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TAG overview

Chapter 2

how working has changed

Leveraging lessons learned: Transforming challenges into opportunities

Owing to the pandemic, our workforce suddenly had to adapt to significant changes in all areas, including research laboratories and production facilities. From the start, we were determined to look beyond the crisis and focus on how we can capitalize on lessons learned in the long run. In a constantly changing environment we need to be agile in how we work, learn and lead. We successfully embedded learnings of the crisis into new ways of working, showing our unique capacity for adaptability through a strong sense of curiosity and community.

Future ways of working:
Striving for agility and innovation

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How we work

    We are continuously looking for ways to evolve the patterns of when, where and how work is done. Our core focus is on flexible hours, remote working, job sharing, and part-time working models. We want to create an inspiring workplace that attracts and empowers our employees while focusing on business outcomes.

    In the future, each task and project within our company will call for a unique approach. A revised guideline on flexible working models will help us find the right balance between a virtual and in-person future.

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How we learn

    As a global science and technology company, our curiosity is ingrained in our DNA. We ask questions, we challenge the status quo, we learn. Since our company was founded more than 350 years ago, a thirst for knowledge has been our strongest driving force. This is also demonstrated by the more than 2 million video views within the first year of our newly launched LinkedIn Learning platform. With this platform, we offer individualized learning formats already used by over 50% of our workforce. We also strongly believe in the power of smart cohorts, being at the forefront with team learning methods such as “working out loud”.

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How we lead

    We lead and are led by our values of courage, achievement, responsibility, respect, integrity, and transparency. We have always believed in the power of great leadership. Last year demonstrated the importance of mental health which has always been embedded in our leadership style. We revised our leadership programs, now based on cohort learning sprints, which strongly empower agile, inclusive and purposeful leadership. We also see and support the importance of self-leadership in a more flexible work-set up, which is why we offer a leadership learning path on LinkedIn, which was the most successful training path for our company in 2020.

The pandemic moved health to the forefront

The health and safety of our employees is our top priority. We used the experiences from Covid-19 to challenge our approach.

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We developed dedicated occupational safety standards for our offices, laboratories and production sites and informed our employees.

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We made personal protective equipment available to our employees to reduce their risk of infection.

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We set up Covid-19 testing centers for our employees at many of our major sites.

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We restricted travel throughout the Group to protect our employees. Many crucial events, such as audits, were carried out virtually.

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In several high-risk countries, we extended insurance coverage to provide additional financial support to our employees in the event of a hospital stay.