The value of ERG at Sanofi

We’re Building Representative Leadership

  • At least 50% of people in every succession plan will be women, who are either ready now or will be ready within two years.
  • By 2025, 50% of our senior leaders and 40% of our executives will be women. The other diversity strands we’re focusing on are age, race, ethnicity, faith, disability, and the LGBTQ+ community. We’re striving to ensure they are equally represented in our leadership and teams across Sanofi, and will set key performance indicators that are locally relevant in each country. Other diversity strands that are not necessarily protected characteristics by law in certain countries, such as socio-economic background, are also considered in our diversity and inclusion strategy.

Growing up in Silence

We Want a More Diverse and Inclusive Work Environment

Diversity means nothing unless it goes hand in hand with inclusive behavior and a culture that allows our employees to thrive. We’re tackling this in three ways:

  • Embracing different ways of working by offering flexibility and full access to wellness programs for 100% of our employees.
  • Nurturing a culture where everyone feels they belong by ensuring managers have the tools to build and sustain an inclusive culture while providing employees with the support they need to guarantee their voices are heard.
  • Evolving our workplace to meet our employees’ visible and invisible needs by making sure that 100% of our sites provide accessibility, inclusive technologies, and ways of working that will allow them to be fully productive in the workplace.

Living with Invisible Disabilities

Our Flexible Work Policy

As part of its commitment to diversity and inclusion, we’re committed to offering all our employees flexible work arrangements aligned with their job activity. This “hybrid” work environment means employees can work two to three days per week in the office. Being face-to-face gives colleagues invaluable social connection and collaboration, while working remotely offers much-appreciated flexibility. Sanofi’s goal moving forward is for employees to enjoy the best of both worlds whenever possible.

The global guidelines are applied locally through country-wide policies defined and implemented by Sanofi’s teams in country and in full respect of local labor law and practices. 

Our new parental leave policy is for every new parent, everywhere

From January 1, 2022, every Sanofi employee will get a minimum of 14 weeks paid parental leave no matter which country they’re working in. This includes birth parents, adoptive parents and surrogate parents. We believe that parental leave should be equal for all parents and not just new mothers. 

Eduardo Terciotti, Strategic Planning Manager in Brazil, with son,
Miguel, and wife Paula Reis, Quality System’s Specialist

Yet so many parental leave policies rarely consider that any parent welcoming a new arrival, also need to take time off to care for their child. That’s why we’re trying to help improve gender parity in the workplace and reduce the gender bias that can occur after giving birth. Another important step on our journey to a better work environment, to a better business, to better outcomes for all.

Eduardo Terciotti, a Strategic Planning Manager in Brazil, was one of several new fathers who helped to trial our new parental leave policy when we first launched it in South America. And his experience showed us why it was crucial for us to change our parental leave policy for parents globally.

He describes his leave as “a unique opportunity to dedicate myself exclusively to my son Miguel, my firstborn. Living this routine makes me admire, with much more respect, all mothers in our society. I don't feel that I have ‘helped’ my wife, but that I have exercised the role of a father.”

And soon, all new parents who work for us will be able to say the same.

Engaging with Diverse Communities

We want to have a positive social impact that goes beyond health and strengthens economic engagement with the communities we serve.

  • In procurement, we’re strengthening communities’ economic engagement with our suppliers through a Solidarity Sourcing program that ensures our large corporate supplier base reflects our behaviors. Our goal is to engage 450 suppliers by 2025 representing over €6 billion (40% of our global expenditure).
  • Additionally, we have a Global Supplier Diversity program in place to increase the inclusion of historically disadvantaged or under-represented groups in our sourcing processes.
  • We have a partnership with WeConnect International to increase our collaboration and engagement with women-owned businesses, and support women’s economic empowerment. On International Women’s Day March 8, 2022, we made a public commitment to:
    • double our woman-owned business spend by 2025;
    • and spend over €1.5 billion with small and diverse businesses by 2025.
  • As part of our social impact strategy, we are supporting projects driven by senior leaders that will have a positive local impact and foster our people to volunteer.
  • In clinical trials, we are working to better represent our patients’ diversity.

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Find out how our people are volunteering in local communities (pdf)

Meet some of Sanofi’s women-owned suppliers

Hear from our people on issues regarding LGBTQ+, gender and the Black Lives Matter movement