Building the organisation of tomorrow

The pharmaceutical industry is growing and evolving fast, making it increasingly important for companies to attract and retain talent. In 2023, Octapharma responded to this challenge with new strategies to ensure it has the skills, technology and expertise around the world to continue our mission to provide new health solutions advancing human life.

“The pharmaceutical industry is highly skilled and, with an expected growth of around 5% a year, rare talent is in strong demand,” says Fany Chauvel, Corporate Head of People, Organisation and Culture, a role created in 2022 to spearhead Octapharma’s employee recruitment and retention programme. “To remain at the leading edge of our industry, we need to continue to attract motivated, talented people and give them a reason to stay with us for the long term. We want people to feel valued from the moment they first engage with us to the day they retire.”

Octapharma’s ambition is to provide an environment for our employees that engages and develops talent, providing an inclusive and healthy workplace where people feel valued, and where they are provided with innovative tools and ways of working together.

"We want people to feel valued from the moment they first engage with us to the day that they retire."

Fany Chauvel
Corpoate Head of People, Organisation and Culture

To that end, in 2023 Fany and her team rolled out a new global strategy for managing human resources and skills, with a strong emphasis on optimising employees’ experience throughout their career within the company.

“We can only reach our full potential if we can create safe and stimulating work environments. To achieve this, we are flipping the traditional pyramid hierarchy, meaning that we want to create a culture in which leaders serve their people from the bottom up, by setting clear goals, removing obstacles and empowering their teams,” explains Fany.

In practical terms, this ambition is reflected in a wide range of initiatives that will be rolled out over the next few years, starting with the harmonisation of job advertisements to ensure messaging consistency and that the right expectations are set from the very beginning.

Other changes include:

• New onboarding processes to quickly connect employees to Octapharma’s global values and purpose

• Career mapping and lifelong learning to help develop relevant skills and career journeys, to help retain our talent

• New training and empowerment for managers, ensuring that they can drive performance while ensuring the wellbeing of their teams at work

• Standardisation and digitalisation of HR processes to facilitate work and processes across teams

"We interviewed 353 people in 30 workshops across every part of our business, from our corporate headquarters in Lachen to our research facilities, production sites, donor centres in the US and Germany, and sales offices around the world."

Per Eriksson
Head of Market Communication

What do Octapharma teams value?

To facilitate this transformation, Octapharma was eager to discover why employees chose to join the company and why they have stayed.

“We interviewed 353 people in 30 workshops across every part of our business, from our corporate headquarters in Lachen to our research facilities, production sites, donor centres in the USA and Germany, and sales offices around the world,” says Per Eriksson, Head of Market Communication, who led the project.

“What we found is overwhelming pride in the work we do on behalf of our patients and very strong appreciation of our working culture and environment. People particularly liked our stability, continuing growth and the many opportunities available for personal development and for taking on new responsibilities. We will use these findings to shape our strategy for attracting and retaining talent, as well as to drive engagement across the organisation and ensure that our people feel more valued, more empowered and prouder than ever.”

The right tools

Octapharma’s drive to introduce simplified processes has been reflected not only in HR, but also in Production and IT. The global IT team introduced its new IT strategy in 2023 which, as Håkan Berggren, Vice President Corporate IT, explains, is more a response to business demand than merely a new IT initiative.

“In the past, we focused on building a strong tech foundation and streamlining our processes to prepare for rapid growth,” says Håkan. “Today, we’re using that foundation to elevate the way we do business. We’re deploying technology and data to improve productivity and drive growth across various parts of our business, from plasma collection through production to sales.”

“The new strategy provides opportunities for our team members to grow and develop to be part of a larger community."

Håkan Berggren
Vice President Corporate IT

Empowering digital data

As well as continuing to support daily operations, Octapharma IT is also investing heavily in three major areas:

• Production IT, where the main goal is digital transformation in manufacturing.

• Data and Analytics, where one example is the new Octapharma Data Platform. Jointly implemented with Production, this new initiative uses artificial intelligence (AI) to increase production yield.

• Security, where the company is working closely with all departments, to improve protection against cyber risks.The new security scorecard allows IT and Business to track progress.

“The new strategy provides opportunities for our team members to grow and develop to be part of a larger community,” says Håkan. “I believe this is a positive development which will help to retain and attract talent.