Overview from Mazen Darwazah, Vice-chairman
Since the company was founded in 1979, we have been committed to honesty, integrity and the highest possible standards in everything we do. We are dedicated to the welfare and education of our employees, committed to the communities in which we work and determined to preserve and protect the environment in which we operate. These principles have guided us for the past 33 years and will continue to do so in the future.
Our five-year Corporate Responsibility (“CR”) plan, which takes us from 2010 to 2015, revolves around two broad themes, wellbeing and education, and four key platforms, our people, our community, our environment and global welfare and ethics. These platforms reflect Hikma’s genuine commitment to its stakeholders and its dedication to fully integrate CR within its business strategy.
Our strong commitment to our various Hikma communities and our environment has always been and remains, key to our way of doing things.
We continue to carry out our 5 year CR strategy, which included activities that are in line with our four key pillars. Our aim for having a strategised approach to Corporate Responsibility is to ensure focus and sustainability to attain optimal benefits to all stakeholders involved.
We began the process of reviewing our CR governance structure in line with the aim of embedding CR throughout the Hikma group and driving the CR program from the board and senior management to operational functions at the end of 2008. Now, we can say that in we have been fairly successful in this process and will remain vigilant in implementing this and seeking new ways to improve upon our processes.
The CR team continues to work closely with Corporate Communications and the Investor Relations team to ensure alignment of activities with emerging trends and keeping abreast of socially responsible investors’ demands. As such, we constantly seek to benchmark and share best practice across our markets.
Our team of 14 CR champions continues to work to implement our strategy across the Group and to ensure that CR remains aligned to operations for maximum business benefit and that it remains relevant to employees’ working lives.
The champions are focused on raising awareness of social, health and environmental issues in our business. In employee and community matters, we gave particular emphasis to five events: the Hikma Global Volunteering Day, ‘You are Hikma’, Hikma’s Day against Breast Cancer, Hikma’s Day against Obesity, and Hikma’s Day against Diabetes. Volunteering is an important part of Hikma’s CR approach and the annual Global Volunteering Day focuses each year on a different healthcare theme.
Corporate responsibility is and always has been an essential part of the Hikma way. Strong commitments to our community and the environment have helped to make Hikma what it is today – a highly successful international pharmaceutical company with a reputation for integrity.
We believe the CR Strategy in place will further enhance Hikma’s reputation, support both the global health and environment agendas, and support a culture of global community engagement. We continuously aim for Hikma to be internationally acknowledged as a committed and responsible global business.