MUNDIPHARMA SINGAPORE HOLDINGS PTE LTD
Mundipharma is a network of independent associated companies dedicated to alleviating human suffering and to improving quality of life. This include a commitment to providing affordable treatment, and focussing on specialist therapy areas in which we can make the most difference: Analgesics, Oncology, Ophthalmology, Respiratory, Specialty Care and Consumer Health. Our patient-centric approach is supported by innovation to enable scientific breakthroughs that result in better medicines as well as entrepreneurship to create growth, which increases the number of patients we can reach.
Our Culture
Behind every successful organisation, there are hundreds of people, all doing their part to create a challenging yet exciting work environment. At Mundipharma, we are passionate about taking innovative, unorthodox approaches to improve the quality of people’s life, every day. We adopt a decentralised, flat organisation, welcome people with different ideas and give them the opportunity to grow, develop, and turn their visions into reality.
Our culture is the heart of our organization, underpinned by our 4 core values: Performance Driven – meet and exceed expectations; Alignment – what we do is focused on meeting the needs of our patients; Accountability – we do what we say we will; and, Empowering Leadership – each of us at every level and regardless of formal authority is empowered to take decisions.
Our People Practices
With a well-developed infrastructure we are able to provide a challenging, supportive environment whereby we can accelerate learning through on-the-job experience and targeting learning and development interventions. Our multi-channel L&D programs cover both core management and leadership development as well as skills training. Programs are delivered either on-line or in classrooms, and will often be integrated across both channels.
We have a strong preference for promoting internally; in 2018 over 90% of our key roles were filled via internal promotions. Talent management also plays a key part in our People strategy and we continually invest in finding better ways to attract, engage and retain our people. In 2018, 88% of hiring was done either by direct sourcing or employee referrals, reducing our cost-to-hire by 39% and increasing the quality of hires – as measured by an annualized attrition rate of 3.5%.
Engaging our People
We approach our employee benefits via a ‘wellness’ lens that focuses on the overall individual experience, customized to each individual employee’s needs. This starts with providing an open office in a Leed Platinum Certified environmentally ‘healthy’ building that is energy and resource-efficient. Our office itself is bright, spacious, and has many different ‘spaces’ for meetings – including a beanbag chill-out zone, phone ‘booths’ for those confidential discussions, closed-door meeting rooms, a coffee barista and two open-concept pantries.
We provide both standard and flexible working hours, including a work from home option. Our wellness programs include fitness subsidies as well as options such as smoking cessation and weight reduction. Our ‘work-hard, play-hard’ culture is further reinforced via work/social events such as lunchtime “life at Mundi” series; quarterly “Mix & Mingle” social activities, Townhalls and the Annual Dinner & Dance.
Our wellness program has both external and internal options. Externally, we provide a wellness allowance so employees can select and attend fitness classes of their choice. Internally, we hold wellness sessions on nutrition, fitness – classes such as Zumba or Yoga, and we invite specialists to the office to perform in-office massages.
We’re very supportive of our employees’ need to give back to their local communities and have made it easy for them to donate – either time or money. Each year we give everyone 2 days paid volunteer leave, which employees can use however they like, and we have a company/employee donation matching scheme whereby employees can make financial donations to charities of their choice.
One of the first measures of engagement is our employees’ willingness to share feedback – we offer both formal and informal opportunities for employees to give feedbacks. In our latest formal survey, 100% of employees took the time to tell us what they think about the company.
Employer branding and Engagement Impact
Employer Branding is a critical component of our products and company brand; it serves to act as the focal point for attracting and retaining the right people. As Mundipharma continues to grow exponentially, our strong employer brand gives us a tremendous opportunity to build alignment and engagement with both future and current employees. This in turn allow us to impact both the bottom and top lines in the business and create a company culture where employees are passionate about doing the right thing and feel empowered to do so.
Our employer branding starts with a deep understanding of the views of current and future employees on the value of working at Mundipharma. This allows us to complete a program tailored to attract and retain people who are more likely to be successful in our company. Existing employees are staying longer with us, and referring more friends, family and ex-colleagues to join us. Candidates are actively choosing us for our culture and growth opportunities. This in turn, has had a cascading effect on decreasing our attrition and cost-to-hire along with increasing employee referrals, quality and tenure of new hires. Against the market attrition rate of 15%, our voluntary regretted attrition is down from 6% in 2017 and 3.8% in 2018. At the same time, the average Mundipharma tenure has also increased by 13% primarily due to the lower attrition. Our employees are proud to work with us and this is demonstrated in the high employee referral rates — 88% of our new hires come via direct sourcing or employee referrals. Employee referrals have consistently gone up over the last 3 years – growing 5 times in 3 years and up 12% from 2017 to 2018.
Finally, all these efforts have made a real business impact with a 2018 USD$3M in cost-avoidance due to our sourcing and referral programs and with our average cost-to-hire down by 39%, well below 2.5k/hire.
Great results aside, at Mundipharma, we strongly believe in helping our people achieve their personal and professional potential through our unique culture and people practices, so they can, in turn, make a positive difference to our business, our patients and our community.
