The challenge

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company, founded in 1923 and headquartered just outside of Copenhagen, Denmark. The company employs more than 50,000 people in 80 offices around the world and markets its products in 170 countries.

At Novo Nordisk, the business is built around its clear purpose: "Driving change to defeat diabetes and other serious chronic diseases." Novo Nordisk's key contribution is to discover and develop innovative medicines and make them accessible to patients throughout the world.

Diversity and inclusion can help realize this ambition by enabling a diverse line of thought, increasing innovation, leading to better and more nuanced decisions and stronger risk management.

For Novo Nordisk, diversity is about the mix of employees, perspectives, and backgrounds of employees in the business, and inclusion is about creating a culture where all employees feel valued and have a sense of belonging.

Novo Nordisk acknowledges that gender is just one aspect of diversity and that diversity encompasses any dimension that distinguishes employees and facilitates a broad range of perspectives. This includes aspects such as ethnicity, race, age, nationality, disability status, and sexual orientation. However, due to legal limitations, Novo Nordisk presently lacks consistent global metrics for all aspects of diversity.

At the end of 2020, despite many great initiatives and programs promoting Diversity & Inclusion at Novo Nordisk, there was still scope for improvement in terms of gender diversity. The primary obstacle to achieving gender diversity is the underrepresentation of women in senior leadership positions. In 2020, the percentage of women in senior leadership positions was 35%, which is only slightly higher than in previous years (At Novo Nordisk, Senior leadership typically includes Senior VP's and corporate VP's).

“To be clear, we are not happy with our current state. That is why we’ve introduced aspirational targets focused on creating an inclusive culture and achieving gender balance.” Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO, Novo Nordisk.

The action taken

In August 2021, the Executive Management committed to a set of diversity and inclusion targets for Novo Nordisk, with the belief that this will ensure leadership accountability and drive transformational change. These targets include:

For Novo Nordisk, gender balance is defined as the range between 45%-55% to leave up to 10% flexibility for women and men while also allowing for non-binary gender, recognizing that some employees may not wish to be categorized.

To arrive at the 45% figure, a forecasting model was developed, which included the previous five years' average turnover and the average share of women in the inflow and outflow of senior leaders. Based on different scenarios of the future share of women among senior leaders, the company found that an aspirational target of achieving a minimum of 45% women and 45% men in senior leadership positions by the end of 2025 was both ambitious and realistic.

The company acknowledged that additional actions are necessary to drive sustainable change in Diversity and Inclusion, and therefore identified three key drivers to focus on:

1. Holding leaders accountable:

• Novo Nordisk expects all its leaders to embrace their role as inclusive leaders by being committed to building diverse teams of complementary strengths, valuing diverse skills, experiences and perspectives, and creating psychological safety for employees.
• The company recognises that diversity and inclusion opportunities are different depending on the local context and societies we serve. Therefore, to drive impact at the local level and to hold leaders accountable for driving progress, all senior leaders are expected to define local focus areas and action plans.
• This is further affirmed by the progress on D&I being anchored in the Short-term and Long-term incentive programs for senior leaders.

2. Embedding D&I in the employee life cycle

To mitigate bias, Novo Nordisk continuously reviews its processes and policies at every stage of the employee experience, including recruitment, compensation, and paid leave.

• When recruiting, leaders are expected to build teams of complementary strengths. To make this ambition a reality, the company strives to ensure a diverse panel in its recruitment processes, as well as a diverse slate of candidates. Furthermore, the leaders at the company is continuously challenging themselves regarding assumptions about what is needed for a position.
• To tackle pay equity, equal pay reviews are conducted annually, resulting in mitigating actions being taken where pay gaps are identified.
• To create a more inclusive environment for all genders, Novo Nordisk has offered a minimum of eight weeks of paid leave to non-birthing parents, regardless of where they work, from 2022 onwards. The policy applies to any employee with a parental responsibility through birth or adoption and is aimed at ensuring all employees have the opportunity to bond with their child within the first 12 months.
• Lastly, the company ensures a strong pipeline of diverse talents by embedding D&I in its succession management and talent programs.

3. Transparency

• Novo Nordisk uses data and metrics to track the progress of D&I initiatives and to create transparency and accountability for its leaders and employees.
• In addition to employee representation data, the company also measures the state of inclusion at Novo Nordisk using its global “Inclusion Index”. The “Inclusion Index” is a numerical indicator of how employees rate the state of inclusion in Novo Nordisk, based on four statements around belonging, equal opportunities, and psychological safety. Each leader gets a unique inclusion index for the team to benchmark itself against the business unit and the company, and address team challenges.
• Additionally, all leaders can access pay insights through the Equal Pay Dashboard, which identifies potential pay biases in the employee life cycle, helping to prevent pay gaps and reduce response time. 

By regularly analyzing these metrics, the company has been able to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to foster a more inclusive workplace culture.

In addition to utilizing these metrics, Novo Nordisk releases an internal D&I progress report that features success stories and knowledge gained from various parts of the organization. The aim is to promote transparency and cultivate a feeling of working towards a common objective.

“Being inclusive should be lived out through action – and how we operate our businesses – everywhere, each and every day.” Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO,

The outcome

Novo Nordisk has made significant strides since introducing its aspirational targets in August 2021, notably in achieving greater gender balance across all managerial levels, inclusion and sustainable pay.

The share of women among senior leaders increased from 35% at the introduction of the target to 39% 18 months later. At the current rate, the company is on track to achieve the 45% target by 2025.

Of Novo Nordisk's 39,127 employees who completed the survey in 2022, 82% rated the inclusion statements favorable, compared to 78% in 2021, signifying a 4% increase in the Inclusion Index from 2021 to 2022.

Out of the 43,000 positions[1] covered in the annual pay review in 2022, Novo Nordisk identified 0.6% with an equal pay gap[2], corrective action is being taken on the identified pay gap.

[1] Excluding some populations and locations due to local regulations such as in the US where a local process is in place

[2] “Equal Pay gap” is defined as the employee’s pay being significantly above or below the expected pay given the employee’s job level, tenure, job family and other parameters

The learnings

• Targets alone don't drive change, subsequent actions are also needed.
• It is important to recognize that diversity and inclusion opportunities differ depending on the local context and societies served.
• Leadership commitment to the D&I agenda is key. Both, to role model inclusive behaviours and to build diverse teams.
• Companies can only unlock the full potential of its workforce by embracing an inclusive and diverse culture representative of the patients, customers, and societies it serves.

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“It all starts with inclusion – and inclusive leaders who make people feel safe to speak up and show up – as their true selves – each and every day. With that, our company becomes stronger. Our business performance will be stronger. We will be more holistic in the way we look at things. And we will better reflect the societies we serve.” Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, President and CEO, Novo Nordisk