F. Hoffmann-La Roche - Female Employee of the Year - Business

Company: F. Hoffmann-La Roche
Company Description: We follow the science: At Roche, we believe in doing what should be done, rather than what has been done. So we follow where the science leads. We focus on today and look beyond tomorrow to tackle the world’s most formidable healthcare challenges.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Female Employee of the Year - Business

Nomination Title: Jessica Bensch

Roche is a 125-year old pharmaceutical organization and based in Basel, Switzerland.In 2016, Roche embarked on an ’Agile Transformation Journey’ responding to changing needs in global healthcare. A cultural transformation was therefore needed.

Employee engagement surveys over the years pointed to the culture ‘on the ground’ was not always aligned with the stated company values (passion, integrity and courage). Colleagues highlighted concerns about expressing their thoughts due to fear of negative consequences. Despite managers inviting staff to speak up, employees did not feel free to express themselves and a lot of employee feedback came through anonymous channels.

Seeing an opportunity, Jessica Bensch included the topics of values and psychological safetyin an internal mid-2018 event that she was already running. She invited ten colleagues to speak candidly about their own experiences and invited the audience to participate.The 400+-strong audience stood up and pledged to be bolder in everyday interactions.Fifty people immediately joined the core team for the new ’Culture Coalition: Humans of Roche’ movement.

The movement's aimis to live and safeguard the RocheValues.Jessica'schallenge was to create authentic conversations to drive tangible change.

As Culture Coalition Lead, Jessica has ambitious plans to reach all Roche employees worldwide (approx. 100 000).

Since the 2019 inaugural webcast, global events and related activities have attracted 20,000+ engagements across the world. Through brave storytelling, Jessica and her team are committed to reducing the fear that exists within the company.All her efforts are completely on voluntary time (i.e. above the day jobs).

Jessica’s work so far includes:

1. Orchestrating every aspect of the 6 global events. Messaging used is plain-talk vs jargon and animations vs corporate words. Attracting an average of 1500-1800 live participants and many more watching the recording later - from 100+ locations worldwide.
2. Facilitating hundreds of hours of focus group sessions in every continent.
3. Moderating one of the largest Google Currents Community Members provide regular feedback to ensure that value is delivered to staff.
4. Creating and disseminating a 2021 survey on psychological safety that attracted 570 responses.
5. Leading various departmental meetings; Leaders are listening and encouraging their staff to attend Culture Coalition events.
6. Producing a series of five videos called ‘The Making of Culture Coalition’ to help spread the message further.
7. Speaking engagements with other organizations to help them develop their own engagement strategies.
8. Regular weekly blogs and polls on the Currents Community.
9. Monitoring global parallel programmes and aligning messaging with similar employee groups to further build out the coalition.

Jessica embodies the Roche core values in everything she does. The sheer act of building a colleague-led team across a large hierarchicalorganization is an example of values in action.

Jessica has been very influential because of her authentic leadership and her deep belief that the cause is a moral imperative. This message has resonated greatly with colleagues. It invites a new transparency around the results of employee surveys, encouraging staff to contribute feedback more freely.

Jessica has voluntarilycommitted to this movement for over 3 years, sometimes at considerable personal cost.A traditional culture brings traditional behaviours – and it’s a challenge to trailblaze the way while building synergies internallyto meet the business aims. Cultural change does not come overnight; this is a long-term effort, and it takes conviction and determination to keep going, especially when key senior leaders do not fully see or understand the root challenges yet.

Culture Coalition formed with the core belief that everyone creates, builds and evolves the working culture at Roche. It is a top-down, bottom-up, side-to-side movement. Jessica and her team understand the importance of the role of leadership (role modelling with accountability) and they work diligently to speak with leaders across many locations.

Culture Coalition is an ongoing movement to create intentional, substantial and sustainable change for the good of Roche employees and its patients.