pauline williams
Pauline Williams

Head of Global Health R&D, GSK

Responsibility

Responsible business is how we do business

Being commercially successful and operating responsibly is how we will generate sustainable returns for our shareholders and deliver on our purpose, to help patients and consumers around the world, do more, feel better and live longer. 

In September 2018, we announced a new set of commitments across three focus areas, to deliver the greatest possible long-term impact in improving health around the world.

Key information

Our purpose is to help people do more, feel better, live longer

By using our

science and technology to address health needs

New medical innovations

Develop differentiated high-quality and needed medicines, vaccines and consumer healthcare products to improve health

Progress in 2018

We launched Juluca, the first two-drug HIV regimen, marking a new era in treatment. We successfully launched our shingles vaccine, Shingrix, in the US, Canada and Germany and our first-in-class severe asthma biologic, Nucala, gained approval in Europe with a paediatric indication, alongside its earlier approval for adults. 

Read more in the Innovation section of our Annual Report.

 

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Global health

Improve global health impact through R&D for infectious diseases that affect children and young people in developing countries focusing on HIV, malaria and TB

Progress in 2018

We received approval for a new treatment for P. vivax malaria and our TB vaccine candidate trial returned positive initial findings. Three countries have approved and prepared to implement our malaria vaccine and, through ViiV Healthcare, we are progressing clinical development programmes for paediatric formulations of our HIV medicines.

Read more here.

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Health security

Help the world to better prepare for future disease outbreaks with pandemic potential, and tackle antimicrobial resistance

Progress in 2018

We worked with the UK government on their proposal to develop a new payment model incentivising R&D into new antibiotics, and submitted our pipeline antibiotic asset, gepotidacin, to the programme. We ranked first among the large pharmaceutical companies in the Access to Medicine Foundation’s AMR Benchmark, and we trained over 15,000 healthcare professionals across 20 countries on the appropriate use of antibiotics. 

Read more here.

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By making our products

affordable and available

Pricing

Improve the health of millions of people each year by making our products available at responsible prices that are sustainable for our business

Progress in 2018

We were first in the Access to Medicines Index for the sixth consecutive time, with our leadership position in implementing equitable pricing strategies for more medicines particularly recognised. When setting developed country pricing, we continued to apply a values-based approach to balance reward for innovation with access and affordability.

Read more here.

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Product reach

Use access strategies to reach 800 million underserved people in developing countries with our products by 2025

Progress in 2018

We reached 102 million people through access strategies, including through tiered pricing and product donations. This included reaching 54 million children with the oral polio vaccine through UNICEF, in support of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Read more here.

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Healthcare access

Partner to improve disease prevention, awareness and access to healthcare services for 12 million people by 2025

Progress in 2018

Our access partnerships reached 4.2 million people in 2018. This includes 530,000 women and children reached with interventions to alleviate the impact of HIV and AIDS through Positive Action for Children and over 2 million people through our healthcare worker training programme.

Read more here.

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By being a

modern employer

Engaged people

Achieve and maintain a competitive employee engagement score by 2022

Progress in 2018

We maintained a strong engagement score of 78% in our biannual employee survey. Our leaders held regular Let’s Talk sessions and we launched an internal social platform to facilitate communication and collaboration.

Read more here.

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Inclusion and diversity

Accelerate our progress on inclusion and diversity, aiming for over 37% female representation in senior roles and recognition in global LGBT+ indices, by 2022

Progress in 2018

Women represented 33% of our senior roles in 2018 (up from 31% in 2017). In the US, we were named Best Place to Work for LBGT Equality for the third consecutive year in Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index and, in early 2019, we ranked 24th in Stonewall’s UK Workplace Equality Index.

Read more here.

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Health, wellbeing and development

Be a leading company in how we support employee health, wellbeing and personal development

Progress in 2018

We successfully rolled out a comprehensive preventive healthcare package for our employees in every country where we operate. We introduced One80 reviews to help managers improve their leadership effectiveness. More than 15,000 people took part in our energy and resilience programmes. 

Read more about health and wellbeing here, and development here.

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Being a responsible business

Reliable supply

Commit to quality, safety and reliable supply of our products for patients and consumers

Progress in 2018

We conducted 1,650 audits of our suppliers’ quality processes. Our pharmaceutical, vaccine and consumer manufacturing sites had 151 external regulatory inspections in 2018, most finding no issues or resulting in only minor observations.

Read more here.

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Ethics and values

Operate an ethical, values-driven culture, in which any issues are responded to swiftly and transparently

Progress in 2018

We continue to report transparently on how we respond to employee policy violations, taking appropriate disciplinary action. We reassessed our biggest human rights impacts: research practices, patient safety, labour rights, environment, health and safety, and privacy. 

Read more here.

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Data and engagement

Use data responsibly and transparently. Improve patient and scientific engagement

Progress in 2018

We trained 113,000 of our employees and complementary workers on our data privacy principles. Following feedback, we updated our policy on engaging with healthcare professionals to improve how we help prescribers to understand new data and clinical experience with our innovative products. 

Read more here.

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Environment

Reduce our environmental impact by one quarter by 2030

Progress in 2018

We cut operational greenhouse gas emissions by 8% this year and our Scope 3 value chain emissions fell by 8% per £bn revenue in 2017. Globally, 77% of our waste was recycled or incinerated with energy recovery and we are implementing plans to reduce our water use at high-risk water sites by 30% by 2030. 

Read more here.

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How we will report our performance

We will share our progress by reporting against our new commitments each year starting in 2019, for the 2018 year. A summary of progress against our commitments can be found here, and further detail can be found in our Annual Report.

Sustainable development

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out a vision for ending poverty, hunger, inequality and protecting the Earth’s natural resources by 2030. Realising this ambition will require private sector, governments and civil society to play their part and work together in new and innovative ways.

As a science-led global healthcare company Goal 3, Good Health & Wellbeing, is where we can make the most important contribution. The scale and nature of our business mean that we also contribute to a number of the UN’s goals through our everyday operations. For examples of how we contribute to the SDGs please download our SDG factsheet.

SDG logo

Our contribution to the SDGs

Our contribution to the SDGs PDF - 195.2KB

Our governance structure

board of committees
Board Committees have been established as set out above (graphic from our Annual report, 2017)

Our Board-level Corporate Responsibility Committee (CRC) oversees our responsible business activities. It meets four times a year to provide high-level guidance and reviews performance against our commitments. Both the Chairman and CEO are among its members and Non-Executive Director, Lynn Elsenhans, is Chair of the CRC.

Management of key non-financial risks is governed by our Audit and Risk Committee. The Audit and Assurance team supports this committee by providing an independent view to the Board and senior management of how risk is being managed across the business consistent with an agreed Assurance Plan.

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Your feedback counts

We welcome your feedback on our responsible business performance and reporting. You can also request to receive regular updates on our progress. 

Find out more