2013 CSR Awards: Employee Relations

Winner: Novartis International and Fishburn Hedges - Novartis and TED: inspiring associates to improve healthcare in Africa

In its inaugural partnership with TED in 2012, Novaris International struck up a discussion with the great thinkers at TEDGlobal, asking: “How can we dramatically improve healthcare in Africa?”

But Novartis knew its associates (employees) have a wealth of experience and expertise too, and wanted to get their ideas. They also wanted to use the company’s exciting partnership with TED to engage and inspire them with its broader Corporate Responsibility (CR) work.

So Novartis put the same question on African healthcare to them, tapping into their unique expertise.

Novartis held invite-only brainstorms in Novartis and Sandoz (generics division of Novartis) headquarters in Basel and Holzkirchen, with inspiration provided by a TEDGlobal conference livestream. They also involved all Novartis associates through “ideapharm,” an online internal brainstorming tool where users post, comment on and refine ideas. They also created content to raise awareness of the context of healthcare in Africa and Novartis programs through essays, infographics, Intranets, Novartis.com and videos. 

The result: more than 100 ideas to improve healthcare—and Novartis’ business—on the continent. Associates from nearly 70 countries participated, helping to drive more than 300,000 Novartis.com views and 27,000 video views. —Bill Miltenberg

Honorable Mentions:

• AT&T Empowers Employees to "Do One Thing" to Improve their Communities and AT&T's Business   

• Bacardi Ltd - Driving CSR Passion in Bacardi Employees

• Baxter International - Creating a Culture of Employee Engagement and Volunteerism

• Bechtel Corporation - Bechtel Stewardship

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - Community Investment Councils Initiative

• MondelÄ“z International - Hope Kitchens