Our culture at Novartis: Inspired, curious, unbossed

The success of our business depends on our ability to attract, grow and retain talented individuals who reflect and understand the diverse perspectives of our customers, patients and other stakeholders. It also depends on our capacity to create a shared culture that fosters belonging and drives long-term performance. We continue to nurture our inspired, curious and unbossed culture and to build a global community. We inspire by connecting our people to our purpose and fuel our curiosity through learning, growth and openness to different perspectives.

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Health and safety

At Novartis, our purpose to reimagine medicine goes hand in hand with maintaining a healthy, safe and environmentally friendly workplace for our employees, contractors, vendors and visitors. HSE is a fundamental component of the Novartis long-term business strategy and supports achieving our objectives by unleashing the power of our people and building trust with society.

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Other information

Novartis has an internally recognized HSE Management System that applies to all employees.  The sites that have chosen to pursue External HSE Management System Certifications (ISO 14001, 45001, and/or 50001) have gone above and beyond our internal expectations.  Novartis supports individual site decisions on pursuing external certifications.

  • External certifications of own sites, in 2024:
    • 31% of our workers at manufacturing sites were covered by an externally certified Health and Safety management system (OHSAS 18001 or ISO 45001 certifications)1
    • 31% of our workers at manufacturing sites with a certified environmental management system (ISO 14001 or Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) certification)1

Learning and development

We recognize that preparing for the future requires a workforce with a depth and breadth of skills. We invest in the development and training of our people for current and future skills, offering access to business-critical, personal and professional development training. Our employees can also use internal AI-based platforms to manage how they learn, find new roles, and develop their skills and experiences through new projects.

Novartis Group company employees are required to complete ethics, risk and compliance training. Our global e-training curriculum provides relevant information to enable employees to make the right choices in the course of their work and to perform with integrity. It addresses identified and relevant company risks and helps to communicate new and upgraded policies and guidelines across the organization.

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  • Scope and extent of performance reviews
    • We are committed to investing in our people and empowering them to drive their career growth and development.
    • All our permanent employees are assessed annually and our approach to managing performance includes frequent check-ins between managers and employees on goals, career development, feedback and wellbeing. It also ensures teams are focused on where they can create the greatest near- and long-term impact. Our process is designed to create agility and accountability by emphasizing focus, collaboration and development, and to ensure timely recognition so our people are celebrated for their achievements.

People-related practices and policies

Novartis recognizes and commits to respect every employee's right to freedom of opinion, expression and speech, consistent with our policies and standards of respectful behavior. We value an open and fair workplace and are committed to cultivating an environment where everyone feels comfortable to express opinions and contribute ideas. We communicate with transparency and our employees can make appropriate use of suitable systems for direct communication, including social media.

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Inclusion

We focus on creating a work environment in which all our people feel they belong. We believe it is the right thing to do, and that it promotes innovation as well as understanding for the diverse perspectives of our customers, patients and other stakeholders. Gender equity is an important part of our DEI strategy. This is exemplified with renewed Equal Pay International Coalition pledge with three commitments to achieve by 2027. These are: to maintain gender balanced representation in management; to review our human resources practices beyond base pay to eliminate any further potential sources of bias from the system; and to make the requirements of the new EU Pay Transparency Directive our global minimum standard for internal pay equity and pay transparency reporting.

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Other information

  • Managerial or board level responsibility for diversity initiatives
    • We embed appropriate DEI principles into objectives for managers, including the Executive Committee of Novartis (ECN), and in internal policies and controls, including our Code of Ethics.
  • Promoting diversity learning within the workforce
    • Training and guidance regarding diversity:
      • Mandatory unconscious bias e-training for recruiters has been assigned to all recruiters.
      • Mandatory Diversity & Inclusion e-Training was developed throughout 2020 and launched in 2021.
      • We have developed the Listening Dialogues approach throughout 2020 that we rolled out in 2021, to enable all employees and teams have open conversations, foster psychological safety and hone their empathetic listening skills.
  1. Percentage of average FTEs working at our manufacturing sites (excluding R&D)