CordenPharma's Global People Strategy

People-Centred Culture: CordenPharma’s New Global People Strategy

Welcome to the Q2 2023 Edition of Corden Connect – this time with a focus on CordenPharma’s new Global People Strategy. My name is Gudrun Schumacher, and I joined CordenPharma in January 2023 as the Global Head of Human Resources.

Over the past few months, I have had the chance to speak with many colleagues to gain a deeper understanding of CordenPharma’s people, brand, culture, mission, and value proposition to customers as full-service CDMO. I have listened, heard, and reflected on many aspects of the organization, and had the chance to highlight these first insights in our internal Town Hall a few months ago. Since then, the CordenPharma HR Community met at our Global Management Meeting in Lisbon to discuss the burning topics around people, culture, recruiting, developing and of course, retaining top talent. The question we strove to answer is, how we can create a work environment that offers the right framework to all our employees, that is inspiring and exciting, where every work and contribution matters and is recognized, where passion counts and people feel the pride of belonging to a strong organization? There is no question that People are our competitive advantage, and being able to attract the best is key to CordenPharma. Capable and passionate employees enable sustainable innovation, deliver excellent service and support, and help shape the growth and success of our customers.

The topics are as exciting as they are complex, and during the meeting we focused our People Strategy into key pillars and of course, discussed how to successfully implement them. Among the pillars identified, the following five have a broad impact on both our global teams and customers:

Excellent Leadership ensures we create, live, and sustain a safe work environment according to our company values. We respect all facets of our employees´ lives and we are conscious that we need to meet the different expectations of various cultures and generations, as only a motivated, passionate, and sustained workforce is able to provide the best results for our customers and their innovation projects.

ESG, and our commitment to sustainability, forms a strong brand to our customers. Here, the Human Resources team will own and drive the social and labour aspects and proactively promote diversity and inclusion, awareness on health and safety, and will manage our labour relations respectfully and ethically at the highest level.

Since CordenPharma is on a strategic growth trajectory, Human Resources will contribute to transparent and accurate Reporting on a global level, which helps the organization make the right decisions, manage our resources respectfully, and place investments wisely. Here, our customers can rely on integrity and reliability.

Another one is Employer Branding, which drives our ability to attract and retain good people. We will strive to be more visible in the labour markets and – let`s be honest – recruiting does not start with an open position, but much earlier. We would like to have a better gender balance as well in technical jobs and we want to be attractive for the entire labour market. So we need to create curiosity about the CDMO industry already in schools and later at apprenticeship centres and universities. A strong brand as an employer of choice is a huge plus for our customers too.

Do we want to retain our people in the long-term? Of course, we have to offer exciting career paths! So our third pillar Learning & Growth will help our employees to look beyond their own horizon, since we recognize a learner mind-set fosters creativity, new ideas and curiosity, which is the best key to innovation.

We all share a common responsibility to shape CordenPharma’s culture while living its core values, asking questions to understand, seeing where we can help each other, and taking ownership – no matter our position – in the success of this company. We will stay connected to you – our customers, to each other, give feedback, and remember why we do what we do – to support your innovations driving the health and well-being of patients. I look forward to helping shape our People Strategy as CordenPharma grows and evolves.

Gudrun Schumacher
Global Head of Human Resources,
CordenPharma International