Employee Engagement at Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Cultivating Our Unique Culture
Originally published in Jazz Pharmaceuticals' 2023 Corporate Sustainability and Social Impact Report
Management Approach
The founders of Jazz created a company based on culture, a strong sense of purpose for delivering life-changing medicines and the ambition to create a great place to work. More than two decades later, Jazz remains a purpose-led, people-centric and performance-driven company. Our origin story remains the cornerstone of our culture and informs our approach to our People pillar.
Our talent is one of our most important assets. We attract and retain a diverse set of employees, ensuring we have the critical capabilities to successfully operate our business. We aim to create a welcoming and inclusive environment where people can thrive as they work together to impact the lives of our patients and their families.
We build people programs, practices and initiatives around our purpose and culture, which support our aim for Jazz to be the best work experience of our employees’ careers.
Employee Engagement: Cultivating Our Unique Culture
We believe connections matter. In order to transform the lives of patients, we must first focus on our people, ensuring we create a culture that enables them to do their best work.
CONTINUOUS LISTENING
A core element of our people strategy is to listen, learn and improve. Our active employee listening strategy allows us to determine areas for improvement to ensure the business environment is aligned to one global culture. This approach leverages a variety of listening methods, including surveys, focus groups, leader listening sessions, Employee Resource Teams and town halls.
Jazz conducts recurring employee Pulse surveys to gather feedback on what our employees value about the workplace experience, consistently achieving participation rates above 75%. Survey results are shared fully and openly with all employees, providing valuable insights into where to focus, prioritize and create a greater sense of belonging while informing initiatives aligned to our corporate objectives. Management actively engages employees on the results, and action plans are implemented where there are areas for improvement.
At Jazz, we truly appreciate the feedback we receive from our employees. Our 2023 Pulse surveys showed positive results with 85% of respondents indicating they feel connected to our purpose to transform the lives of patients and their families and 81% recommending Jazz as a good place to work.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND BELONGING (DEIB)
Jazz strives to create a workplace culture that encourages everyone to be their authentic selves. Building a sense of belonging by championing DEIB drives better business outcomes and creates a better environment for our employees to do their best work.
At Jazz, we are committed to:
- Create and embrace diversity in our workplace, leadership and beyond
- Encourage all to learn more about challenges and inequities in society
- Ensure our policies and processes are equitable
- Foster DEIB in the world around us by investing in employee resources and support
EMPLOYEE RESOURCE TEAMS AND AFFINITY FORUMS
Creating a sense of belonging for all employees is an important aspect of embracing diversity and ensuring we foster a culture of acceptance and inclusion. To this end, we created Employee Resource Teams (ConcERTos) where every employee can find membership and allyship.
Our ConcERTos were established with the intention that every employee has unique offerings and diverse experiences to offer and were established as broad self-led teams of employee volunteers. These teams deliver global events to educate the organization on important issues, celebrate important dates on our cultural calendar, foster allyship, amplify inclusive tools and resources to drive innovation, create opportunities for community and connection and act as employee listening hubs to share feedback supporting business and work practice decisions.
We have three active ConcERTos, including:
- Inclusion for Innovation. Leveraging our people to make Jazz a better place to work and help us improve to impact more patients’ lives through inclusive work practices
- Community Beat. Strengthening the bond between our people by fostering social connection and giving back to our communities (see the Community Pillar section of this report for further details)
- All Dimensions of Diversity. Connecting our people from a diverse range of backgrounds to educate the business, build connections and improve allyship
In addition to our unique approach to ConcERTos, we have five active Affinity Forums at Jazz that partner closely with our All Dimensions of Diversity ConcERTo. Affinity Forums are open to all employees and provide a space for employees from traditionally underrepresented groups and their allies to build community, while engaging in educational and other activities. The five forums include, ¡HOLA Jazz! (Hispanic Organization for Leadership Advancement), JazzSoul, JAWS (Jazz Association for Women Supporters), Jazz Pride and Pan-Asian. In 2023, our ConcERTos and Affinity Forums led seven global events aimed at educating employees, including events for International Women’s Day, Juneteenth and Pride Month.
We believe our differentiated approach to employee-led action provides an environment that creates opportunities for all Jazz employees, regardless of background, to find belonging in the workplace. This inclusive approach inspires active engagement toward our DEIB efforts across the company, with 32% of employees active in our ConcERTo and Affinity Forums at the end of 2023.
