At Sanofi, there are diverse pathways to success
When Jennifer Kim was a microbiology student at the University of Toronto, a professor impressed upon her the virtual certainty that humanity would face another infectious disease pandemic. From then on, she took care to get her flu shot every year. In fact, the prof’s warning inspired her to work in vaccines, and she decided the best place in Canada to do that was with Sanofi, heir to Connaught Laboratories, a public health player in Toronto that’s been operating for 110 years.
In 2015, she got her chance. She was hired into Sanofi’s polio vaccine manufacturing department, bringing a quality assurance mindset from her previous experience. But she soon learned her new employer would expect her to broaden her skillset. She was promoted to lead the polio vaccine manufacturing team.
Then, as the company made a number of big new capital investments in vaccine development and manufacturing facilities, funded in part by the federal and provincial governments, she took on progressive roles in project management, operations, strategy, and her current position as end-to-end program leader – flu vaccine manufacturing and pandemic readiness.
“I come from a science background, and I previously had a quality assurance and operations background,” Kim says. “The projects were heavy on finances. It was completely out of my wheelhouse.” But with Sanofi’s training and development support, she’s been able to grow into the role.
“I’ve been quite fortunate through Sanofi to have these opportunities to enhance my own skills and experience, to be able to do multiple types of roles at the company. I’m able to challenge myself and really grow,” she says.
As the French pharmaceutical firm does at its facilities around the world, Sanofi aims to create lateral as well as vertical pathways for employees to develop their careers says Stephanie Veyrun-Manetti, country chair for Canada, who herself has had more than 10 different roles in the company over 24 years.
“This is how you retain people,” she says. “When you leave or decide to stay with a company, your choices come down to people and opportunities to grow.” She’s happy to report that Sanofi Canada has reduced its turnover 10 per cent in the past two years.
Backing up that promise of employee care is All Well, a program that takes in everything, from supplemental health benefits to an on-site gym and yoga classes and access to the Headspace app for managing stress. Sanofi also prides itself on its diversity and inclusion.
Following up on a study it conducted to gauge the trust in the health-care system among various communities in Canada, Sanofi last year launched A Million Conversations, an initiative to rebuild trust among under-represented populations, including Indigenous Canadians, LGBTQ+ communities and people living with disabilities.
“The numbers prove there’s a gap in how welcome Indigenous people and people of colour feel in hospitals and in workplaces,” Veyrun-Manetti says. “It’s our ambition to rebuild that trust in health care and close the gap in inclusion.” A Million Conversations is a series of public dialogue sessions with marginalized groups and medical professionals – and also fosters internal dialogue, as some Sanofians, as they’re known, share their personal experience.
“The support around diversity, equity and inclusion has really grown since I’ve been with the company,” confirms Kim, who on top of her work duties co-leads a multicultural employee resource group, Mosaic Canada, that brings awareness and celebrates cultures within the organization. “We’re having conversations that never took place before.”
Sanofi Canada is investing in care for the planet
The commitment to sustainability by Sanofi Canada has been hard to miss for anyone who’s visited the company’s 54-acre pharmaceutical research and manufacturing site in Toronto over the past couple of years.
“We’re on track to deliver $170 million in investments at our Toronto campus to directly impact and minimize our environmental footprint,” says Kate Winchester, the company’s head of manufacturing and supply.
Last year, Sanofi completed construction and started up a wastewater treatment and re-use plant that cut its municipal water draw by 20 per cent despite expanded operations. The facility reuses wastewater from throughout the site in its power plant boilers.
“This is a facility that’s really state of the art in terms of design,” Winchester says. “This plant is being used as an example of best practices with the Sanofi network around the world.”
This year, the company aims to finish the Energy Project, a comprehensive update of the campus’s power plant and other infrastructure that should reduce the carbon emissions of the growing campus by 30 per cent.
“While increasing our long-term demand, we are decreasing our emissions,” says Elena Savic, Energy Project lead.
These two initiatives dovetail with the multinational pharma company’s Planet Care program, which commits to five green goals: fighting climate change, limiting its environmental footprint, minimizing the environmental impact of its products and packaging, mobilizing people for sustainability and engaging suppliers and partners to work towards sustainability.
Sanofi Canada’s green efforts go beyond one-time capital projects, though. It takes ongoing steps to maintain environmental certifications relevant in its industry: ISO 14001 and ISO 50001. Its waste management protocol, which mandates the use of compostable food containers and cutlery in the cafeteria among other things, meant that just 0.73 per cent of all solid waste generated on-site in 2024 ended up in a landfill — 85 per cent was either reused, recycled or recovered.
And Sanofi solicits new ideas from employees. It even holds an annual Planet Care Challenge offering rewards to workers with the best, most practicable suggestions. Employee-led initiatives that have been implemented include free electric vehicle charging in the staff parking lots and an eco-friendly garden that produces vegetables and herbs.
Employees also spearhead an annual cleanup of an adjacent ravine. Since 2018, the company has sponsored two beehives in the area dubbed “Plan Bee”; employees can buy jars of the honey produced in the cafeteria.
“We’re taking ideas from employees because they’re there — they’re on the shop floor, they’re doing their jobs and we appreciate their suggestions,” Savic says. “I’m really glad to work at a company that promotes an environmentally-conscious mindset but also gives the opportunity for employees to lead those initiatives.”
An engineer by training, Savic stresses that there are opportunities at Sanofi beyond health sciences. Skill sets needed at the Toronto campus include finance, marketing, health and safety and more. The organization espouses a “One Sanofi” culture, whereby employees from various backgrounds are encouraged to focus on common goals.
“We care about not just the impact we have on public health, it’s important to think about the impact our company has on society overall,” Winchester says. “I think it’s meaningful for employees to work for a company that is not just focused on the bottom line, but really on this broader impact we have on the world at large, and our impact from an environmental perspective is a key component of that.”