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Connected colleagues, company culture, community impact—is it possible to tie these three pieces together? Amneal Pharmaceuticals rose to the challenge, took action and succeeded. But what was the secret to their success?
Amneal Pharmaceuticals is more than just a global
pharmaceutical company—it’s a company with purpose at the heart of what they do. And that means going above and beyond to make an impact on the community. With their strong entrepreneurial spirit, they’ve been able to foster a unique environment where people are encouraged to connect and bring their best selves to work every day.
But with the onset of the recent pandemic and the shift from an office and field-based workforce to remote working, there was an urgent need to unite their employees.
“We looked at the landscape of what was going on. We knew a lot of our teams were physically distanced and yearning for that sense of teamwork.”
– Steve Sost, Vice President of Internal Communications
Searching for a prompt, effective way that would help them reconnect their employees, emphasise personal wellbeing and also provide aid to communities affected by COVID-19, they turned to Virgin Pulse and their charity partner Americares. Virgin Pulse’s flexibility and similar entrepreneurial spirit aligned well with their company values and needs. Plus, they provided a turnkey wellbeing solution that could help them get their idea off the ground running:
“I recalled the Virgin Pulse platform and how easy it was to plug and play to get colleagues engaged. It’s also quite simple and light from an administrative standpoint. People really embraced it.”
– Bryan Van Steenbergen, Director of Internal Communications & Corporate Branding
When Amneal launched VP GO, they were amazed by their people’s engagement and excitement. VP GO’s chat feature provided a great avenue for employees to keep building connections and cheer each other on, despite being physically apart. It even helped foster connections between colleagues from different offices and locations and gave a voice to new and more reserved employees.
“It fostered connections that otherwise wouldn’t have been there, even if we were in the office.”
– Bryan
From light-hearted banter to sharing funny jokes and pictures from their walks. “It was just everything Amneal needed at the time…you know the things that make a team”, says Steve. Giving employees something other than work to talk about helps to strengthen bonds and relationships between colleagues and aids in cultivating culture, which is vital to employee engagement and teamwork. But establishing and maintaining a strong organisational culture is more difficult with a remote workforce, hence why fun, digital wellbeing solutions are gaining popularity.
“It gave us a way to keep the culture preserved during a time when it easily could have been negatively affected by the pandemic.”
– Steve
In addition to strengthening connections between employees, it also gave everyone something to be excited about in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “People were so tired of being cooped up…it was almost like “YES! This is our reason to get outside and enhance that sense of team!” exclaims Steve.
Give your remote and on-site workforce the boost they need to take charge of their wellbeing while improving company culture with VP GO.
For an extra dose of motivation, Amneal tied company-funded donations to Americares for every step milestone reached. The result? More engagement. And more steps. Employees were determined to smash the next goal so they could continue to raise money for those in need. And whoa, did those steps and donations flow in! Over 500 employees collectively walked 87,249,424 steps, exceeding the goal of 74,000,000 steps, and a total donation of $50,000 was made to Americares’ COVID-19 relief efforts.
Consistent communication was key to keeping the organization on the road to success. The Amneal team kept their employees up-to-date with stories of how their donations were helping local communities, and these heartfelt stories were much more impactful than seeing the dollar amounts donated. For example, thanks to their fundraising efforts, Americares was able to provide disinfectant wipes that enabled high-risk patients from low-income backgrounds to safely pick up their medicines.
Part of the company’s success in this mission was attributed to the support they received from their Client Success Associate at Virgin Pulse, which made them feel that their wellbeing vendor had become a wellbeing partner:
“Virgin Pulse stuck with us throughout the entire process. It was a value-added benefit that we weren’t expecting.”
– Bryan
After so much success with their employee engagement response during the pandemic, what’s next for Amneal? Certainly, they plan to continue their efforts to drive more impact and make healthy possible for disadvantaged communities. But how about on the employee wellbeing front? “We’d like to look at expanding it…we have colleagues in India and Ireland, and it’d be great to wrap our arms around everybody and get them connected,” says Bryan. And why not! The more people can connect, the more united companies are. And the more united and collaborative companies are, the better their performance.