Highly Commended
Sanofi Inspires
Summary of work
In 2011 Sanofi Group acquired two businesses, Genzyme and Merial. In the same year, Sanofi Pharmaceutical Operations UK and Ireland were combined as a single operating unit. To connect all employees and the CSR activities across three businesses, a new Corporate and Social Responsibility strategy was launched in February 2012 at 13 locations under an overarching brand, ‘Sanofi Inspires’.
The first universal programme to sit beneath this brand was the ‘Sanofi Challenge’ aimed at engaging employees, their friends and families in a common purpose and raising money for two corporate charity partners, Teenage Cancer Trust and the Children’s Medical Research Foundation in Ireland, at the same time helping staff to improve their health and wellbeing.
Over 500 people did a Sanofi Challenge in 2012 helping raise over £100,000. Now in its second year Sanofi Inspires promotes ‘Inspiring Communities’ which helps local causes at each of our locations, is a founder partner of National Fitness Day and will soon be launching Inspiring Sustainability, tracking and improving our CO2, waste, recycling and water use.
This enormous fundraising effort supported young people affected by cancer, contributed to an improved employee engagement index and launched social media channels within Sanofi, UK and Ireland.
Judges’ comments
Sanofi Inspires is a great programme linking CSR, integration of acquisition of staff and wide-spread employee engagement. The combination of wide-scale engagement and great internal commitment produced clear outcomes for two charities through honest learnings and the value of the money raised.
