Why Novo Nordisk was named Britain's Healthiest Workplace

We sat down with the mid-sized organisation to hear how it got the ‘sanity check’ it needed through taking part in the UK’s largest employee wellbeing survey.

Global healthcare giant Novo Nordisk has had plenty to celebrate during recent years. Acknowledged as a world leader in the understanding of diabetes and other serious chronic conditions, including obesity, it already supplies nearly half the world’s insulin and can boast 35 million users for its diabetes care products.

Its UK division’s win in the 2022 Britain’s Healthiest Workplace (BHW) survey’s ‘medium business category’ is yet another accolade to add to the list. And something the company has not taken lightly.

“Winning this award feels very special,” reflects Antonio Marin-Blazquez, Senior Director, People and Organisation at Novo Nordisk (UK). “When you’ve been working for a company for so long sometimes you lose sight of how you compare with other companies, so we wanted to benchmark ourselves.”

“It’s not only about HR and the many things we’ve put in place, but about every one of us that has decided to look after ourselves and each other. It’s about the managers that have listened and supported their teams through two years of fears and unknowns, and about the people who have kept us safe and fed at the office. The list is endless.”

The company’s 59 different wellness interventions – many of which are available via its Vitality private medical insurance scheme and highlighted as playing a crucial role – span everything from workplace massages, a running club, a gym, an employee assistance programme (EAP), online exclusive YouTube channel with yoga and meditation sessions, free healthy meals, a discount platform and menopause support.  

But coordinating and managing such a broad range of benefits in a way that feels cohesive and has maximum impact has been challenging.

“It’s certainly not an easy task,” Antonio Marin-Blazquez continues. “But we work as closely as we can with our internal comms team and our managers’ population to make sure people are always aware of our offerings at all times. We use every channel and opportunity that we have to promote them”.

A network of mental health champions, who are retrained annually and consulted two or three times a year for feedback on major issues, enables employees to unload their feelings in the right setting.

The biggest issue for stress management is highlighted as being that everyone is so engaged that it’s easy to work too hard. This explains why the 13% of Novo Nordisk employees shown by the BHW data to be experiencing a level of work-related burnout is only just below the 14% sector benchmark.

“The survey has given us so many insights into things we were only able to assume or guess before,” explains Antonio Marin-Blazquez. “The results are very enlightening and concrete, so we now know what areas to tackle and the interventions to use. The biggest insight is that awareness of some of our offerings is not so high, and it’s good to know what people are and aren’t willing to change.

“We are always looking at ways to improve what we offer, and over the past 12 months we’ve been paying a lot of attention to making everything as inclusive as possible. This has meant that activities like bootcamp and ‘legs bums and tums’ that have historically only been offered on site are now also available virtually. And we are determined to raise the profile of our discount platform because people are not yet massively aware of its wide range of offerings.”

Another important recent development has been the decision to move annual salary uplift timelines forwards to this January instead of April. This effectively gives people an extra three months of reviewed salary to help them combat the cost-of-living crisis – along with existing tools like financial workshops.

And there could be plenty of further new developments to come because the BHW report, which had previously only been shared with HR employees, has now been shared with all employees in early March 2023. As having an engaged and healthy workforce is one of Novo Nordisk’s 10 essential values, these findings will definitely be taken seriously.