Laval, Aug. 5, 2014: As the pharmaceutical industry faces unprecedented challenges, Sanofi Canada is proud to release its first-ever case study outlining best practices for companies undergoing significant transformations in their corporate culture and work environment.

Entitled Relocation as a Catalyst for Change: How Leadership Empowered Employees and Achieved Organizational Change at Sanofi Canada, this case study offers readers a behind-the-scenes account of a year-long communications and change management initiative during which the company relocated its corporate headquarters to Laval’s Biotech City, and made its 325 employees an active part of the change process.

Executive summary

The work environment can be a powerful tool through which to communicate information about the organization and its values to both employees and the outside world. Studies over the past ten years have revealed how evolving office space design – when combined with employee-focused initiatives – can bring about positive change to a company culture. Relocation as a Catalyst for Change: How Leadership Empowered Employees and Achieved Organizational Change at Sanofi Canada tells the story of a concerted effort to implement good change management initiatives at a global healthcare partner, and how such change management affected a corresponding transformation in the organization’s culture of work.

In 2013, the sale of part of its business prompted leading healthcare partner Sanofi Canada to relocate its headquarters. Moving from an antiquated building of closed “silo” offices, to a state of the art work open-plan environment, Sanofi Canada achieved meaningful change in its work culture in a very short space of time: a companywide survey undertaken 4 months into life at their new headquarters revealed satisfied and engaged employees, taking advantage of new technology and embracing new opportunities to collaborate. Patterns of interaction had begun to change, and an increase in informal communication contributed to greater transparency and efficiencies in the business. How had this been achieved?

Firstly, by establishing a powerful and open dialogue between Sanofi Canada’s Executive Committee, Human Resources and a team of Change Ambassador “agents”. Secondly, by creating small, inclusive initiatives aimed at building new capacities through new technology , increasing employee interaction and prompting the role modelling of new behaviours from the “bottom-up”. Finally, the paying of particular attention to the “emotional aspect” of employees’ change experience contributed to the creation of a workforce receptive to the prospective change, while motivated to own, embody and see the transition through.

In presenting how Sanofi Canada enabled transformational change within this timeframe, and in examining the key lessons learned by company executives and HR, Sanofi’s inaugural case study aims to both tell the story of the company’s relocation, while offering insight to organizations embarking on a similar journey.

For a full copy please contact: joanne.kennedy@sanofi.com