Health, Safety & Wellbeing

As a core pillar of our sustainable business approach, we understand that delivering innovative solutions for patients begins with supporting the physical, mental, and social well-being of our employees, their families, and communities, now and in the future. 

We aim to foster a working environment and climate where people are happy, healthy, safe, and able to thrive. We do this by creating the right conditions for colleagues to benefit from cutting-edge, impactful programs. We also aim to pay particular attention to colleagues affected by severe diseases, whether as patients or caregivers.  

This delivery model has five key pillars:
 

Benefits

UCB recognizes that our employees are our most important asset. We want to provide our employees with a complete rewards package, including compensation and benefits. Employees and their covered families have access to:

• Medical coverage, prescription drug, vision, and dental coverages
• Flexible spending accounts /death insurance coverage
• Short- and Long-Term Disability
• Legal Assistance Plan / Identity Theft Plan
• UCBWell wellness program
• Retirement plans, including 401k and Retirement Savings Plan

In addition to these benefits, UCB also provides an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to our employees who may be affected by personal problems, employee discount programs through LifeMart, an Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and fertility benefits through WINfertility. UCB also partners with Peloton to offer UCB employees access to the Peloton app with thousands of live and on-demand classes and discounted prices on Peloton equipment. 

In 2021, our benefits program was nationally recognized as a recipient of the 2021 Cigna Well-Being Award.

Career Development

At UCB, we constantly work to close the gap between current and future capabilities to ensure that we can deliver differentiated solutions for patients living with severe diseases. We want to establish a learning mindset where employees lead their own development with the support of their Managers and Talent. 

UCB’s Career Development offerings include:

• Comprehensive Global Learning & Development Platform outlining the internal courses available to UCB employees
• Educational assistance for graduate and post-graduate degrees related to the employee’s current role
• Financial support for employees to attend external conferences and networking events and to obtain business certifications
• Mentoring and Coaching programs
• Access to external learning resources such as LinkedIn Learning 

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, coupled with the societal changes that may be stressful for our employees, we have continued to assess how we can best support our employees in other ways beyond benefits. To ensure UCB employees continue to deliver value now and in the future, UCB offers a competitive vacation and time off policy, including a company-wide week-long closure during the end of the year holidays. In addition, in the U.S., we have offered our employees additional “recharge” days where we hope employees will take advantage of this flexibility to disconnect, rest, and recharge so that they can continue bringing their best selves to UCB and bring the best UCB to patients.

UCB recognizes the future of work is different now. What we use the workplace for is rapidly changing due to digitization, new emerging jobs and careers, and new expectations and needs from the next generations coming into the workforce. To support this new way of working, UCB has adopted a hybrid model giving our employees additional flexibility and balance. In UCB’s Hybrid Model, employees are expected to be in the office for a minimum of 40% of the time, with the remaining 60% devoted to virtual working (on a monthly basis). We believe that a hybrid approach helps us deliver our PVS strategy while preserving our company culture, which we’ve worked hard to shape and evolve over the last years, and gives us a strategic competitive advantage.

In the U.S., we’ve also adopted Summer Friday, allowing our employees to stop working at 1 PM local time on Friday afternoons by adding one hour to their workday Monday through Thursday. We have also encouraged our employees to plan 25- or 50-minute meetings by adjusting the meeting times in their UCB calendars to allow for a few minutes of transition and rest time between appointments.