HR Director Service constantly makes all efforts to improve the life within the Company for everyone to face the future with confidence, feel cared about even today and to enjoy his or her work.
People are the most important value of the Company, and we won’t stop repeating that. Our Company employs over 2,500 people, and we assume responsibility for their lives and well-being. Our relations with each employee are based on trust and joint responsibility. It is the talent of every employee that makes Farmak the market leader. Our Company is our people!
It is really great to know that there are people in the friendly Farmak’s family who have been employed by the Company for almost their whole life. This indicates our high standards of social and financial protection for almost a century.
Innovations, technologies, European quality standards, highly qualified professionals and the best industry experts – all these are representative features of Farmak. But we would not become the company we are today if the most important thing – responsibility for people’s health and life – did not join us together.
Education and professional competences are important to us, but we pay no less attention to whether a potential candidate shares our values, whether a person is motivated enough and ready to improve his/her skills along with the Company’s development.
If we see fire in someone’s eyes, this is the very moment when we say:
“Yes! You will join Farmak team”.
For example: in 2018, Farmak became the first place of employment for 27 of 283 persons employed by the Company. This is 10% of the total number of the Company’s employees.
The Company has approved the multilevel personnel training and development system. Thus, there is no way to work without learning. The adaptation program has been effectively applied to new employees, and the development schools, such as School of Young Leaders and Managers’ Development School, have been created for managers of various levels. We have successfully applied the Personnel Reserve Program aimed at developing management skills of each participant. This is proved by the fact that 80% of managerial positions have been held by the internal candidates for the last 2 years.
Over the years, the Company has formed a reserve of highly qualified professionals who have unique knowledge and skills and are ready to share them with others. Therefore, it was decided to create the Internal Trainer Development Program which allows sharing the experience with the employees who need it.
It is worth noting that the Company regularly ensures that its employees undergo training not only throughout Ukraine but also abroad, and involves the leading European experts to improve their qualifications.
We support our employees in striving for personal development, having established the corporate library which currently comprises 9,000 books.
Our team includes 35 candidates of sciences and 6 doctors of sciences who are our proud and example to follow by other employees.
We have held a vast number of workshops, lectures and presentations.
Farmak values each employee. It strives for providing all opportunities for improvement and career development to everyone whose achievements and constant commitment to excellence show that he or she is ready to develop within the Company.
The employees appreciate Farmak for transparency of doing business, competitive salary consisting of base payment, bonuses and other payments that are reviewed annually and stipulated by the Collective Agreement. In addition to the good monetary remuneration, the Сompany provides discounted food, full free health insurance and development programs. One of Farmak’s missions is to think about the future and invest therein. Such mission is implemented not only through manufacturing process modernization, obtaining GMP certificates, but also through the care about its employees and their families. The trade union assists therein by providing holiday package tours to recreation camps for the employees’ children, and to health resorts for those who need treatment.
Each employee gets familiar with the Collective Agreement concluded in accordance with the current legislation and the Industrial Agreement between the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the Central Council of the Trade Union of Chemical and Petrochemical Workers of Ukraine. This guarantees the protection of the rights and interests of the employees and their welfare. I coordinate the fulfilment of the Company’s obligations under the Collective Agreement.
The Company applies quotas for vulnerable population groups, which are not able to compete in the labour market. They include veterans and disabled persons under retirement age, and young people who have completed or stopped studying in general educational, vocational and technical schools and higher educational institutions.
The state grants quotas of 5% for employment. This figure is as much as 20% at our Company which is the largest one compared to any other company in Ukraine.
Farmak has applied the employee non-financial motivation models. Over the past two years, we have implemented the Motivation Cafeteria program, which consists of three domains with partial compensation: development (attending courses or trainings), recreation (recreation centre “Smuhlianka” on the Black Sea coast), sports (attending swimming pool or gym). Since January 2018, sports were chosen by 745 employees, training – 136, recreation – 270, reading books – 326. The program was applied by 1,477 employees in total.
The program is effective because it is aimed at different life spheres. We are interested not only in the proper performance of the person’s functions, but also in the comprehensive development and motivation of employees to take care of themselves and achieve more.
We track the satisfaction with the program by surveying and, if necessary, make adjustments. Now we get almost 100% positive feedback which is the best reward for our work.
Recently, we have launched the leave automation project through DOCS.UA. Before, we had to use a lot of paper folders with applications, orders, approvals for leaves. Now, due to DOCS.UA, we keep the history of leaves granted and record the unused days from the previous years. And now, any employee of Farmak can apply for and be granted leave directly at his or her workplace. This made it possible to save much time for all employees and reduce the amount of paper used by three times.
It should be mentioned that Farmak was the first among the Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies to develop and implement SAP SUCCESS FACTORS system in order to automate the most critical and time-consuming processes in HR management. Using modern IT solutions, the Company tracks the key performance indicators (KPI) of employees, competence assessments, formation and development under the Company’s personnel reserve development and management individual plans.
Due to this project, each employee observes the relationship between his or her goals and the goals of the manager, and understands how achievement of his or her personal goals influences on achievement of the goals of the particular subdivision and the Company as a whole. This solution also allows tracking the task performance dynamics and providing managers with the information needed to make balanced and quick management decisions. We optimized routine operations and reduced manual labour by 95%.
Speaking about the social and educational projects implemented by the HR Director Service, it is worth noting #Profession_lab. It is the educational career guidance project that has been created for our employees’ children in order to introduce professions in the pharmaceutical industry. Everyone can learn how to start career, what personal qualities are required to be competitive in the labour market in the future.
The HR Director Service has implemented the educational project #Farmak_Lab for the students and university teachers. The best experts of our Company present the relevant topics of the pharmaceutical industry within this project.
Everyone knows “School of Young Scientists”, which became a platform for sharing knowledge between students, scientists and experts of the Company.
As for the social initiatives, we held children’s charity fairs twice this year. The funds raised by the employees of Farmak and with the assistance of Farmak Charitable Foundation during the Christmas Charity Fair were used to purchase the sports equipment for the boarding school in Shostka. The trade fair of children’s drawings and other handcrafted item was held on the Children’s Day. The purpose of the event was to help children from the children’s hospital. Joint efforts were taken to purchase tilting beds for the children’s intensive care unit at Kyiv Children’s Clinical Hospital No. 1.
The Secret Santa is one of the favourite events of our employees. The purpose of this event is to secretly give presents and incredible emotions through Santa’s charming helpers.
We initiated the “Day of Happiness”, due to which all employees of Farmak could make their working day positive and cheerful.
We successfully hold workshops on painting and craft on a regular basis. Each participant of these events may create their own masterpiece for the first time.
We care about making our people pleased and happy!
We act as a social partner for our employees and create an atmosphere of care and support. That is why the motto of our Service is “In partnership with you and taking care about everyone”. All our actions are based thereon.
In addition, we provide our employees with an opportunity to live an active life full of sports, become healthier for free and get high-quality health insurance for themselves and their relatives. We provide a comfortable workplace, develop employees, and streamline business processes. We adhere to the Labour Code of Ukraine and pay a competitive salary that is reviewed annually.
We care about the employees’ children by providing them with holiday package tours to summer camps, giving New Year’s gifts and engaging in various corporate activities.
We analyse the causes of dismissal and make efforts to improve the corporate life within the Company.
To support our development strategy, one of our projects will be dedicated to the corporate culture transformation next year. We strive to increase everyone’s awareness of the Company’s values. We want everyone to understand, share and guide them in their work to better achieve the Company’s strategic objectives, mutual success and comfort.
Each employee will have the opportunity to join the project and contribute to its development.
In 2019, we are going to work towards the development and promotion of the HR brand of the Company: to create videos “Life Inside the Company”, to hand over referral cards, to cooperate more closely with universities etc.
The Ambassador program will be an indicative project aimed at cooperation with the company-friendly students who will involve their friends in working at Farmak.
The projects #Profession_lab, #Farmak_Lab and “School of Young Scientists” will evolve and become global. These projects have become our landmark in this area.
Learning process automation will be another no less important project.
We improve the life within the Company for everyone to face the future with confidence, feel cared about even today and to enjoy his or her work.
Recently, labour migration has become a concern for the pharmaceutical industry and Ukraine as a whole. According to experts, today, up to 5 million Ukrainians work abroad and, what is worst, almost half of migrant workers are 18 to 29 years old. That is, the tendency is observed that young people are not interested in staying in Ukraine.
This negative tendency may be eliminated by creating additional opportunities for development and, undoubtedly, paying decent salaries. However, not only responsible companies, but the state itself should be involved. We want the competent labour force to stay in the country, to develop the industry, to make our state strong and independent. Farmak is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country. It has been the industry leader for the eighth year. We use modern equipment manufactured by the leading world companies, we have our own research centre – one of the best in Ukraine. Therefore, we invite students to join us so that they have the proper image of modern pharmaceutical business. We, as a driver of the pharmaceutical industry, feel responsible for the future of today’s students and the future of the country as a whole. For these purposes, we actively develop HR brand of the Company, have prepared the competitive value proposition for future employees, incentive packages, and encourage the employees of Farmak to live an active and happy corporate life.
We are building Europe in our country!
