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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 improve the quality of human life by helping people do more, feel better and live longer.

Trust is essential to how we deliver on our purpose. We have 13 commitments across three focus areas that support our Trust priority.

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 2020

We had nine major approvals for medicines in respiratory, oncology, HIV and immuno-inflammation and nine pivotal trials were started, including for our vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Overall, we now have more than 20 assets in late stage development.

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 2020

 
The FDA and EMA approved an age-appropriate formulation of Tivicay, for children living with HIV weighing at least 3kg and from four weeks of age. We announced a product transfer agreement for our RTS,S malaria vaccine with PATH and Bharat Biotech, and we licensed our TB candidate vaccine to the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute for further development. In early 2020, we also joined the Partnership to Accelerate New TB Treatments.

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 2020

 
We became a founding member of the Trinity Challenge collaboration, which aims to use data and analytics to better predict and prevent outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics. We partnered with industry and multilateral organisations to launch the $1 billion AMR Action Fund, aiming to bring two to four novel antibiotics to patients by 2030.

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 2020

When setting the price of our medicines in developed markets, we apply a value-based approach to balance reward for innovation with access and affordability. In developing countries we use innovative pricing structures to extend product reach. In least developed and low-income countries we do not file patents for our medicines and do not enforce historic patents.

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 2020

 
We have reached over 267 million people since 2018 through access strategies, including tiered pricing and product donations. By the end of 2020, 80% of people living with HIV on antiretrovirals in low- and middle-income countries had access to a generic dolutegravir-containing product because of ViiV Healthcare's voluntary licensing agreements.

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 2020

 
In 2020, we exceeded this target and our access partnerships have reached 13.9 million people since 2018. This includes, in 2020, reaching over three million people through our partnership with Save the Children, Amref Health Africa and CARE International through our health 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 2020

In 2020, a record 85% of people took time to feedback through our employee survey, and our engagement score increased 6% from 2019, to 84%.

Read more here.

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Inclusion and diversity

Accelerate our progress on inclusion and diversity, including aspirational targets for female and ethnically diverse representation in senior roles by end 2025, and recognition as a disability confident employer and in LGBT+ indices

Progress in 2020

 
In 2020, we set new aspirational targets for gender and for race and ethnicity, to improve representation at VP level and above, and introduced mandatory inclusion and diversity training for all employees. We signed up the Valuable 500 pledge, which involves developing a measurable and strategic three-year Disability confidence plan, and received recognition across a number of LGBT+ indices.

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 2020

 
Our executive team has overseen our COVID-19 response, including the health, wellbeing and engagement of our employees as a primary focus. More than 22,000 employees completed online energy and resilience programmes, and we updated our One80 manager feedback tool to help managers understand where to focus their development.

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 2020

We conducted 1,839 audits of our suppliers’ quality processes. Our pharmaceutical, vaccine and consumer manufacturing sites and local operating companies had 142 external regulatory inspections in 2020, with many carried out virtually due to the pandemic. Wherever necessary, we have robust processes in place to ensure corrective and preventive action plans are implemented in a timely manner.

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 2020

We continue to report transparently on how we respond to employee policy violations, taking appropriate disciplinary action. We further improved visibility of labour rights risks in the supply chain in 2020. Working with external experts, we identified the raw materials and commodities that are sometimes linked to modern slavery and are now prioritising them for due diligence activities.

Read more here.

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Data and engagement

Use data responsibly and transparently. Improve patient and scientific engagement

Progress in 2020

We evolved our privacy approach to better align with external expectations and the ‘privacy by design’ framework. We established a process to seek patient feedback on the design of our clinical trials, and continue to increase focus on improving diverse representation in clinical trials so that they represent the real world population in terms of age, race, ethnicity and gender.

Read more here.

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Environment

Have a net zero impact on climate and a net positive impact on nature by 20301

Progress in 2020

We set ambitious new climate and nature goals and have been accredited for 1.5°C-aligned emissions reduction targets by the Science Based Targets initiative. We have joined RE100 and 52% of the electricity we used was sourced renewably. By the end of 2020, all of our sites had stopped sending waste to landfill.2

1 This commitment is supported by targets for carbon (including accreditation by the Science Based Targets Initiative) and nature.

2 This achievement excludes waste, such as asbestos, that must be sent to landfill.

Read more here.

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How we will report our performance

A summary of progress against our commitments can be found in our ESG Performance summary (PDF-2.9MB), and further detail can be found in our Annual Report (PDF-4.9MB).

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
Our Board Committees

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. Non-Executive Director, Lynn Elsenhans, is Chair of the CRC and both the Chairman and CEO are attendees.

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.

woman office employee

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