent Health Dashboard demonstrates that Viatris is performing well above benchmarks in talent retention, establishing a healthy foundation to grow and a focus on retention through our first years as Viatris. Across the organization:
- 47% of senior management level roles were filled internally.
- 74% of senior management roles have one or more successors identified as being ready now, next or in the future.
Our Leadership Principles
Develop key leadership capabilities in management for the present and future.
Invest in our talent and build bench strength via highly engaging and thought-provoking content delivered at pivotal moments on the development journey.
Diversify our talent development focus by applying the DEI lens in all aspects of program development and ensuring representation in all program facets.
Innovate leadership and people management culture to enhance performance through a variety of experiential, reflective and expert-led stretch development experiences.
Build leadership foundations by introducing and developing modern practices in inspirational people leadership that drive innovation and performance.
Advance the value proposition at Viatris by leveraging challenging and modern programs that dually supplement on-the-job experiences with the potential to accelerate learning, growth and achievement.
Learning and Development
To encourage colleagues’ continual growth, we deliver training, learning and development throughout the year via a variety of self-paced, facilitated and team learning activities.
We have expanded our professional development opportunities, including introducing skill benchmarking capabilities for colleagues to measure personal skill development. More than 160,000 voluntary online trainings for professional development were completed on topics including enhancing individual professional performance, project management methods and personal productivity.
As part of promoting high ethical standards and a quality-first mindset, colleagues are mandated to complete a large suite of annual continuing education in our companywide online training platform. In 2022, approximately 99% of colleagues completed nearly 4 million learning items on key topics such as cGMP, sales and marketing protocols, regulatory and compliance.
Other programs included the following:
- Completing nearly 700 CliftonStrengths assessments and nearly 300 Insights Discovery profiles in 2022 to help colleagues become more self-aware, identify strengths and understand others.
- Piloting the Athena Program, a leadership development program in Europe for women who have the potential and interest to develop their careers into more senior roles. Fifteen women participated in the pilot program, and we intend to scale participation for 2023.
- Growing our Ardor Learning language program, which provides access to colleagues to learn English as a second language. Over 700 one-on-one classes were completed in 2022.
