Question

AstraZeneca is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in London, the company has 59,000 employees around the world. Some 21.8% percent are in the United States, 32.9 percent in Europe, and 18.1 percent in China. The company is active in more than 100 nations and had sales in excess of $23 billion for 2016. A key strategic imperative for this multinational is to build a talented global workforce, led by managers who have a global perspective and are comfortable moving around the world, interacting with people from other cultures, and doing business in different nations. It is not easy.

To help build international bench strength, the company moves managers to another country for up to three years. Such assignments are not cheap; the company estimates that it can cost two to four times an employee’s annual salary to cover expenses. Expenses can include a child’s school tuition, tax equalization, cultural training, and subsidized housing. Because of this expense, AstraZeneca focuses its international assignments only on its most promising, “high-potential” employees—those who are scheduled for advancement and leadership positions within the company. In every case, the human resource staff will assess whether the investment in a person is worth making. Simply posting an employee to a foreign country is not enough. To get promoted, employees must also learn to work in international teams and to manage across borders. If a person is judged to lack the capability to do this, he or she will not get a foreign posting. If the employee fails to do this effectively when on the posting, advancement prospects will be reduced.

To ease the transition to another country, AstraZeneca offers employees and their spouses help with moving, locating schools for children, learning a language, and understanding cultural differences. The company also offers repatriation training for employees coming home after extended postings abroad. It does this because experience has shown that many expatriates and their families have problems readjusting to their old life after extended time in a different culture.

Another problem that the human resource function at AstraZeneca has to grapple with is how to raise the talent base of employees in emerging markets where AstraZeneca has been making big investments in recent years. An example is China, where until recently, there was very little in the way of professional management education (this is now changing rapidly). In 2003, the company had a little more than 1,000 employees in China. By 2017, there were more than 10,0000 employees in China. AstraZeneca has been trying to raise the skill level of key Chinese employees as fast as possible.

With regard to key Chinese managerial talent, the company has been sending them abroad to get exposure to other cultures and to acculturate them into the way in which AstraZeneca does business. It wants them to understand what it is like to be part of a global business. Each expatriate will have a host-country line manager assigned to him or her, as well as a home-country line manager who monitors the expatriate’s progress. After a period, the majority of them return to China, where the most successful are targeted for future leadership positions within the Chinese subsidiary. The most talented, however, may go beyond this and, ultimately, move into senior management positions at the corporate level.

AstraZeneca has also been working hard to increase the diversity of its global workforce. The company believes that diversity fuels innovation, emphasizing that teams need people who don’t all think the same, and who approach challenges differently. Women comprise half of the company’s global workforce, comprise 30 percent of the board of directors, and occupy 43 percent of all senior roles in the company. In 2016, the company piloted a European Women as Leaders program to support the accelerated development of high-potential women. As of 2017, this program is being offered globally. The company is also trying to ensure that employees from fast-growing emerging markets are promoted into leadership positions. In 2016, 14.5 percent of managers who reported to the senior leadership team had a country of origin that was an emerging market or Japan, up from 5 percent in 2012.

5.) What do you think about AstraZeneca’s efforts to increase employee diversity? How might this benefit the company?

Answer 1

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What do you think about AstraZeneca’s efforts to increase employee diversity? How might this benefit the company?

I definitely agree with your notion of creativity ignited by diversity. There is great awareness as workers face difficulties and barriers as going outside. Managers will improve partnerships and create successful brainstorms and team building opportunities from all backgrounds. This integrates the workers and provides an effective working atmosphere. It is also important to ensure that AstraZeneca can completely adapt to the international climate into which it is introduced

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