In Conversation With Deepshikha Mukerji, Regional HR Director, Abbott India

Congratulations to your organisation for winning the Best Places To Work at the BW People HR Excellence Awards 2023. In your view, what makes Abbott, a great place to work?

We’re happy to receive the BW People’s ‘Best Place of Work 2023’ award. It’s a testament to our purpose and mission to provide our workforce with the opportunity to change people’s lives for the better while living their own best lives personally and professionally.   

Abbott is an innovative, great place to work. We care about and value our employees. People want a motivational work environment and a clear path for growth, especially to meet their development needs, and we aim to offer this through opportunities and differentiated benefits that provide security for themselves and their families. 

All of our initiatives are based on ensuring that we help our employees build purpose-filled careers within the organization. We’re committed to helping our people thrive both in work and in their personal lives. That is what makes Abbott a great place to work.

How does your organization prioritize employee wellness and the need for a healthy work-life balance?

For us, employee well-being means helping people fulfil their potential to live full and healthy lives with holistic initiatives and benefits. This helps them truly thrive. 

Our India Wellness Strategy is a structured and holistic employee experience. It focuses on helping employees and their families on their journey to physical, emotional, financial, and social wellness, which are the four pillars around which this program is based.  Our wellness strategy goes beyond more traditional health benefits. For example, we have yoga and fitness sessions, financial management and planning for the future, amongst other things.

Our ‘Mind Strong’ initiative focuses on increasing awareness of the importance of mental health and providing tools to help manage stress and sleep, among other factors that can impact mental well-being.  Implemented well before COVID in 2019, the initiative reinforces our focus on supporting the well-being of employees and is an integrated solution aimed at creating a culture of acceptance on matters related to mental and emotional well-being. 

We also support our employees through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which is a customized counselling and resource service available for employees and their families.    

Further, employee assistance is available through the Clara Abbott Foundation — a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Abbott families worldwide. This includes helping them achieve financial independence with a wide range of resources, expert guidance, and education scholarships. 

We offer flexible work schedules and office timings to help our employees achieve work-life balance. We view these initiatives not only as important tools for talent attraction and retention but also as key components in our approach to diversity and inclusion.

Could you please tell us about the employee engagement initiatives at Abbott that have proved to be successful?

We care deeply for our employees and want them to feel valued and engaged. We have several employee networks to help people stay connected. These help us create a diverse and inclusive work environment. While each network has its own goals and programs, they all promote diversity of perspectives, as well as cultural awareness, personal and professional growth, and inclusion. 

One of these is the Women Leaders of Abbott network, a platform for attracting, retaining, and advancing women in the organization. 

Another employee network is the Working Mothers of Abbott - aimed at providing a platform where all working mothers can stay connected with each other, feel supported, learn, and grow. 

The Early Career Network - provides mentorship, leadership connections, and knowledge-sharing opportunities to foster generational diversity and empower early career professionals.

Also contributing to our employee engagement and satisfaction is our commitment to Volunteering - Abbott cares about and offers our employees opportunities to actively support communities where we operate through outreach, volunteering, and programming. We also aim to build teams that reflect the diversity of these communities.

To transform our employee experience, we have an AI-based technology, SmaHRty. This is an innovative and interactive AI-powered chatbot that supports employees with round-the-clock assistance. This helps resolve various employee queries – whether in terms of policies or benefits, including questions on Mind Strong – in real time. 

How does your organization eliminate any form of discrimination and bias and promote an inclusive environment for all?

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are fundamental at Abbott – in our people, mindsets and business models. We strive to create the kind of work environment where every employee feels welcome and able to bring their true self to work. This means integrating DEI practices across all areas of our business and building teams reflective of the communities we serve. 

Our commitment to developing a diverse workplace starts with our senior leadership; our Executive Diversity Council meets regularly to drive DEI strategy development and implementation across the company. We have framed an India-centric Equal Employment Opportunity policy to convey our commitment to being an inclusive employer. We continue to strengthen our hiring approach so we can effectively hire diverse talent across businesses. 

To strengthen our diversity commitment, our Abbott Second Careers Engagement (ASCENT) Program is a step to help empower veterans and women returning from career breaks, while giving them the flexibility they need as they make this transition. 

We also offer our employees opportunities to engage with and learn from different communities through various forums and employee networks, including the Women Leaders of Abbott network and the Early Careers network. We’ve launched the PRIDE network to provide education, awareness, and advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, enabling us to create a workplace where everyone brings their true selves to work every day. 

We’re fostering a more diverse pipeline of future employees. As part of our global 2030 Sustainability Plan, we are addressing the shortage of global STEM workers by creating opportunities for more than 100,000 young people, including 50% from underrepresented groups, to participate in Abbott’s STEM programs and internships.

In India specifically, our STEM program currently runs in 14 schools, impacting the lives of over 4600 children. Here, we promote STEM education in collaboration with SMILE Foundation, while simultaneously raising health awareness to spearhead healthy living

Our STEM internship programme in India is now in its second year, and we are committed to helping children with diverse talents and from different backgrounds, gain real-time experience through mentorships and hands-on experience within Abbott as they work on special projects

Communication and awareness will continue to be a foundation through which we will connect both internally and externally to drive our intent on DEI.

Can you share some examples of employee development and upskilling opportunities for employees?

To continually innovate and offer life-changing solutions, we must empower our teams with skills to meet the health needs of tomorrow. We do this by supporting our employees at every stage of their careers. We offer support and extensive advancement opportunities through comprehensive training, development, and mentoring.

Our internship and professional development programs give employees across levels, opportunities to gain valuable experience and rotate through positions in different businesses and locations across the globe.

Our leaders actively engage in mentoring talent across Abbott. Mentoring helps employees acquire new cross-functional expertise and perspectives that they can apply in their work. 

We aim to accelerate the growth of our key talent in partnership with renowned Indian academic institutions. For instance, the Future Leadership Development Program in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management helps our key talent take on senior management roles. Further, we work along with the Indian Business School to offer the ‘In Stride’ program, to advance the development of talent that have been identified as ‘ready now’ or ‘future ready successors.’

In addition to these, our employees have access to a comprehensive learning portfolio (through virtual and e-learning) to upskill themselves. We offer ‘learning gigs’ on our Career Connect portal, which are short-term, on-the-job learning opportunities to support their career growth. We also hold annual Global Development Weeks that encourage employees to explore the range of resources available to help them build their best career and realize their full potential.

How does your organization ensure effective communication and transparency between leadership and employees?

To ensure our leaders meaningfully communicate with other employees while keeping our values in mind, we offer leadership-oriented training as well. 

For instance, we train senior leaders in the organization to be effective coaches with our ‘Leader as a Coach’ program. This gives them the skills and tools they need to then offer individual coaching to key talent, supporting employee development. We also focus on our leadership benefitting from skill building and learning from current leaders, so they can lead with impact.  

Other channels of communication used by leaders to communicate to employees include regular townhalls, newsletters, sales and strategy meetings and our company portals. Our senior leaders periodically accompany the sales teams on their field visits. 

What strategies or practices do you employ to reward employees for their contributions beyond a monthly salary?

We celebrate our successes throughout the year. Our values – pioneering, achieving, caring and enduring – shape us and attract high performers who want to work for a company with a strong history of evolving and adapting to meet the world’s health needs. It is important that we recognize and celebrate results. Performers are rewarded in a differentiated manner, with both monetary and non-monetary recognition.

Once a year we recognize the performances that, in retrospect, had the greatest impact for our company and the people we serve. These contributions are honored at the annual President’s Awards. 

The Managing Director’s Awards and Abbott Excellence Awards recognize exceptional performance that support our values, going above and beyond what is expected, teamwork, innovation, continuous improvement, and crisis management. Our Long Service Awards celebrate employees for their tenure.

We also have monthly Spot Awards. These are for initiatives that merit immediate recognition in areas of saving time/money, enhanced efficiency, quality customer service, efficient resource utilization and intrapreneurship with speed, agility and competitiveness.

Employee engagement is a big part of happy and highly productive workplaces. How do you measure employee engagement within your organization?

To make sure our employees are heard, the “Your Voice Counts” survey provides them with the opportunity to have their opinions heard. This is an annual survey that asks questions on how people feel, what they need to keep evolving, are they feeling valued and if they’re getting the right level of work and personal support in several core areas. The feedback from this survey guides us with tangible actions across Abbott. 

Besides this survey, we also invite employee testimonials for specific programs/initiatives and participation in forums and webinars, where topics of interest are discussed with larger audiences.

India's top workplaces attract the best talent from across the country. Can you provide some insights into the strategies your organization implements to retain top talent?

Abbott is committed to recruiting and retaining a workforce that reflects the communities where we live and serve. This means attracting and retaining diverse employees while creating and supporting an inclusive workplace culture. 

We’re fostering this diverse talent pipeline through our internships and professional development programs. And we’re partnering with organizations that help us identify and recruit diverse employees. All of our initiatives focus on helping them grow within the organization. We empower our talent and remain committed to designing opportunities for them to learn, develop, and grow in leadership roles. This includes giving employees the flexibility to build successful careers in different roles– which is possible with our global footprint, diverse businesses, and commitment to development. 

We provide an extraordinary recruitment experience to our candidates through their hiring and onboarding process. We believe that connections and common purpose drive retention. 

Employee satisfaction is another good indicator guiding retention. One important practice we follow is listening to our employees – checking in and seeing what they are thinking and feeling. For instance, we have periodic surveys instead of just an annual survey to understand evolving employee experiences and proactively engage with them on an ongoing basis.

Ultimately, our employees stay with Abbott because they are connected to our purpose – helping people live fuller lives through better health. Regardless of your role in the company, our employees have the opportunity to change people’s lives every day, and by doing so, they can live their own best lives and do their best work. That is what we are here to do. And that is a compelling reason to stay with a company.