Winning healthy minds with Sanofi
A practical shift that improved feedback, support and team performance
of leaders in the large group sessions felt the content was relevant to them
of leaders in the large group sessions felt the session inspired them to think differently about this subject
of executives in the small group sessions felt actively involved in the workouts
About Sanofi
With more than 100,000 employees across more than 90 countries, Sanofi improves the health of communities and finds new solutions for patients. It does this by combining breakthrough science with advanced technology.
In 2020, Sanofi embarked on a six-year Play to Win strategy, setting out to create an environment where everyone can bring the best version of themselves to work. To transform the practice of medicine, Sanofi wanted to create new behaviours, new ways of working and a new organisation. Growth, innovation and efficiency would be accelerated and organisational structure and culture reinvented.
Challenge
Embedding wellbeing into how Sanofi works and leads
As part of the Play to Win strategy, MindGym was brought on board as a partner to help Sanofi implement a new wellbeing development framework, with the objective of reinforcing both healthy minds and a healthy working culture at Sanofi.
Sanofi was looking for a scalable, flexible approach which would help employees, people managers and executive leaders develop strategies to improve their own wellbeing across a number of different areas:
01 Healthy minds
Sanofi wanted to transform:
- Purpose and motivation: identifying individual purpose and drivers to enhance performance
- Resilience and energy: managing energy effectively
- Personal effectiveness: smarter working tools for an accelerated/digital context
- Mindfulness: creating space and reflection to support personal perspective with self and others
02 Healthy working culture
Sanofi wanted to transform:
- EQ and empathy: awareness of others to support each other and encourage better connections
- Inclusive leadership: leveraging diverse perspectives and collaboration to do more and better
- Play to Win (PTW) behaviours: recognising and promoting PTW behaviours
‘MindGym have given us a phenomenal programme with strong, easily actionable insights on how to bring Wellworking to life across our population. We’re delighted to be working together.’
Global Programme Director of Leadership Offers, Sanofi
Solution
Building healthy habits through practical behaviour change
Together, Sanofi execs and MindGym co-created the Winning Healthy Minds programme to provide a best-in-class behaviour-change programme of live sessions, eWorkouts and engagement comms across all company levels. They started by creating and testing a pilot programme and conducting a Focus Group for those taking part.
Following on from the pilot, MindGym incorporated solutions to address both illbeing (reducing the risk of burnout) and wellbeing (energising and engaging those who were ready to thrive) at all levels of the business:
- Executive leadership: MindGym worked with Sanofi’s executive leaders to unlock WellworkingTM through the identification and mitigation of illbeing and driving wellbeing.
- People managers: Winning Healthy Minds empowered managers to learn to spot the signs of and prevent burnout, while energising and reinvigorating teams.
- Employees: Winning Healthy Minds equipped all Sanofi employees with a self-driven journey to build skills in personal resilience and energy management, supported by manager coaching.
‘This was a fantastic journey. Indeed, being in-person, engaging and playing with colleagues, building on each other’s thoughts and tactics was great. It got me to realise that I was not alone facing challenges to maintain my wellbeing at work.’
Global Head Clinical Sciences & Operations, Research & Development, Sanofi
Results
100% of leaders left inspired and engaged
- 100% of leaders in large group sessions said the content was relevant to them
- 100% of executives in small group sessions felt actively involved
- 100% of leaders said the sessions inspired them to think differently about wellbeing
‘As we reshape our Executive & Leader Development portfolio to enable leaders to accelerate our Play to Win strategy, the Winning Healthy Minds learning journey has been highly impactful for our executives, people managers and individual contributors.
The programme has brought incredible energy, practical tips and tools that are easy for employees to embed in their day-to-day and an opportunity for colleagues to connect and learn from each other on important wellbeing topics. We are thankful to have partnered with MindGym to help us design and deliver this programme across the company!’
Global Programme Lead for Executive Development, Sanofi
