KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 — Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis’ Malaysian subsidiary has been awarded Top Employer for 2020 by Top Employers Institute, a global company that recognises excellent people practices.
Patrik Grande, Novartis Malaysia president and managing director, said the company was honoured to receive the recognition as it reaffirmed Novartis Malaysia’s continuous commitment to providing the best working environment for its associates.
As part of its commitment to always place its employees at the forefront, Novartis Malaysia also announced a new parental leave policy that offers equal parental leave to all parents who bear a child, adopt, or use surrogates.
The global policy, which will take effect by January 1, 2020, offers 14 weeks or 3.4 months of fully-paid parental leave.
Anne Heng, Novartis Malaysia people and organisation head, said the company celebrates life and recognises moments that matter, and wants to celebrate their associates’ experience in becoming parents and bringing children into their lives.
“We also aim to support our associates’ journey towards becoming new parents with our new leave policy,” she added.
“As gender equity is a priority at Novartis, we want the men in our company to feel empowered to share childcare responsibility.”
Grande, meanwhile, said Novartis Malaysia believes in an “inspired, curious and unboss culture” to “unleash the power of our people”.
“We take pride ourselves for embracing diversity and inclusion initiatives, attracting and developing talents from diverse backgrounds towards our mission to reimagine medicines,” he said.
Novartis, a Switzerland-based global pharmaceutical manufacturer, uses innovative science and digital technologies, to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. The company has been present in Malaysia since the early 1970s.
In 2015, Kuala Lumpur was chosen as one of the five Novartis Global Service Centers, which delivers a broad variety of services to the Novartis group of companies worldwide. The others are located in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
Services offered by Novartis Global Service Center Kuala Lumpur include IT, human resources, FRA Operations, product lifecycle, and procurement.
