Fostering a culture of lifelong learning

Marc Howells, VP of Global Talent and Development at AstraZeneca, reflects on what we are doing to promote continuous learning through our diverse range of learning and development programmes.
 

Learning at Work Week (15-21 May) is an opportunity to highlight the importance of continual personal development at every stage of our careers. This year’s theme is ‘Create your future’, which reflects the need to learn and adapt in the face of change, so that we can drive innovation and solve the challenges of tomorrow. 

As the Vice President of Global Talent & Development at AstraZeneca, I am passionate about lifelong learning. At AstraZeneca, we support people to own their development and create their own futures. We foster a culture of lifelong learning so that we can remain agile to deliver on our purpose of bringing life-changing medicines to patients.  

At AstraZeneca, we know that the needs of society are ever evolving. As a science-led organisation, we recognise the importance of empowering our employees to develop existing skills and acquire new ones so that we can build resilience, adapt to future challenges, and aid scientific discovery.

Providing opportunities for continuous learning

We place great emphasis on creating the right environment to support a high performing organisation. This is reflected in our long-term commitment to upskilling and reskilling, enabling our people to develop existing skills and learn new ones to advance and enhance their career within AstraZeneca. The key to success in Learning & Development (L&D) is encouraging employees to take ownership of their development. One way we do this is by offering a vast range of learning programmes for employees at all stages of their career. We have a 38% year-over-year increase of employee participation in our development programmes, and we make the vast majority self-nominating, truly allowing employees to own their development.

Discover how our people have benefited from these programmes in the below video:

We inspire and empower individuals to prioritise their L&D journey with our digital Learning Experience Platform, that provides a single-entry point-of-access, where learners can search content anytime, anywhere and on any device. Giving employees this level of flexibility has encouraged our people to take control of their development journey and form healthy learning habits. Since its launch, we have seen over 2.52 million learning completions with a 95% learner return rate.

We also nurture potential talent and future leaders and undertake immersive Development Centres for high potential employees. This helps to set our people up for success whilst building a sustainable talent pipeline. Our Development Centres and Executive Transition Labs help to retain almost all participants, and participants have consistently high promotion rates.

The connection between Inclusion & Diversity and Learning & Development

Lifelong learning involves exposure to a diverse range of perspectives and ideas, helping individuals to develop a global mindset crucial for fostering collaboration and addressing global health challenges. We pride ourselves on creating a culture of inclusion and diversity, where personal development resources are inclusive and accessible to everyone in the organisation. Our latest employee engagement survey showed that 89% of employees had improved their existing skills, learned new skills, or had a development opportunity in the past 12 months. 

Along with encouraging our people to champion their own development, intrinsic to our culture are the leaders and managers that proactively support their employees’ development through engaging in forward-looking development conversations. We have seen over 13,179 line managers attend one of our development workshops since 2020 when we introduced ‘feedforward’ development reviews. With our focus on coaching and feedforward, we believe this supports our people in identifying their opportunities for growth, whilst establishing a psychologically-safe environment and a sense of belonging. This was reflected in the latest employee engagement survey, where 85% of employees said their manager gives them regular coaching to improve the contribution they make, and 89% of employees said they have had at least one quality development discussion with their line manager during the year.

Creating our future

Lifelong learning cultivates a mindset that embraces change and fortifies an individual’s strengths while acknowledging areas for development. By continuously learning and exposing ourselves to new ideas, we create networks of collaboration, discover fresh perspectives, and develop novel and creative solutions. In the face of future challenges, those who have developed a habit of lifelong learning are more likely to perform, adapt, and grow. This growth mindset helps to unlock our potential and drive innovation so we can continue to deliver life-changing medicines to patients.