Colleagues
Building a culture of inclusion and belonging to harness the power and impact of our globally diverse workforce
Building a globally diverse workforce requires intentionality, transparency and accountability and by leveraging talent management best practices, accelerated leadership development and inclusive leadership behaviors, we harness the collective power of our colleagues to drive the human connection and innovation we bring to our work every day.
We are proud of the significant progress we are making to expand the diversity of our executive, management and professional teams.
Global gender by management level chart
We value an executive team that reflects the perspectives and backgrounds of the patients and communities we serve
Workforce aspirational representation goals
In 2020, we made bold Inclusion, Diversity, & Health Equity commitments to accelerate our efforts to address systemic inequities and drive meaningful change. We are proud of the progress we have made to achieve our aspirational representation goals at the executive level of our organization given our intentionality and accountability.
- Achieve gender parity at the executive level (VP+) globally by 2022
- Double executive representation (VP+) of Black/African American employees in the U.S. by 2022 from 2020 levels
- Double executive representation (VP+) of Latino/Hispanic employees in the U.S. by 2022 from 2020 levels
At the executive level:
We leverage a broad suite of programs to identify and develop future talent
Leveraging mentoring programs
The BMS Connections Mentoring Program leverages intra-company global group mentoring capabilities to build relationships and learn from the diverse perspectives of others.
One Young World
One Young World (OYW) is a global non-profit that unites young leaders, from every country and sector, working to accelerate the change they want to see. BMS supports OYW as an opportunity to provide leadership development and demonstrate our commitment to nurture and grow emerging leaders at the company.
Encouraging tomorrow’s leaders through support for education today
We know fulfilling our mission to be a more inclusive organization — one that is laser-focused on improving patient outcomes—takes strong leadership. That is why we are nurturing a future generation of decision-makers and opinion leaders who can lead the charge in reducing healthcare disparities among globally diverse patients.
Partnering with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to solve STEM disparities
The number of STEM graduates has grown, especially at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. However, Black/African American and Latino/Hispanic talent remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce compared with their share of all workers. To help address this gap, BOLD (Black Organization for Leadership and Development), one of our eight PBRGs, not only engages middle school, high school and university students in STEM mentoring, but also has a continued sponsorship of the Executive Leadership Council BMS Scholarship Program and the United Negro College Fund Postgraduate Fellowship Program.
Building a global, diverse workforce that is driven by our values
Pay equity
We are committed to pay equity as one of several enablers of an inclusive and diverse work environment. It is a BMS principle to pay employees equitably based on the work they do, the capabilities, and experience they possess, and the performance and values they demonstrate. We use a market-based approach for roles at all levels in the organization to set starting salaries and make pay decisions.
Aspirational goals — accountability & transparency
By leveraging analytics and external market data, we set five-year aspirational goals to increase the representation of women globally and historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. in the healthcare industry. We will strive to achieve these goals by holding ourselves accountable through key performance indicators (KPIs) linked to critical talent management data, such as robust succession plans, ensuring and tracking diversity of candidate slates and interview panels.
Accelerated leadership development and advancement
We have enhanced our longstanding investments in accelerated leadership development and have developed unique and relevant content for women globally and for underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. These initiatives include creating differentiated development opportunities and development plans that prepare our leaders for future global challenges.
Insights for Success
Our Insights for Success program is offered to diverse employees — women, Black/African American, Latino/Hispanic and Asian Americans— to enhance their organizational and personal career success and ensure equitable leadership opportunities. During 2021, we hosted several cohorts in this program and offered our first cohort focused on LGBTQ+ employees.
Creating a culture of inclusion and belonging
We strive to ensure every colleague around the world — across diverse cultures, backgrounds and experiences—is valued, respected and feels a sense of belonging. This brings to life our efforts to create a culture that rewards employees for bringing their authentic selves to work and encourages them to speak up and contribute to how we move forward.
96%
of BMS employees who feel they are working in an inclusive environment would recommend BMS to others as a great place to work.
Veterans, People with Disabilities and LGBTQ+ Status Self-Identification
In the U.S. and Puerto Rico, employees have the opportunity to disclose their veteran status, disability status and LGBTQ+ status in our Human Resources system of record. Through an amplified self-identification program with leader messages and employee videos called, “Everybody Counts,” we are seeing increases in the number of employees who voluntarily participate and report their veteran, disability and LGBTQ+ status.
From 2019 to 2021, we saw the percentage of those willing to disclose their disability status increase from 36.7% to 44.4%. In addition, for LGTBQ+ employees, the increase in those willing to self-ID increased from 6.4% to 14.8%. These results show that we are creating an environment of trust and psychological safety where people feel they can disclose the full spectrum of their identity at BMS.
Percentage of workforce providing status
| Veteran* | Disability | LGBTQ+ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 63% | 44.4% | 14.8% |
| 2020 | 75.7% | 41.3% | 13.2% |
| 2019 | 83.4% | 36.7% | 6.4% |
*Adjustments in how these data were captured between 2019-2021 caused a change in data availability
Veterans, People with Disabilities and LGBTQ+ status Self Identification
Focus on employee wellbeing
During 2021, we continued to invest in our Living Life Better strategy that encourages wellbeing at BMS for ourselves, our families, our patients and our community. Our strategy allows employees to choose offerings that best suit their unique needs. To further our support of emotional wellbeing, we created a Mental Health Allies program to train BMS employees to provide onsite real-time emotional support on a peer-to-peer basis. This supplements our global employee assistance program and continued investments in access to mental health professionals. As a result of the Mental Health Allies program, we saw a double digit increase in positive sentiments about using Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services and speaking with a Mental Health Ally.
Our People and Business Resource Group Leadership (PBRG) Team
The PBRGs focus on our inclusion and diversity priorities to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the patients and communities we serve, foster a culture of inclusion and belonging and drive innovation and business results.
Each of our eight PBRGs is led by a full-time business leader, who reports directly to members of the BMS Leadership Team. They serve as a trusted advisory group, providing critical insights and value on key business initiatives, amplifying the voice of our workforce and advancing innovation fueled by diverse patient insights and knowledge.
PBRG membership has grown to more than 12,200+ unique members in 2021 across 200+ chapters in 44 countries.
Nearly 40% of our employees worldwide are members of PBRGs.
We have eight PBRGs focused on various dimensions of diversity, including women, Black/African American, Latino/Hispanic, Pan Asian, generational, LGBTQ+, Veterans and People with Disabilities.