xHow Novartis put
skills at the centerof their workforce
transformation
Customer success story | Novartis

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Summary
Driven by a purpose to reimagine medicine to improve andextend people’s lives and guided by a vision to become
the most valued and trusted pharmaceutical company,
Novartis’s life-saving treatments have positively impacted
269 million patients. To equip their workforce with the skills
needed to stay at the forefront of the next wave of medical
innovations, leaders recognized the need to transition toskills-based models of operating and planning.

Talent marketplace users are

Talent marketplace users are

73% lesslikely to leaveNovartis

51% morelikely to bepromoted(Gloat Live, 2024)(Gloat Live, 2024)

Mapped skills to roles with

33,000 job codes across
105,000 employees(The Josh Bersin Company, 2023)

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Overview
Headquarters:
Basel, Switzerland

Top selling drugs:

Company size:
76,000 employees

Founded:1996

Industry:
PharmaceuticalWebsite:​​https://www.novartis.com/

Entresto, Cosentyx

The company
Novartis’s purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people'slives. They use innovative science and technology to address some ofsociety's most challenging healthcare issues. Their focus is on discoveringand developing breakthrough treatments and finding new ways to deliver
them to as many people as possible.

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The challenges
In a world hallmarked by accelerating digital innovation and shifting market
demands, leaders at Novartis recognized that they could no longer maintaintheir traditional siloed talent management approach. Instead, executives
sought to embrace skills-based strategies that would enable them to navigate
and respond to evolving priorities and emerging challenges.
Since shifting to a project-based work environment would require employees
to develop a diverse range of skills, leaders wanted to equip their entire
workforce with access to a breadth of learning and development opportunities,
including hands-on experiences. Simultaneously, the company sought toreimagine its approach to talent management to focus on a skills-based
understanding of work that transcends specific job roles.
Novartis aimed to transform into a more dynamic and skills-based organizationfor three primary reasons:1

2
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To stay at the forefront of innovation, executives needed insights into
future skill needs and emerging knowledge gaps
As the company shifts to project-based work, managers needed to see
which specific skills were necessary to perform specific tasks
The company needed a more flexible people strategy to swiftly deploy
talent to emerging organizational needs

4The goals
Novartis implemented five “big bets” to optimize its talent strategy to ensure
it has the skills and capabilities needed to deliver on business priorities:
Precision talent: Focus on the roles and teams that create thegreatest value for Novartis
Leaders of the future: Assess and develop leaders with focus toaccelerate performance today and tomorrow
Talent experience: Foster career and development for everyone todrive their careers and grow
Future-ready workforce: Predict capabilities and skills needed andbuild, buy, and borrow them intentionally
Employer of choice: Strengthen attractiveness as an employer, bothinternally and externally, from early career to senior executives

These core goals would be supported by four strategic enablers:
Skills intelligence
Skills operating system
Data and technology
Mindset and capability(The Josh Bersin Company, 2023)

5Focus on the roles that create the greatest
value for Novartis
In a market that changes as rapidly as the pharmaceutical industry, Novartis
needed to understand fast-emerging trends like omnichannel customer
engagement and digitization tools. To gain a complete picture of theirworkforce’s capabilities and the emerging learning and development priorities
that would prove most crucial, Novartis harnessed Gloat’s Skills Foundation toharmonize data across disparate systems, in turn enabling the organization tocreate a unified job architecture.
In describing how Gloat’s Skills Foundation equips leaders with complete
visibility into workforce capabilities and skill needs, Rene Gessenich (Gloat webinar,2023), former Head of Strategic Workforce Planning says, “We can get the topskills against any job in our job architecture and have that updated. Then, we doworkforce planning where we go into much more detail and see what the roles
are, how they’re changing, and what roles we need.” By taking a skills-based
approach to strategic workforce planning, Novartis can ensure its people arebuilding the capabilities needed to adapt to a market that is quickly evolving
and leaders can gain in-depth insight into the skills employees possess and how
these competencies relate to their colleagues’ expertise.

Assess and develop leaders with focus toaccelerate performance today and tomorrow
To develop the next generation of managers and executives, Novartis’s workforce
needed complete visibility into internal opportunities that would enable themto hone the capabilities required to lead with confidence. Launching a talentmarketplace (which Novartis calls Talent Match) would enable employees toexplore and acquire new skills beyond the jobs they were initially hired for.
The platform would also expand flexibility, in turn encouraging individuals togrow further within the organization and develop both technical knowledge
and soft skills.

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Sara Steiner, Global Head, Performance and Talent Development, pinpoints
the core question that Novartis was looking to answer by launching a talentmarketplace: “How do we inspire our associates to look at the different
opportunities that exist and how do we make them curious about them in an
unbossed and self-empowered environment so they can really take control of
their careers?”. (Gloat Live, 2024)

Foster career and development for everyone todrive their careers and grow
Developing new expertise is a prerequisite for success for any organization,
particularly during times of accelerated innovation and rapidly shifting consumer
demands. To keep pace with evolving customer expectations and remain at theforefront of medical innovations, employees across Novartis needed access tolearning and development opportunities that would enable them to build indemand expertise and grow their careers.
In describing Novartis’s ongoing commitment to employee development and therole their talent marketplace would play in helping workers expand their careers,
Vice President Markus Graf explains, “The talent marketplace is an end-to-end
journey and the main focus for us is in the field of employee development. Ourjourney always starts with the employee.” (The Josh Bersin Company and Gloat Webinar, 2024)

Predict capabilities and skills needed andbuild, buy, and borrow them intentionally
As talent landscapes grow more competitive and global skill gaps continue towiden, leaders at Novartis wanted to gain insight into which skills would become
more important in the new world of work. They also wanted to understandwhat knowledge they would be able to develop and share internally andwhen it would be in the company’s best interest to acquire new talent with indemand expertise.

7Gloat webinar, 2024

With the help of Gloat’s Skills Foundation, executives would be able to see
which capabilities were on the rise and on the decline, as well as pinpointing
emerging knowledge shortages within the company. While the shifting talentlandscape had previously made creating a unified skills taxonomy challenging,
Gloat helped Novartis create a single source of truth by identifying employee
skills; suggesting related skills, inferring skills from individuals’ profiles,
and subsequently matching individuals with various opportunities such as
mentorships and job placements.

Culture and technology reinforce each other. You
can’t match talent to opportunities at scale without
technology. For us, it was very clear that we wantedto bring this idea of an ‘unbossed’ culture to life andthat’s where a talent marketplace really helps.
(The Josh Bersin Company and Gloat Webinar, 2024)

Markus GrafVice President, Global Head of Talentat Novartis

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Strengthen attractiveness as an employer, bothinternally and externally, from early career tosenior executives
As Graf explains, “Our culture is centered around ‘unbossing,’ including unbossing
the traditional understanding of talent management so that we democratize
talent with more access to opportunities.” This type of employee-driven careerdevelopment not only motivates Novartis’s current workforce but also sends aclear signal to prospective employees that the company is committed to theirlong-term growth and development. (The Josh Bersin Company and Gloat Webinar, 2024)
Rather than letting traditional talent management tactics limit employees’ growth
opportunities, the launch of Novartis’s talent marketplace would give their entire
workforce full visibility into relevant projects, gigs, and mentorships. This shift
would in turn democratize career development and inspire all employees to pursue
new learning experiences that would enable them to achieve their full potential.

9The solution
With their big bets identified, Novartis set out to turn its skills-based transformation
vision into a reality. In order to do this, the organization recognized that embracing
a holistic, integrated perspective would enable the company to transition fromthe skills assessment and understanding phase to an operational one.
To address the complexity of its job architecture, Novartis decided to launch anagile workforce operating system, which includes both Skills Foundation anda talent marketplace, to facilitate the matching of skills and talent with open
opportunities across the organization. Creating a unified skills framework wasa pivotal step for Novartis in its quest to become a more dynamic, skills-basedorganization. Their agile workforce OS could seamlessly connect the labor market,
the external environment, and the relevant skills to create one single source of
truth for strategic workforce planning.
Previously, when the company had attempted to create a single taxonomy
independently, it faced challenges because skills impact everything in HR indifferent ways. “It wasn’t easy, given the continuously evolving landscape,” Graf
explains. By identifying employee skills, suggesting related skills, inferring skills
from individuals’ profiles, and subsequently matching individuals with various
opportunities such as learning, projects, mentoring, and gigs, their agile workforce
OS played a pivotal role in driving Novartis’s skills-based transformation.
When employees are looking for more personalized exchanges about their careerand development goals, they can turn to the talent marketplace within theiragile workforce OS to find a mentor who has relevant expertise. Rather thanmatching people by role or level of seniority, the platform ensures that menteementor pairings are based on skills and ambitions. As a result, associates havethe opportunity to build new connections and work closely with team members
they may not otherwise have a chance to collaborate with.

10The results
Talent marketplace users are 73% lesslikely to leave Novartis(Gloat Live, 2024)

Talent marketplace users are 51% more
likely to be promoted(Gloat Live, 2024)

Mapped skills to roles with 33,000 job
codes across 105,000 employees(The Josh Bersin Company, 2023)

When Novartis launched their agile workforce OS, they first rolled it
out with a “test and learn” approach to ensure it provided the typeof experience users would recommend to others, with the intent toscale. By starting small among units that were eager to test out the newskills-based talent marketplace, Novartis made improvements in theimplementation process.
As the company piloted and learned, it scaled further, allowing for rapid
adoption and organic growth. To date, more than 30,000 employees haveregistered to use their agile workforce OS, predominantly through wordof-mouth recommendations rather than a top-down rollout. “There wasno big central campaign,” says Graf. “And it worked quite well. It was agood way to roll it out.”(The Josh Bersin Company and Gloat Webinar, 2024)
11Overall, Novartis has seen many benefits from the launch of its agile
workforce OS—including a 67% increase in cross-functional project
assignments. Employees who use their talent marketplace, Talent Match,
to participate in projects are also 73% less likely to leave the organizationand 51% more likely to get promoted. Additionally, it has enabled thebusiness to save on consultants and contractors by empowering leadersand managers to tap into talent across the company. Reflecting on theprofound changes that their platform has already set into motion,
Gessenich notes, “When you think about organizational agility or reallythink about how to find the right kind of skills for a particular task orproject, the talent marketplace is at the heart of matching these twopieces at scale.”With the ups and downs in the work that we do, weneed to make sure that you can still find you energy,
your purpose, and your focus. And platforms like
Gloat and other things that we provide for ouremployees really help them to build their learningand build their skills.
(Gloat Live, 2024)

Vicki Rawlinson
US CHROat Novartis

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companies transform and adapt to today’s world of work withmore dynamic operating models.
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