Living Our Values

Abbott’s Value-Based Culture

Abbott’s four core values – pioneering, achieving, caring and enduring – guide and support our employees in every aspect of their work. We engage employees globally with values workshops and our statement of purpose, the Abbott Promise for Life, published in six languages.

Each Abbott division president is accountable for pushing the company’s values deep into the organization, where they can influence and guide the day-to-day decisions that are made across the company and around the world. For example, Abbott’s international pharmaceutical division – the company’s largest – has embraced a program called “I AM ABBOTT,” which encourages employees to think about the four values in the context of their own decisions, not as something ambiguous.

“It is one thing for a colleague to see a plaque on the wall that says the company is pioneering,” says Olivier Bohuon, president, Abbott International, “It is quite another for that same person to think to him or herself, ‘I pioneer.’ It is only by internalizing the values at an individual level that we will be able to build the kind of culture we want at Abbott.”

Decision Making Among Our Leaders

We continued to update our core leadership training programs, with a focus on supporting employees at key transition points during their careers. As part of the process, we developed training modules on how to incorporate the Abbott values into daily activities. The curriculum in this area addresses a number of core issues identified in the values workshops with Abbott management, including balanced risk taking, approaches to minimizing bureaucracy, and developing more long-term strategic thinking, increased collaboration and cross-divisional focus to better serve stakeholders.

Understanding our values helps employees make the best choices to create positive experiences for our stakeholders and, ultimately, leads to positive perceptions of our company. In 2007 we developed tools to create opportunities for values learning with additional training programs, including our new employee orientation and onboarding process. These tools have been integrated into key applications in 2008.

Abbott’s values integration is reinforced in specific leadership programs taught by members of senior management, including: Abbott Executive Compass for newly appointed executives; Global Leader Program for newly appointed or soon-to-be-appointed international general managers; Operations Leadership Summit for key leaders in quality assurance, manufacturing, supply chain and regulatory affairs; Leadership Development for Scientists Program for senior scientists with leadership potential. Values training is also included in our Abbott New Leader program, a core foundational program for all Abbott leaders.