Our people sit at the heart of our business. They are critical to our ability to deliver and succeed. To ensure they feel valued, we continue to focus on developing a strong structure adapting accordingly, and continually improving our employee experience. This is an important part of our global people strategy, which is designed to enable our colleagues to “Come, Stay, Grow and make a Meaningful Difference”.
In 2022, we have continued to evolve our strategy to encourage continuous improvement on the topics that matter most to our employees across our global network. As we maintain momentum through a period of rapid growth, in 2022 we focused on the “stay” and “grow” pillars of our employee offering to support the retention of our current colleagues, as well as improving the onboarding experience for newly hired talent. Personal development and job satisfaction remain priorities to ensure we continue to offer rewarding career opportunities, improve long-term job satisfaction and support sustainable growth across our global business. In addition, we integrated new sites to our network to strengthen as well as expand the technological platforms of our organization, such as the Codiak Exosomes Manufacturing Facility in the US and the Exosomics Service Unit in Italy. Alongside these recruitment and integration activities, we have continued to support and grow our talented workforce.
Our diverse global community encompasses a broad range of backgrounds, cultures and perspectives. Across the 28 countries in which we operate, our employee community comprises more than 100 nationalities. We have a cross-generational community and – in line with previous years – we continued to see a proportionate increase in the recruitment of younger employees during 2022. Globally, the gender split remains at 36% female and 64% male.
We understand the value and importance of diversity and inclusion across our employee community. By embracing different characteristics, preferences and beliefs, we can encourage innovation, engagement and creativity. Further information on recent initiatives in this area can be found in our 2022 Sustainability Report
In 2022, our work continued to support a strong pipeline of talented candidates, supported by a strong onboarding process as an integral part of our recruitment program. More than 3,500 new employees joined Lonza in 2022. Our recruitment activities had a strong focus in our Visp (CH), Houston (US) and Portsmouth (US) sites.
We continued to focus on the strength of our talent pipeline by enhancing our portfolio of Employer Value Proposition (EVP) content and campaigns. Improved access to interactive and video content has supported talent attraction and helped new joiners to understand our working practices and cultural values.
We have also improved the onboarding experience in 2022, in the time prior to an employee’s start date as well as in the first days of joining. This has been designed to manage turnover levels for early tenure employees. It was delivered by expanding our digital onboarding tool, which has created a tailored and engaging platform for new hires across selected test sites in the US and Switzerland. Feedback received from Houston (US), the first pilot location, has shown that the tool provides an enhanced onboarding experience with the overall satisfaction rate increasing by 17%. Positive responses to the question: ‘’Do you see yourself working for the organization in two years’ time?’’ rose by 11%, showing a promising impact on retention. By using the tool, managers, HR partners and new colleagues have regular interaction in the time before hire and during onboarding. Having confirmed positive outcomes from the test phase, the program will be further expanded across Europe and Asia in 2023.
We continue to review our initiatives to ensure we can attract industry leading talent and create an environment where they can thrive and feel motivated by a sense of belonging. This will support the ongoing expansion of our employee community as we continue in our work to achieve our ambitious, sustainable growth plans in the coming years.
Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)
During 2022, we continued to focus on building strong foundations to drive engagement and retention. This was illustrated by an increase in our Employee Engagement Index to 67 (from 65 in September 2021).
Discover More
A period of rapid growth in 2021 required us to focus on creating a stable environment to attract new employees and, in 2022 the focus shifted to talent retention. This strategic approach was designed to engage our new colleagues and to manage the challenges arising from a competitive external recruitment market.
2022 saw an employee voluntary turnover rate of 10.7%1, globally. This is in line with our competitors at a global level and is lower than external market trends. However, higher rates were identified at the beginning of the year for the Americas and for employees with a tenure of two to three years on a global basis. In 2022, we continued to collect data and insights to understand the root causes of these movements. We also worked to establish appropriate initiatives to improve retention. In response to the findings, we worked to provide stronger career progression and development opportunities and to create a more consistent approach to leadership training. We have seen an improvement to 14.4% for the Americas (from 16.6%) and 14% for employees with a tenure of two to three years (from 17.2%).Improving employee engagement and retention will remain a priority in 2023, to ensure that our new programs are culturally embedded through sustained focus and commitment.
In 2021 and 2022, our Voice of Employee Survey and Exit Survey information indicated that there was an opportunity to improve work schedules across our global network. As part of our post-pandemic back-to-office planning, we redeveloped our approach to hybrid working at a global level to ensure that colleagues could continue to deliver while benefitting from improved levels of flexibility.
Lonza’s Global Hybrid Work Policy was introduced in 2022, allowing our employee population to perform part of their work remotely for up to two days a week (where tasks allowed, representing 25% of global employee base). This was designed to provide time to connect with colleagues in person during the remaining three days per week. Introducing a global policy ensured a consistent experience for employees across our network. In 2022, we also launched the “Work from Anywhere” policy. This provides employees with an opportunity to work from another location for up to four weeks per year, subject to compliance requirements.
As we work in a highly competitive industry for talent acquisition and retention, we invest in regular external benchmarking, as well as actively listening to our colleagues. The insights gained from our work in these areas has led to enhancements and new offerings across our Total Reward suite.
During 2022, our Lonza Bonus plan was redesigned to bring our divisions and functions into a single performance structure that aligns to our One Lonza company performance ambition. The new Lonza Bonus plan also encourages greater focus on sustainability across the business, as a proportion of the company performance calculation is now measured through our progress on our Environmental, Social and Governance targets.
Further enhancements were made with new employee share program offerings. Our “ShareMatch” program allows employees to purchase an agreed number of Lonza shares at a discount, with a company matching scheme after a three-year holding period. This is expected to encourage colleagues to engage with company performance and supports improved retention rates. In 2022, it was offered to employees in Switzerland, the UK and the US (excluding residents of California), with 30% uptake among eligible employees, higher than external benchmarks for this program. We aim to expand the eligible country list in 2023.
The Lonza Restricted Share Plan (LRSP) was also launched in 2022. It allows senior leaders to nominate key strategic talent to receive company shares on a three year holding period, for those who are not otherwise eligible to receive company shares. The aim is to recognize and reward high-value strategic contributors in a way that will encourage loyalty and improve retention.
Throughout 2022, we have continued to explore ways to support the wellbeing of our people. We launched a pilot of an Employee Wellbeing App (“Lonza Life”), designed to boost the wellbeing of our employees and their families in relation to health, wellbeing and fitness. This pilot has given us the opportunity to listen to and understand the needs of our employees. In 2023, we will take a site or country approach to advance a meaningful wellbeing offering focused on Mental, Financial, Physical and Social Wellbeing. Further support is provided through the existing Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which provides a global support structure, offering advice and guidance for physical and mental health.
We aim to ensure that our people feel safe and empowered at Lonza through a focus on Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging (IDB). The IDB Council runs a series of regional events and initiatives to ensure every colleague is welcomed and valued for their differences. Specifically, Gender Equality was a focus in 2022, in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, which targets an increase in women in management, alongside initiatives to ensure gender equality across the employee experience. These initiatives have seen the proportion of women in management positions increase to 27.6% and female representation across the company reach 36%. Our Voice of Employee Survey found that appreciation of Lonza as an inclusive and diverse company continued to increase between Q3 2021 to Q3 2022, with an increase in a feeling of belonging from 66% to 68%. More information on the IDB Council and the SDG 5 Gender Equality initiative can be found in the 2022 Sustainability Report.
Looking to 2023, we will continue to listen to employees’ feedback, benchmark progress, and monitor market trends to ensure that we continue to care for our people. This is important for our business, as we understand that strong and sustained performance is made possible through happy and engaged employees.
To ensure employees feel that they can build a career at Lonza, personal growth and development became a focus in 2022. It is a vital part of our employee career journey and a key to long-term job satisfaction.
Our new Leadership Framework was developed, comprising three core components: Care, Coach and Communicate. It was designed to provide a common understanding of the expectations of our leaders and to support them in navigating the change from traditional management to servant leadership. With the framework in place, our people can expect a consistent experience across the business while leaders have the clarity of clear guidance supported by a bespoke framework.
This overarching framework is supported by the launch of related leadership development training including the Core Leadership Impact Program (CLIP) and Accelerated Management Development Program (AMDP). CLIP comprises a series of modules to empower leaders by improving their awareness of their own strengths alongside focal areas for improvement. CLIP was rolled out to around 330 leaders in 2022. AMDP is a targeted program to ensure a strong pipeline for senior leadership positions. It gives up to 10 employees the opportunity to experience supported job rotation (internationally and domestically) and offers intensive development programs to enhance leadership capabilities. It is designed to ensure a strong and sustainable future by nurturing leading internal talent.
We are also developing a culture of learning at Lonza through Quality Education, linked to the UN SDG 4 (Quality Education). By providing technical training programs we are encouraging our people to take ownership of their development. We launched LinkedIn Learning in 2021, and in 2022 we saw increased utilization of this important resource with learning hours increasing by 72%. We have curated several Lonza courses on the platform, allowing for tailored and specialist training in areas most requested by employees. We will explore ways to further enhance the use of this tool in 2023.
The focus on personal and professional learning and the impact on career development is demonstrated with an increase in our internal mobility between positions to 29.8% in 2022 (an increase of 5.6% from 2021).
Opportunities for personal and professional development remain critical in creating and maintaining an engaged employee community. We will continue to build a compelling environment where employees are inspired to grow, by listening to feedback from our biannual Voice of Employee Survey (distributed in March and September) and establishing programs that can influence career paths in a meaningful way.
With a strong baseline of employee feedback from our onboarding experience, Voice of Employee Survey, Exit Survey and live global people data, we have established a data-driven people strategy that aligns with the needs of our people and business.
In 2022, we refined our strategic approach to ensure our employees stay and grow with us, while maintaining momentum in other key areas of our people offering. This will continue into 2023, with an emphasis on operational excellence, enhanced use of automation, technology and continuous improvements to the employee experience. As we continue to consolidate our culture and identity as a strategic partner to the healthcare industry, we aim to empower our leaders, to enable our employees to make a meaningful difference and to provide an innovative approach to sustainable and strategic talent development.
Total turnover in 2022 was 12.8%
