Lasting impact comes from a true commitment to sustainability
The world is our community
At Kyowa Kirin, we believe that our ability to make a profound, positive impact extends beyond our work in the labs. We believe that we also have an opportunity, and an obligation, to try and make life better for patients and families living with unmet medical needs, and for us all–including our employees, partners, and the communities where we live and work.
Our core values reflect this commitment. Our teams ensure we are always innovating and looking to see where we can make the greatest impact.
This includes:
- Giving back and helping grow the communities in which we live and work
- Protecting the environment that enables us to flourish
- Building a sense of community inside and outside our work and create more opportunity
for individuals from different, diverse backgrounds - Delivering quality products patients can trust
A passion to help others
Our company and our employees are passionate about giving back and helping grow the communities that we call home.
In addition to actively collaborating with institutions and patient advocacy organizations in the disease areas where we work, we also seek other ways to support the health and well-being of children, families, and communities.
We encourage employees to support their passion projects by providing them with 16 Volunteer-Time-Off-Hours for causes they care about without having to tap into vacation days set aside for family time and rest.
We currently dedicate support to three national, community-based organizations.
Ronald McDonald Houses
Kyowa Kirin is proud to support Ronald McDonald House Charities with employees helping families with "care bags" of snacks and games for families spending all day in the hospital, serving as Secret Santas, and delivering meals to bring a warm spot to a long day.
American Red Cross
We partner with the American Red Cross to support the local community and global areas impacted by crisis. Our employees volunteer to make Essential Needs backpacks for U.S. Veterans experiencing homelessness, writing cards to military personnel away from family during the holidays, and hosting blood drives. Meanwhile, the company donates to help communities rebuild in times of local and global crisis.
Dream Foundation
For more than seven years, Kyowa Kirin and our employees have partnered with the Dream Foundation, fulfilling the wishes of people whose battle with serious illnesses has taken a final turn. Employees build wish packages and deliver them personally to families across the country.
Supporting environmental sustainability
At Kyowa Kirin, we have long-established goals of reducing our environmental footprint, including water conservation, CO2 emission reductions, and increased use of natural power and recyclables. The targets are aggressive, and our work is always ongoing.
In addition, we have adopted a vision of increasing our positive impact on nature. The idea of "nature positive" includes halting the loss of and increasing the recovery of biodiversity.
By working on both fronts simultaneously and across all global facilities, Kyowa Kirin is actively striving to ensure we are working in ways that are good for the world.
Read more about our goals, commitment, and work here:
https://www.kyowakirin.com/sustainability/trust/environment/index.html
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Behind the scenes of our
new North American facility
Sustainability has been woven into every design aspect of our new manufacturing facility–our first in North America, currently under construction in North Carolina.
We began with location, ensuring we were building in an area open to development with nominal traffic impact. A detailed site analysis included an assessment to identify and protect existing natural habitats and ecosystems.
The building itself utilizes materials with low embodied energy and environmental impact.
Additional design features include a focus on reducing the urban heat island effect by using reflective roofing materials, reducing light pollution with specially designed exterior lighting, and ensuring water-use efficiency by installing low-flow fixtures and greywater reuse systems that will reduce potable water use by at least 35% below the LEED baseline and ensuring irrigation is at least 30% below the LEED baseline by planning drought-resistant plants and efficient irrigation systems.
Interior lighting is designed to promote energy efficiency and visual comfort, using occupancy sensors and high-color rendering index (CRI) fixtures. The open concept floorplan and expansive windows are designed to maximize natural light and reduce the need for artificial interior lighting, creating a brighter and more energy-efficient space.
Increasing our impact,
one person at a time
Engrained in our culture of Wa (harmony in teamwork) is the understanding that every employee brings a unique perspective and skill set that, if recognized and encouraged to grow, will help strengthen our work and increase our impact and effectiveness.
- By striving to understand and embrace varied views, we can better reflect the needs of the people and communities we serve, especially as we strive to put patients at the heart of everything we do.
- We want ours to be a community, where all employees feel empowered and encouraged to share new ideas, and feel confident they will be listened to.
- Whether in the office, working in partnerships, or in the community, we want to create an environment where everyone has a sense of belonging and is free from any form of inequitable treatment.
- We foster an inclusive culture that enables our employees to bring their whole, authentic selves to work, where we can grow together, feel valued and respected, and achieve our shared corporate vision.
To support and grow the sharing of varied perspectives, we have four Employee Resource Groups whose mission is to give employees a forum to engage, support one another, suggest change, and foster growth. Anyone can participate in any group, and each is a place of welcoming support.
Participation in our Employee Resource Groups is open to all
I think it's important for Kyowa Kirin to have ERGs because diversity drives our core values, especially innovation and teamwork.
We have 3 Employee Resource Groups. We have EmBrace, we have WIN, which is Women's Initiative Network, and then we have PRIDE.
We organize, we strategize over how to educate the people around us so that they become more understanding, standing and familiar with the issues that LGBTQ plus members of that community face on a daily basis.
I started my journey in diversity, equity and inclusion and employee resource groups when I was with my former company. At that time, I was not comfortable in my own skin, and so I wanted to take on a bold step and get involved in the Pride group.
It allowed me to, you know, walk into a room and speak without reservation, to have more confidence in myself and really speak my mind to advance my opinions. And so, you know, it it, it helped a lot.
We're trying to show some of the employees who may be considered vulnerable or may not be used to being their authentic self that you can and that this is a company where you can do that.
I many times face gender based differences, challenges and barriers, but I'm happy to tell you that I could find ways to navigate those.
And in Women Initiative Network, we exactly do the same.
We are a group of employees who are very motivated to support this breaking such challenges or barriers which comes on our way based on gender.
As an Employee Resource Group lead, I wish that all employees here in Kyowa Kirin feel confident and a sense of belongingness at workplace.
Once you better understand the shoes that your colleague walks in, it helps in open one's awareness.
It helps bring more understanding and embracing of inclusivity, which is what we're trying to achieve as a part of the Embrace ERG.
It's important that we all work together and support one another, celebrate the differences, help and strive toward inclusivity and belonging within Kyowa Kirin, I will say from personal experience, since being here, I've never felt anything less than accepted for who I am.
All those experiences really helped shape me into the person that I am today.
Quality in everything, always
We strive to ensure that ours is A Quality Culture. And to us, that means a focus on three things: establishing a clear vision, having a set of agreed upon values that all employees live by, and providing strong leadership. This approach is infused into our labs, offices, partnerships, and across the supply chain to deliver the very best for the patients and communities that we view as family.
In a healthy Quality Culture, you will find things like science-based approaches to decisions, sound risk management, robust data integrity, compliance, a supportive management structure, an environment of preventing issues before they arise, and a continual improvement mindset.
Learn more about our policies, practices, and commitments here.
https://www.kyowakirin.com/sustainability/trust/quality_supply/index.html