Making a positive impact, inside and outside Karo Healthcare
Our social impact starts within our own business. Our goals include helping our people feel they can bring their true selves to work. We do this by creating a diverse and inclusive environment that fosters engagement and mutual respect. But our efforts also extend beyond our own company.
Keeping people engaged and connected is doubly important when we’re growing fast and welcoming many new people. To track our progress in this area, we run employee engagement surveys twice a year. In December 2021, we recorded rising employee net promoter scores (eNPS) on survey questions, including how engaged our people feel (up from 52 to 62, where a score of 50+ is defined as ‘excellent’ on Bain & Co’s scale) – and whether they would recommend Karo Pharma to friends (up from 31 to 35, where over 30 is excellent). Meanwhile, our onboarding experience scored 4.6 (out of a 5).
We also recorded scores of over 4 out of 5 from employees rating Karo Healthcare’s strategy and communication, culture, leadership, and wellness and inclusiveness. This tells us that our people understand our purpose and goals, and are fully behind what we’re trying to achieve. It’s also a tribute to them, not just our ways of working.
We aim for 50% female representation among our corporate management team and people managers. Our current proportions are 44% and 50%, respectively.
Looking beyond our business
We also aim for a wider social impact beyond Karo Healthcare itself. Providing healthcare products means we make a positive contribution to society by helping people live life to the full.
Our social impact is also part of our core business practices. Our supplier code of conduct and contracts exclude suppliers who don’t treat their staff in line with labour laws, and forbid practices like modern slavery. We ask our suppliers to sign off on this code, and we review them regularly through audits. We also monitor how our suppliers perform against International Labour Organization and United Nation’s codes and recommendations.
We give back to communities through work with charities. This includes Operation Smile, a charity carrying out surgery for children born with cleft lip and palate around the world, which we’ve supported since 2018. Our recent support includes Move for a Smile, an initiative where for every employee taking a 45-minute walk or run, we funded a cleft palate surgery. This paid for 152 operations.
In 2021, through Operation Smile, we committed to support a maternity clinic in the Philippines for two years by funding training to feed babies with cleft palate until they’re strong enough for cleft palate surgery.