Promoting equal opportunities in the workplace is a vital part of fulfilling our commitment to social responsibility and a main focus area of our People Strategy. People with diverse backgrounds and perspectives are essential for creating and maintaining the innovative capacity that is fundamental to the continuing success of our company.

In an age of globalisation and hard competition for talent we depend on our preparedness to take advantage of an increasingly diverse labour force. We need to recruit the very best people and provide them with equal opportunities to develop and apply their skills. This translates into a more open and flexible organisation, one that is able to expand into new markets and sustain growth. Since 2001, we have been engaged in a process that will move us closer towards stimulating diversity and equal opportunities. Creating a corporate
culture that supports equal opportunities begins by recognising diversity as an opportunity, rather than a problem. Promoting sensibility to discrimination, and recognition of the importance of valuing other cultures, are the first stages of harnessing that recognition and making change happen. Following a series of workshops, department meetings, teambuilding exercises and executive coaching on the topic of equal opportunities held in 2001, and the launch of an intranet-based toolbox on the topic, all business areas in 2002 have developed action plans for working with equal opportunities. As a clear signal that equal opportunities should figure high on the agenda of all Novo Nordisk managers, the issue was included in the overall Balanced Scorecard for 2002. The corporate People Policy was also amended to include equal opportunities explicitly.

Representation of immigrants/decendants of immigrants in the Danish organisation and gender representation in Novo Nordisk's top management
(click to view table)

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is our guide in establishing company policies and practices to ensure equal opportunities. We emphasise that people
seeking employment, or employed with us, are not discriminated against because of their background – in terms of gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, religious belief, creed, colour, race or ethnic origin, or political orientation. Equal opportunities  should be ensured in the conditions at work, with regard to remuneration, training and promotion, termination of employment as well as in recruitment.

We are working actively to promote equal opportunities and create an open organisational culture in which anyone will feel welcome, regardless of background. Inequality of opportunities may not only arise as a result of direct and indirect discrimination but also from more informal barriers in the practices and culture of the workplace. We are working to identify the barriers that may prevent specific groups from seeking and attaining   employment with us.

We recognise that these are ambitious goals. Novo Nordisk employs more than 18,000 people and is represented in 68 countries on five continents. Each society has a unique cultural perspective that entails its own specific issues in the field of equal opportunities. In 2002 Novo Nordisk formulated 15 action plans to address specific issues of equal  opportunities in each business area. In consultation with Stakeholder Relations, all  executives with responsibility for business areas have discussed the challenges and opportunities regarding equal opportunities in their own business areas.

In the international part of the organisation we have adopted a dual approach: to secure  on-discrimination verywhere while working actively with equal opportunities in a few  selected countries, as a start. For example, in International Operations, a business area that covers all countries outside North America, Europe, Japan and Oceania, the
action plan aims as a minimum to secure non-discrimination throughout the region. Moreover, three countries, Turkey, South Africa and Singapore, will develop action plans to address local equal opportunities issues.

To ensure closer cross-functional cooperation and coordination of initiatives, an equal  opportunities task force with members from the key corporate functions has been established at Novo Nordisk. The task force will drive the process forward and facilitate sharing of better practices to support the implementation of equal opportunities in the company. Equal opportunities and diversity will continue to be a focus area for the facilitator team that assists each business unit in ensuring that policies and management principles are applied and that we fulfil our commitment to the Triple Bottom Line
throughout the company. In 2003 Novo Nordisk will continue to develop a companywide
approach ensuring that equal opportunities is effectively promoted in all parts of our global organisation. We will evaluate the results achieved in each business area yearly and make
the experiences and the successes earned in the past the vehicle for ensuring continuous progress in the future. Step by step we will sharpen our ability to attract and retain the best
from a diverse labour force – to prepare for the challenges of globalisation and strengthening the foundation for reaching new customers and sustain growth.

Some examples of actions taken by the company in 2002 to enhance
equal opportunities and diversity include:

• Employer branding initiative: The US affiliate Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, Inc attracts diversity through an ‘automatic’ job posting system. Job openings at the company are automatically posted on iMinorities.com, a diversity website. This site is linked to over 24 other diversity websites, including the Black MBA Magazine, Asian-American Exchange and America’s Job Bank. This national site is recommended by the US Equal Opportunities Commission, a government agency that coordinates all US equal opportunity regulations, practices and policies. America’s Job Bank also links to sites related to people with disabilities and veterans.
• Pilot project on fair evaluation: The Novo Nordisk R&D department is working to establish a system of evaluation of foreign educations. This is to ensure that candidates’ professional qualifications are evaluated on an equal footing. No one should be excluded from potential employment because his or her qualifications were achieved abroad and thus harder to evaluate in another country.
• Diverse engineering base Novo Nordisk: supports an education programme for engineers of ethnic minority background. 11 students have enrolled in a two-year Master of Science programme at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The students are also involved in Novo Nordisk projects relevant for their studies.
• NovoCorps: A group of employee volunteers at the US affiliate provide support to local social and environmental programmes in the areas of government, education and community relations, with a focus on sharing the diversity strategies developed by Novo Nordisk.
• Training operators: At the Kalundborg and Genofte production sites there are  programmes for training candidates from ethnic minority background to qualify as operators, which combine a period of education with a period of onthe-job training. The programme has been very successful as 23 out of 24 have been hired.
• Community outreach event: The US affiliate participated in 2002 at the ‘Latino Expo’ job fair with a demonstration of Novo Nordisk products and a healthy cooking exhibition. The purpose of participating in such an event is to identify diverse job candidates as well as educate people about diabetes. The Hispanic population is one of the fastest-growing populations in the US and Latino-Americans are twice as likely as Caucasians to develop type 2 diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association.
• After-work meetings: These are meetings for employees in Denmark featuring prominent external experts on equal opportunities issues. In 2003 the focus is on women in  management and ethnic minorities.