It was one of the initiatives that we developed as part of AstraZeneca 2025, back in 2020. We were reflecting on whether or not our existing approach, which was pretty traditional, was fit for purpose. It was the old end-of-year review where the employee feeds back, the manager writes up a review, and, after a calibration exercise, they’re assigned a rating between one and five. Subsequently, that was taken into account when making reward decisions.

Employees were really dissatisfied with it. Managers didn't like it either. And there were a couple of things we thought we could improve. Firstly, employees are not a number. Saying you’re a one, a two, a three, four, or five wasn’t very motivating. Secondly, it was a look in the rearview mirror, not spending enough time thinking about what we’re looking forward to in the next year. Where did we want to learn or grow? The emphasis was wrong. Thirdly, the timing is something we thought we could improve.

Instead of having this end-of-year review and then a goal-setting process, we wanted to have something focused on a coaching approach and looking at feedforward, not feedback. There is still an emphasis on what people have done, but now we also consider how they’ve done it, the impact they’ve created, and how they’re going to roll that forward into the next period. What strengths are they going to build on and what are some things that they might want to improve? As a result, we don't assign numbers to people anymore.

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of managers taking the time to put some qualitative content into the system, having had a meaningful conversation with employees about the year they've had and the year to come.

In the past, managers had been relying on the number and communicating that with a little bit of flavour around it. Now we have managers invested in taking the time to understand what employees found difficult and what they want to build on in the following quarter or year. We had to invest in coaching to make that successful and give managers the skills to thrive.

The first thing we did was make sure our senior leaders were comfortable with the change because we wanted this to be led by them. It wasn't an HR initiative, it was led by the business. So, our HR colleagues did a roadshow and sessions with senior leadership teams around the organisation, giving them the space to ask questions to make sure they understood and were brought in. That was a key component in engaging the senior leadership team.

The second was the investment that we made in coaching programmes, to help people build their coaching skills. We rolled out a series of workshops in multiple countries and languages to allow managers to understand the theory, and more importantly, practice some role play.

And then, of course, we had the employee engagement campaign to help leaders understand it's not just what [work] you do, it's how you do it. It's the impact that you create. We talked about the what, the how, and the so what. We helped them understand those expectations for quarterly check-ins but also made sure they felt empowered to ask for coaching, to seek it, and to give feedforward to colleagues so it could come from all directions. Every day is a school day, so we want people to constantly learn, to feel comfortable learning, and to have the right environment for that to happen.

A good proportion of the organisation already has coaching skills. For example, in sales and marketing, first-line sales managers coach reps on how to be effective when meeting healthcare professionals. We’ve also had over 14,000 line managers participating in performance development workshops. There's been a 12% increase in core coaching capabilities and managers have reported a 70% increase in their confidence around holding meaningful coaching conversations.

Our coaching approach is underpinned by the international coaching federation competencies, designed to unlock value from not only quarterly coaching, but everyday conversations too so that we are systematically helping people to enhance the contribution they're making now and in the future.

We recognise that to be an effective coach, managers have to set clear expectations. But importantly, it's not about just giving advice. It's about asking questions, encouraging dialogue, and helping the employee to understand and work on any area they want to invest in for their future.

We have to make sure managers are comfortable approaching those situations and help them to feel there’s a good degree of psychological safety to be vulnerable. And it's also helpful that this is happening throughout the year rather than only at the end of the year point.