Santen has been working towards implementing the People Success Center of Expertise (COE) that focuses on targeted core HR practices to bring their People Philosophy to life. Santen aims to branch into improving employee’s work life and induce them with the idea of ‘co-creating success’ in a flexible and agile setup.

To share his observations, Manuel Kirchhoff, Global HR, Global Head of People Success at Santen conducted a session at Mercer's Regional HR Conference 2021. Here are the excerpts from the session:

Santen’s mission to contribute to employee welfare

Eye problems are being recognized as a social issue all over the world. The United Nations made some significant moves in 2021 by adopting two global targets related to eye care and recognizing the connection between eye care and SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Producing innovative ophthalmic products has enabled Santen to contribute to people’s eye health and the company has adopted this as its mission as they offer a clear vision for life to the people of the world.

Santen’s core principle is ‘Tenki ni sanyo suru’ which translates to ‘exploring the secrets and mechanisms of nature in order to contribute to people’s health’. “It is all about improving the quality of life” shared Manuel Kirchhoff while discussing the company vision and how “it’s not about patients first but people first .. the family, our loved ones, whose lives we are trying to make better off.”

‘People Success’ to make people’s lives better

“We are striving to be socially available and working towards to orchestrate and mobilize technologies to deliver happiness to the people through our vision“, Kirchhoff discussed the global vision while emphasizing the company’s need to shift from manufacturing, process-based business to an entity that helps people to improve their lives, huddling in for joint ventures and going beyond the stereotypical aims set by businesses.

Adopting the newly minted ‘People Success’ strategy has been an important part of Santen where the employees are encouraged to co-create success through meaningful work injections. The aim is to show the positive impact on employees with well-meaning work directions and to establish the core culture for the future of work. The ‘team values’ are supposed to be the foundation of the whole concept.

So what are the pillars of “People Success”?

Kirchhoff highlighted five points that were quintessential to bring ‘People Philosophy’ to life -  

1. Performance and Development management 
2. Total Wellbeing
3. Listening and Engaging Framework
4. People Analytics
5. New Workstyle

Based on these five points, he emphasized that the core HR functions will become more agile and flexible as employees and people alike, attempt to adopt this holistic philosophy. He also noted that these initiatives would work in tandem with how people [employee] self-measure themselves or if they can open themselves for a self-assessment discussion 

Manuel Kirchhoff concluded his session by sharing a few guidelines on how to make the hybrid workplaces, a people-centric setup. He shared that focusing on employee flexible work time, regional wellbeing programs, and changing the word ‘workplace’ into ‘an optional workplace’ would help employees by creating a choice for them, an option available to choose if they want to return to the office or work remotely. 

People Matters is the exclusive media partner for Mercer's 2021 Regional HR Virtual Conference.