The Smiling Face of HR

Penny Stoker, Vice President for Human Resources at AstraZeneca, talks to NGP’s Rebecca Goozee about her management style, attracting talent and the global future of the HR function in the pharma industry.

Penny Stoker started her career in business and accounting, achieving a bachelor’s and master’s degree in both. Approaching HR from a different perspective to standard HR training, she began as a line manager, where she claims to have picked up some incredibly useful understanding and motivation skills. “That line manager role has been critical in getting me where I am,” says Stoker, “engaging and helping employees as a line manager, with all the issues that they may be bringing to the table at any one point in time – all the problems – was vital.”

From financial services Stoker moved to consulting and then to dotcoms before settling into pharma, where she now takes up the role of VP of Human Resources for AstraZeneca. Responsible for HR in the US, she looks after 12,000 employees and about $12 billion in revenue. Asked about her management style, Stoker laughs and says, “This is probably a better question for anybody who reports to me!” She goes on to explain, “my door’s open all the time – I do set high standards and expectations but I’m also very clear about those expectations. I’ll encourage folks to ask the questions on their minds, making sure we have the facts, so we can move forward to solutions.”

Attracting and retaining
Attracting people is one thing, retaining them is another matter. In order to retain and motivate key staff Stoker recommends getting passionate about the organization you work for and passing that on to employees. “You’ve also got to care about what is important to employees,” says Stoker, “what is it that folks need in a situation where they spend a significant part of their daily life within our four walls.”

Solid management skills, flexibility and a purpose for being, all contribute to productive staff, and Stoker declares that AstraZeneca has this in “bucket loads”. Flexible working hours, an outstanding environment surrounded by great people and a fantastic rewards package all play a role in retaining key staff.

Asked about specific examples that she has implemented, Stoker, highlights that over the past couple of years AstraZeneca felt that it was very important as a healthcare company to “walk the talk” around employee health. Stoker: “The only way we are really credible is if we move the needle on employee health within the organization – we’ve taken a look at our approach to health benefits, wellness within the organization and connection with all of our key products.” Stoker goes on to explain that they now have an integrated approach to healthcare with a benefits plan that encourages prevention, wellness and quality. AstraZeneca provides indoor walking trails, fitness centers and health food in cafeterias to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Stoker also says that they have focused on flexibility as a critical component for motivating and retaining staff. “Everyone has a laptop,” explains Stoker, “so that they can plug in from home if they want to.. Or if someone wants to get all their work done in four and a half days, we are flexible on that.”

Challenges
Stoker is currently focusing on three main challenges that she faces in the HR department at AstraZeneca – globalization, industry change and outsourcing. Stoker is concentrating on how what they do in the US connects with the broader global organization, while recognizing there are differences globally.

In terms of tackling change Stoker says, “In the US the industry is under immense change. How do you help the business and the people in the business understand what that change process looks like, and how to get themselves through it emotionally and productively, as the industry changes in a new and dynamic way.”

Stoker also mentions that she is currently considering the relationship that AstraZeneca wants to have with outsourcing and off-shoring.

Social responsibility
Stoker points out that she takes social responsibility very seriously and believes that the whole of the pharma industry needs to do the same. Stoker highlights the amount of uninsured people in the health industry and says that AstraZeneca took it on as an organization to help those uninsured patients. “We’ve established a patient assistance program in the US and made sure that people have access to our medicines,” explains Stoker, “and over the course of the last five years, we’ve given away in excess of $2.5 billion in medications – and last year alone that was $400 million.

Stoker goes on to say that more importantly around 75 percent of AstraZeneca employees – around 4500 employees in total – have volunteered at least once over the past two years. “We put our employees in touch with programs such as working with Habitat for Humanity, with the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters or with the elderly in the neighborhood,” explains Stoker, “and we want people to get involved with this during the course of a normal workday.”

Collaboration
Stoker believes that in an organization that operates in a very large matrix, internal collaboration is absolutely critical, “we have to work across the various boundaries that exist within any structure working with patients, and internal collaboration is key to this working well.” In the same vein external collaboration is vital and Stoker says that this is something that she has been very vocal about. Stoker: “There has been some evidence of that with the external deals that we have done over the past 12 months – with our co-promotions, our alliances with people not only within the pharma industry but also within biotechnology, academia and not-for-profits.”

Stoker also points to a specific HR example when explaining her collaborative passion, “we have an agreement with the American Heart Association, where we have signed on as a national sponsor of their Start program, ‘Get Out, Get Moving, Start Walking’. That’s been a great relationship and really gets our employees focused on their own wellness. We didn’t have to build the program ourselves, the AHA had it in place and we’ve established the partnership in order to be able to do that together.”

Future of HR
Stoker predicts that HR will become a much more global function in the future. She says that there will be challenges ahead but overcoming them will lead to a globally focused pharma industry. “There will be a greater mixture of in-sourcing and outsourcing,” anticipates Stoker. “We will have to get more comfortable with large vendor management and language differences.”

Stoker goes on to say that she sees a more strategic pharma industry ahead and that there will have to be a much better job done of defining the metrics around which we measure our effectiveness and become more transparent in going forward.