With the successful spin-off of Alcon, we are re-energizing our culture and providing opportunities for growth.
Talent Attraction & Retention
The Alcon Blueprint, which includes our Values & Behaviors, sets the stage for talent and culture at Alcon. It is the bedrock for how we attract, develop and retain top talent. We seek diverse talent who embody our values and contribute to a culture that enables us to help people see brilliantly. We work with associates to set challenging performance and career goals, offer training and development opportunities, and encourage growth through mentoring, challenging roles and assignments – all while ensuring competitive compensation and benefits. Alcon’s spin-off has allowed us to drive results by more directly linking performance with employee rewards.
Our performance management process focuses on driving performance with the right behaviors. Goal setting and alignment is a company-wide effort initiated by the executive leadership team at the beginning of each year. Associates align individual goals to our company wide priorities and we evaluate performance according to individual goals, as well as Alcon values and behaviors.
Diversity & Inclusion
The breadth, depth, and diversity of our collective experiences differentiate Alcon. We believe we will build an even stronger Alcon by cultivating a more diverse and inclusive culture. Every day we strive to advance the quality of patient outcomes across an incredibly diverse population of patients, providers, and payors. By unleashing the full potential of our people, we accelerate innovation, improve quality, and deliver better patient outcomes.
Our D&I training programs address various dimensions of diversity, including raising awareness, advanced learning, skill-building, and action. Through these programs, we raise awareness about diversity and associates’ understanding of cultural differences, and we build inclusive leadership behaviors. We believe we make the biggest impact on diversity and inclusion through education and by embedding it into everything we do.
The D&I Ambassador program engages Alcon associates all over the globe to create an inclusive environment, hosting host educational opportunities, such as our Cultural Competency, Unconscious Bias and Psychological Safety programs, as well as activities to celebrate diversity at Alcon. In addition, our ERGs aim to provide programming, mentoring, and professional development while contributing to Alcon’s business goals. We have nine ERGs at various Alcon locations, and these groups are now starting to expand outside of North America.
Highlight Story: Inclusive Design
In the last decade, the number of female ophthalmologists, as a percentage of all surgeons has steadily grown. Historically, product designs have unconsciously catered to men, resulting in unintentional ergonomic disadvantages for women. To address that bias, Alcon is changing our product design approach to be more inclusive of women.
Physical differences in height and hand size, in addition to the potential for repetitive injury, have influenced the design of our new surgical products. Through insights provided by our Women Innovating Now (WIN) ERG, we now consider physical height and hand size in our product design. The first products to be impacted by this research are our surgical visualization system and hand activated forceps. Within visualization systems, innovations such as the ORA Wavefront Aberrometry and iOCT attach to the analogue microscope stack, resulting in an increased height of the microscope’s oculars. In extreme cases, this could potentially contribute to the rise of repetitive-use injuries to the cervical spine. With Alcon’s NGENUITY system, a 3D camera replaces the microscope’s oculars, allowing the surgeon to operate with a heads-up view of an OLED display, eliminating potential strain and back injury. This design change eliminates the impact of stack height, resulting in a more ergonomically sound environment.
Through this research, we also recognized that physical differences in users’ hand sizes required improvements to our hand-activated forceps. As a result we have created hand forceps with smaller dimensions in terms of length and circumference of the activation mechanism, as well as reduction of the required hand activation force. These features subsequently enable more surgeons to effectively and comfortably use our products.
Our Results
We have identified key focus areas for increasing representation of female and ethnic diversity at supervisor and management levels, as well as at all levels of the company. We recognize the importance of continuing to strengthen our company- wide effort to build a more diverse workforce.
Health & Safety
We truly care about people — our associates, visitors to our campus, and our neighbors in the communities where we operate and work. Alcon is committed to fostering a culture of safety and health to help our associates and contractors thrive as they meet the demands of running one of the largest eye care organizations with operations in 170 countries.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, our crisis management teams spearheaded a globally coordinated response to protect our associates around the world. All office-based associates were encouraged to work from home, while our sales and customer service teams delivered remote account management. New safety measures were implemented to protect associates onsite, such as modified workstation arrangements, scheduling changes to reduce the crossflow of people between shifts, enhanced cleaning and sanitization, and temperature screenings prior to entry.
Our Results
Alcon tracks our safety performance for both associates and contractors. In 2019, the main injuries associates sustained were sprains and strains, while contractors experienced sprains and strains as well as lacerations, cuts, and bites. We are pleased to report no fatalities, and our recordable and high- consequence work-related injuries improved year-over-year.
Highlight Story: Commercial HSE Champions
In 2019, HSE champions were appointed in approximately 75 country organizations. HSE champions are responsible to facilitate of HSE management in each location. They are supported by the Regional HSE business partners, as well as the HSE global technical functions (Safety, Occupational Health & Environmental). Programs are divided into four different categories: emergency preparation and incident reporting, accident prevention and reporting, fire and life safety, and HSE data and documentation. These programs guide the champions on the health and safety management of our commercial associates.
For more information, please visit Alcon Careers.