Letter from our chief govt officer and president, Rob Davis
Pricey Stakeholders,
At Merck, we’re proud to make use of the ability of modern science to save lots of and enhance lives around the globe. That is our objective, and it anchors each determination we make. Though our international neighborhood has confronted no scarcity of challenges in recent times, our potential to navigate and reply to those difficulties with velocity, agility and ingenuity has demonstrated the ability of our objective and has made our firm stronger and extra resilient. We’re excited and energized concerning the highway forward as we proceed to allow a protected, sustainable and wholesome future for folks and communities all over the place.
An ongoing power of our firm has been our enduring commitments to working responsibly and creating worth for society. For greater than 130 years, our international workforce has pursued environmental, social and governance (ESG) excellence. Right now, our ESG method helps propel and allow our enterprise technique in ways in which make us a greater firm—and a greater company citizen.
Our 4 ESG focus areas are 1) increasing entry to well being; 2) creating and rewarding a various, inclusive and wholesome workforce; 3) defending the setting; and 4) working with the very best requirements of ethics and values. We now have particular objectives in every space, and I’m happy to share our continued progress on this report, together with these crucial highlights:
Increasing entry to well being
Merck has an extended monitor file of constructing our medicines and vaccines accessible and inexpensive globally, and we started executing on a complete provide and entry technique early on within the pandemic to speed up equitable international entry to our investigational oral antiviral COVID-19 drugs. Our method has included investing in danger to supply thousands and thousands of programs of remedy; tiered pricing primarily based on the flexibility of governments to finance well being care; coming into into provide agreements with governments of roughly 40 markets worldwide; allocating 3 million programs of remedy for distribution by means of UNICEF to low- and middle-income nations; and granting voluntary licenses to a number of generic producers and to the Medicines Patent Pool to make generic therapy obtainable in additional than 100 low- and middle-income nations following approvals or emergency authorization by native regulatory companies.
Growing and rewarding a various, inclusive and wholesome workforce
We’ve remained intensely targeted on constructing a extra numerous and inclusive workforce. Our workforce’s range fuels innovation, and we’ve made formidable commitments to extend illustration in any respect management ranges with methods to raise traditionally underrepresented ethnic teams (UEGs). From 2020 to 2021, we grew our whole UEG illustration, together with a 5 % improve in senior administration. We’ve additionally initiated a number of collaborations with exterior companions and joined key initiatives to make sure we proceed to speed up and increase our efforts on this space.
Defending the setting and working sustainably
In environmental sustainability, we made progress towards our local weather motion objectives final 12 months and are additionally creating the instruments and processes wanted to decrease our firm’s carbon footprint. We’re on monitor to attain carbon neutrality by 2025, and we’re working in the direction of transitioning to renewables to fulfill our 2025 renewable power goal as nicely.
Working with the very best requirements of ethics and values
At Merck, we function responsibly on daily basis, with an unrelenting dedication to conducting ourselves in keeping with the very best requirements. Our code of conduct is on the core of our character, serving to us to take care of our fame as a reliable firm. To that finish, we preserve 100% compliance to regulatory necessities for energetic incident monitoring, threat/hurt evaluation and on-time notification of information breaches. We additionally foster a tradition the place workers are inspired to talk up and guarantee our ethics and values are represented in every thing we do.
As a signatory to the UN International Compact, Merck stays dedicated to bettering our communities globally, partaking regionally, and constructing sustainability throughout all our enterprise operations. We proceed to assist environmental protections, human rights, labor protections, and anti-corruption efforts worldwide. In December 2021, we introduced the issuance of our inaugural $1 billion sustainability bond, which can assist initiatives and partnerships in our precedence ESG areas and contribute to the development of the UN Sustainable Improvement Targets.
Lastly, however actually not least, I need to thank my Merck colleagues around the globe for his or her unwavering dedication, creativity and fervour for creating and sustaining societal worth. And on behalf of Workforce Merck, I need to specific my deepest and sincerest appreciation and thanks to your curiosity, assist and partnership. We acknowledge that ESG isn’t a vacation spot, however as a substitute a journey. Whereas we’re happy with our progress, we all know we now have extra work to do. We look ahead to embracing alternatives, with all our inside and exterior stakeholders, that allow us to achieve momentum, ship on our commitments and make even larger strides within the years to return.
Highest regards,
Rob Davis
Chief Govt Officer and President
