Developing women leaders: Abbott turns commitment into action and results

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Autumn 2005

© 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joe.20069

DEVELOPING WOMEN LEADERS: ABBOTT TURNS COMMITMENTINTO ACTION AND RESULTS

DIVERSITY

With women rapidly becoming a larger part of its workforce and its customerbase, Abbott got aggressive about increasing the number of women in leadershippositions. A sustained five-year diversity effort on multiple fronts is showing laud-able results. Women have made gains at all management levels across the organ-ization—including international and R&D, two areas where long-standing mythsand misconceptions pose additional barriers to diversity. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Delores Patterson

Delores Patterson is the manager of Headquarters Human Resources and Diversity Programs for the International Division of Abbott in AbbottPark, Illinois. In addition to generalist support, her responsibilities in the International Division include implementation of global diversity strate-gies, rollout of Women in Management initiatives, facilitation of focus groups to assess the professional needs of women at the affiliate levels,and facilitation and coordination of diversity training.

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Building an inclusive environment is a top pri-ority for Abbott and is an integral part of the

way we do business every day. As with any otherkey business function, we focus on improving andmeasuring our performance in creating a diverseand inclusive workforce representative of the com-pany’s diverse stakeholders. We are convinced thatsuch a workforce generates higher productivityand better business performance.

Abbott has a long history of valuing and in-vesting in its people, a commitment reinforced byMiles White when he became the company’s chair-man and chief executive officer in 1999. He im-plemented an aggressive strategy, “Building a Pre-mier Employer,” to accelerate Abbott’s investmentin people, and Abbott has since been nationallyrecognized for its progressive efforts, especially

in the support and advancement of women andminorities. In 2003 Abbott was again named byWorking Mother magazine as one of the 10 bestemployers for working mothers, and we made oursixth appearance on FORTUNE magazine’s list of“50 Best Companies for Minorities.”

The company views the promotion of womeninto management positions as essential for de-veloping a diverse workforce and has made it acritical component of the “Building a PremierEmployer” strategy. Through a portfolio of tar-geted programs, management commitment andaccountability, and measurement of outcomes,we have made impressive gains in this area overthe past five years and considerable progress to-ward our broader goal of making Abbott the bestplace to work.


40 Delores Patterson

WHY FOCUS ON WOMEN?

Founded more than 100 years ago by Dr. WallaceCalvin Abbott, a Chicago physician, Abbott todayis a broad-based health care company whose prin-cipal businesses are pharmaceuticals and medicalproducts, including nutritionals, devices, and di-agnostics. A truly global company, Abbott has60,000 employees worldwide who serve customersin more than 130 countries.

Women’s participation in the U.S. and globalworkforces—and in Abbott’s customer base—hasgrown significantly:

• Representation of Women in the Work-force. The Business Women’s Network re-ports that 51 percent of the U.S. populationand 47 percent of the U.S. workforce isnow female. And yet women representonly 15 percent of all senior managers inlarge companies and 16 percent of corpo-rate officers in the 500 largest companies.Women are now 40 percent of the world’slabor force, and yet in almost every regionof the world, their share of managementjobs rarely exceeds 20 percent.

• Influence of Women as Consumers.Women play a significant role as decisionmakers in the marketplace. In the UnitedStates 95 percent of women make or helpmake family and financial decisions; 75percent handle all household finances; and53 percent make all family investment de-cisions. Women spend more than $3.3 tril-lion annually, and they earn half or more ofthe income in most U.S. households today.

• Influence of Women on Health Care. Par-alleling the growth in the workforce atlarge, the number of women in the pro-fessions that comprise Abbott’s customerbase is increasing. Today 25 percent of allphysicians are women, up from 7.6 per-cent in 1970, and by 2010 women are ex-pected to be 33 percent of the profession.

The American Medical Association re-ports that 45 percent of current medicalstudents are women, numbers that meanbig changes for the profession in the nextdecade. We find that in the United States,women now make 80 percent of all healthcare purchases and spend two out of everythree health care dollars, which amounts toapproximately $500 billion annually.

These changes have implications for all aspectsof our business. Abbott wants a diversified organ-ization that reflects our global base of customersand patients. Abbott’s many stakeholders—cus-tomers, employees, and shareholders—all under-stand that women are critical to Abbott’s continuedsuccess in the workplace and the marketplace, andthey expect that Abbott will have women in lead-ership roles in a more diverse workforce.

As important, women complete the organiza-tion’s business “brain” by helping to spark entirelydifferent kinds of ideas and offering a different kindof intuition, compassion, experience, and style ofleadership. Because an organization requires differ-ent leadership styles for different needs and situa-tions, having enough women leaders is a matter ofpragmatism: We need the right tool for the right job.

A STRATEGY BEARS FRUIT

To further its “Building a Premier Employer” strat-egy, Abbott adopted a three-pronged approach tocreate leadership and advancement opportunitiesfor women:

• A strong commitment to building andleveraging a diverse and inclusive corpo-rate culture where each individual can con-tribute to her or his full potential

• Specialized development and work/lifeprograms

• Focused recruitment and retention

Through a sustained five-year effort in thisarea, Abbott has been able to increase the numberof women in executive and management positions;women now comprise 38.6 percent of all man-agement positions in the company and 16 percentof corporate officers. A total of 395 women weretapped for key leadership roles in 2004.

Abbott wants a diversified organization that reflects our global base of

customers and patients.

Developing Women Leaders


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implementation and effectiveness; this includesclosely monitoring the status and metrics of womenand minority representation in the managementpool, the company’s succession planning process,and women/minority recruitment and hiring. Sim-ilarly, division-level inclusion councils endorse andoversee diversity initiatives within each of Abbott’sdivisions and share best practices. The participa-tion of corporate and divisional leaders in thesecouncils sends a clear message about the high pri-ority the company places on the efforts in this arena.

Management Accountability through Re-wards. Commitment, however, does not neces-sarily translate into action unless accompanied byaccountability for results. Each manager in thecompany has diversity hiring goals, which helpsmake the recruitment and retention of women andminorities a constant priority. Members of topmanagement have annual incentive goals for spe-cific action items related to diversity and inclu-

Despite the additional challenges in the inter-national arena (discussed later in “Global Lead-ership Program”), Abbott’s International Divisionhas also made steady progress in women’s repre-sentation in middle and senior management rolesoutside the United States, which has grown from19 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2004 (see Ex-hibit 1). The number of women in internationalgeneral manager roles has increased from two tofive, with two of the women now on their secondinternational assignments.

Despite tremendous progress, women still rep-resent only 19 percent of the nation’s scientistsand engineers. In the absence of a critical massof female scientists in academia and industry, theability of an organization to move women intotechnical management positions requires specialefforts to recruit, train, and advance promisingcandidates. Abbott’s focus in these areas duringthe past five years has produced significantprogress in hiring and advancing women scien-tists. For example:

• The number of women in Abbott’s R&Dorganization has increased 65 percent.

• Women constitute 39 percent of middlemanagement scientific positions.

• Women hold 53 percent of managementpositions in clinical research.

• Women now represent 31 percent of se-nior R&D managers, almost two and a halftimes higher than five years ago.

TURNING STRATEGY INTO ACTION

The progress toward our goal of having adequaterepresentation of women in management positionshas come through concerted efforts on several fronts.We credit the programs and actions described belowwith having a significant positive impact on the de-velopment and advancement of women at Abbott.

Management Commitment through InclusionCouncils. A commitment to diversity and inclu-sion at any company needs to begin at the highestorganizational level. Abbott’s chairman and CEO,Miles White, heads up the Executive InclusionCouncil, a top-management committee responsi-ble for setting overall diversity direction and driv-ing Abbott’s diversity initiatives throughout the or-ganization. The council actively reviews program

Exhibit 1. Representation of Women in InternationalManagement Positions at Abbott



sion, with 10 percent of their annual incentive tieddirectly to diversity placement.

A Clear Business Rationale. In order to re-ceive management approval for implementation,every diversity initiative must have an effectivebusiness case, i.e., an explanation of how diversitywill help the company achieve its business ob-jectives. This rationale might reflect businesstrends, strategic alignment, cost control, or thevalue added by greater diversity.

Women Leaders in Action. Launched in 2003by a group of female managers at Abbott, theWomen Leaders in Action (WLA) initiative is aleadership development, mentoring, and network-ing program open to all female employees. As withother employee networks throughout the company,WLA helps its members acquire skills that willenhance their personal and professional develop-ment. With a global focus, WLA is growing bothin the United States and internationally toward itsgoal of reaching 3,000 women worldwide.

Targeted Recruiting. A workforce that en-compasses diverse experiences, viewpoints, cul-tures, and backgrounds is essential to Abbott’sability to innovate treatments and solutions forsome of the most complex diseases and medicalproblems confronting the world today. Aggres-sive recruitment of women and minorities in keybusiness functions is an important element inbuilding a more diverse internal talent pool. How-ever, when we first implemented Abbott’s diversitystrategy, the organization had neither strong rela-tionships with many minority or international uni-versities and professional groups nor the rightmechanisms internally to effectively search fortalented women and minority candidates in thesciences, marketing, and other technical functions.

The company took several steps to strengthenits capabilities in these areas:

• We partnered with several national andlocal organizations—the Society ofWomen Engineers, The National Society

of Hispanic MBAs, the National Organi-zation of Black Chemists and ChemicalEngineers, and others—to create aware-ness of Abbott’s commitment to hiring andadvancing women and minorities and toidentify potential candidates.

• We retained minority-owned search firmsto focus recruitment efforts on women andminorities. In addition, we now requireour search firms to produce candidateslates that include at least 50 percentwomen and 25 percent minorities; recentefforts have produced women and/or mi-nority candidates for 90 percent of thesearches as compared with a national av-erage of 64 percent.

• In the especially critical R&D area, we aremaking efforts to develop women and mi-norities internally even as we aggressivelyrecruit top female and minority talent fromthe limited external labor pool.

• We developed a strong college internshipprogram. Last year’s intern class of 369students included 50 percent women and41 percent minorities, and 35 percent ofthe interns became full-time hires. Ourgoal is to increase the hiring ratio to 50percent by 2005. Abbott’s internship pro-gram is ranked one of the top in the coun-try by the Princeton Review.

Abbott Work/life Programs. As part of its“Building a Premier Employer” strategy, Abbotthas introduced more flexible working arrange-ments through job sharing, part-time employmentwith benefits, telecommuting, and shift trading.These have been important tools for attracting andretaining talented women—and men—who havefamily obligations or working preferences that aredifficult to accommodate through traditional em-ployment arrangements.

The growth in part-time employment has givenrise to the Abbott Part-Time Network (PTN). Thisvoluntary community connects Abbott people whoare committed to creating a corporate environ-ment that enables part-time employees to con-tribute their best and advance in the company.Part-time work arrangements produce a number oftangible benefits for all of Abbott’s stakeholders,including:

Aggressive recruitment of women andminorities in key business functions is

an important element in building a more diverse internal talent pool.

Developing Women Leaders


43

work, the Black Business Network, the ChineseCultural Network, and the IberoAmerican Net-work. The fair gave its 650 attendees insights intocareer paths in the Finance and Operations or-ganizations across the company. The attendees—70 percent of whom were women—heard careerdevelopment presentations and were able to net-work with key leaders to whom they ordinarilywould not have had access. The event was so suc-cessful that we are implementing the fair as anongoing program and expanding it to other func-tional areas in 2005.

Abbott has also formalized two types of men-toring programs. Transitional Mentoring, gearedto employees who are new to Abbott or new to aparticular division, offers the individual “person-alized orientation” by an orientation partner. Indoing so it ensures new employees feel connectedto their new organization, which facilitates an en-vironment of inclusion. Navigational Mentoringfocuses on career development for current em-ployees by enabling them to work with a mentorto identify their next growth opportunity, on atechnical or managerial career path, either in theircurrent organization or elsewhere in Abbott. Anonline tool matches mentors with employees basedon the employee’s personal and professional goals.The tool also tracks statistics and program uti-lization. Mentoring circles provide yet a third op-tion through sessions in which employees can aska group of three or four key leaders questionsabout career paths and developmental opportuni-ties in their areas of the organization.

Global Leadership Program. Many mythsabound as to women’s willingness to take on in-ternational assignments and their effectivenessin other, especially non-Western, cultures. In Ab-bott’s International Division, we have made greatinroads in debunking these myths and are in-creasingly successful in moving women into in-ternational management roles. As shown in Ex-hibit 1, women now fill more than a quarter (26percent) of these management roles in AbbottInternational.

• Support for Abbott’s diversity and inclu-sion goals by responding to various indi-vidual needs for work/life balance

• Support for recruitment efforts by offeringopportunities for flexibility

• Increased retention of long-term employ-ees, which also reduces costs associatedwith new hire recruitment and training

• Continued career advancement opportunities

Today, more than 200 women and men, in po-sitions ranging from nonexempt to director-level,are involved in the Part-Time Network. This num-ber is expected to grow as we continue to com-municate the benefits of supporting employeeswho wish to work part-time and as we meet ourobjectives for increasing the utilization of part-time arrangements.

Another important commitment Abbott hasmade to helping its employees balance work/lifedemands is to provide a range of child care solu-tions for working parents, many of whom arewomen. The company operates an on-site childcare center—the largest such facility in Illinoisand one of the five largest corporate child carecenters in the country. Additionally, Abbott offersa discount to all U.S. employees on child care ob-tained through three national service providers.

Navigation and Access. In many organiza-tions the pathway for women to senior leadershiproles is often confined largely to staff or supportfunctions. These career paths tend to offer con-siderably less access to the executive suite thando roles in operations or other line functions,which are seen to have a greater impact on a com-pany’s bottom line. Obtaining key line assign-ments requires knowledge about the opportuni-ties and exposure to decision makers, which canbe difficult for women, who often lack the net-works and mentoring relationships of their malepeers. This problem is further compounded inlarge and complex organizations like Abbott. ThusAbbott has implemented an Internal Career Fairand formalized its mentoring programs to helpwomen (and others) navigate our large organiza-tion and gain access to and visibility with keyleaders throughout the company.

The first Internal Career Fair was sponsored bythe company’s employee networks, includingWomen Leaders in Action, the Part-Time Net-

An online tool matches mentors withemployees based on the employee’s

personal and professional goals.



Abbott’s Global Leader Program (GLP) is alsobecoming an important avenue for helping womenachieve the top general management positions inour international operations. GLP was designedand implemented to prepare strong leaders to besuccessful international general managers or com-mercials heads. Candidates for the program—whomust be nominated by senior management—areregarded as having the potential to fill an inter-national general manager (GM) role within eight-een months and must have expressed a desire topursue a GM career path. While the program wasnot developed specifically for women, Abbott’ssenior managers are encouraged to use the suc-cession planning process to identify females intheir organization with GM potential and nominatethem for the GLP.

Through the GLP, participants prepare them-selves for a GM role in several ways:

• Build a cohesive support network withother participants.

• Expand their capabilities in the six Abbottleadership competencies.

• Enhance their skills in and awareness ofthe five critical success factors for generalmanagers.

• Gain exposure to current general man-agers and executives who appoint andwork with international GMs.

One key success factor of the program is theutilization of internal faculty, various members ofsenior management who have functioned as GMsor in some global capacity. Recent faculty mem-bers have included two female general managers,who serve as strong role models of women as suc-cessful global leaders. Due in part to programssuch as the GLP, the number of female GMs hasincreased from two to five, and we are optimisticthat this trend will continue.

CONCLUSION

Successfully meeting our customers’needs aroundthe globe demands a workforce that reflects thespectrum of diversity in the places where Abbottdoes business. Internally, diverse perspectives andan inclusive culture are keys to fueling the inno-vation that is the engine of our business, to at-tracting the best and the brightest talent, and tohelping Abbott become the world’s premier healthcare employer.

Abbott believes that the importance of womenas employees, leaders, and customers will con-tinue to grow. We are committed to offeringwomen—indeed, all our employees—the pro-grams, services, and support they need to not onlydevelop successful careers and reach their full po-tential but also achieve the goals outside of workthat matter most to them. ■

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE

Women and diversity: WOW! Facts 2003. (2003). Washington, D.C.: Business Women’s Network, Diversity Best Practices, and iVillage.

Documents

Developing women leaders: Abbott turns commitment into action and results