AstraZeneca's definition of Inclusion and Diversity

What is Inclusion and diversity at AstraZeneca?

We create a working environment where every employee has a sense of belonging, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, disability status or sexual orientation. This includes equitable compensation, benefits and opportunities for development and advancement. 

We believe that inclusion is a right and diversity is a strength. Both make a fundamental contribution to the success of our company because innovation requires breakthrough ideas that only come from a diverse workforce empowered to challenge conventional thinking.

We believe our shared creativity unlocks challenges and brings new solutions. Incorporating Inclusion and diversity (I&D) across all aspects of our organisation is an imperative to innovating for patients, continuous learning, and growing as individuals and as a company.
Embedding I&D into all that we do supports our purpose, bold ambition and strategy by: 

• Advancing societal change 
• Ensuring our medicines reach the diverse spectrum of patients affected by the diseases they treat 
• Accessing a broader patient population and accelerating clinical trial impact 
• Providing better consumer insight through an employee population that matches our patient population 
• Attracting, developing and retaining high-quality talent from a broad and diverse talent pool 
• Driving innovation through inclusion of diversity of thought and experience

Our approach

Inclusion and diversity is one of the foundations of our People strategy — driving innovation, engagement and a sense of connection and belonging. We focus on four areas:

• Empowering inclusive leadership 
• Fostering an environment where we each speak our minds 
• Building and sustaining a diverse leadership and talent pipeline 
• Contributing to society, which includes our commitments to supplier diversity, clinical trial diversity and health equity 

We have a comprehensive plan to ensure racial equity in our workplace. Our commitments include making sure that our workforce is representative of the communities in which we operate, taking action at each stage of our talent pipeline to increase representation, and driving change beyond our company by ensuring all that we do reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. 

Tracking workforce demographics

As part of our commitment to create an inclusive culture, we track employee sentiment on measures of inclusion twice a year. In 2021, 83% of employee survey respondents feel we have a 'Speak Up' culture. We have also launched a global voluntary disclosure campaign to better understand our workforce demographics. Tracking dimensions such as country of origin, disability status, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation, where locally permissible, provides us with a more comprehensive picture of our global workforce diversity, and is one way that we can understand where we are today and opportunities for progress in the future.

Our key targets and progress