Caring for team members
We are committed to continually enhancing our resources and benefits to enable a high-performance culture and support our team members’ ability to live with purpose every day. Our aim is to create a positive work environment where everyone can thrive and find opportunities to grow, learn, and pursue their passions while helping us create healthier futures.
Benefits
Cencora offers a comprehensive benefit and compensation package, which includes healthcare, flexible spending accounts, Health Savings Accounts, life, disability, and other insurance; a retirement plan with company match; and a stock purchase program in the U.S. and Canada. Numerous other benefits include tuition assistance (including scholarship opportunities for dependents in the U.S. and Canada), student debt support tools, medical coverage for same-sex partners and domestic partnerships, holidays, paid time off, and a global team member assistance program. In 2023, benefits for U.S. team members (with the exception of disability coverage and 401k) became available on day one for all new hires and rehires to prevent any gaps in coverage when changing jobs.
We support our team members and their families with coverage for fertility services and increased parental leave to twelve weeks and paid caregiver leave to two weeks in FY23. We offer a supportive return-to-work environment that includes on-site lactation rooms and flexible work arrangements such as flex hours and the possibility of remote work. We provide support for adoption and maternity care in addition to assistance for nursing mothers who are traveling within the U.S. or abroad for Cencora. Postpartum services include access to pediatric sleep coaches, lactation consultants, mental health professionals, and more.
We offer numerous wellness initiatives, including a well-being program, diabetes support, musculoskeletal virtual physical therapy, benefits navigation and advocacy, and a program to support neurodiversity at home and at work. Convenient, virtual access to coaching, therapy, and psychiatry for all mental health and behavioral services is now available, so team members can access resources to best fit their schedule and needs.
We also offer financial support through our Cencora Team Assistance Fund for team members and their families who have been impacted by an unforeseen catastrophe. In mid-2022, Cencora announced expanded reimbursement for travel and lodging expenses when a team member or their covered dependent needs to travel to access quality medical providers and facilities.
Spotlight on men’s mental health
In recognition of International Men's Day, our teams in Europe highlighted the importance of addressing men’s mental health and breaking the stigma around it to create a supportive and accepting work environment for team members’ well-being. To raise awareness, we launched a video campaign featuring Alliance Healthcare male team members sharing their stories and encouraging others to speak up about their experiences.
Development
Development is a strategic priority, and we continue to make thoughtful investments to support our team members in building capabilities and improving competencies. In FY23, our integrated talent framework across Cencora took a progressive approach to performance management as well as enhanced enterprise learning strategies and programs to drive a consistent and inclusive experience.
Our integrated talent framework is based on our leadership competency model, which focuses on inclusion, collaboration, and innovation. This model provides a common language and behavioral standard for assessing performance and potential, which is enabling a culture of accelerated growth and development for our team members. We also prioritized team member development through a robust performance management process that includes rigorous goal setting, succession planning, performance, and talent calibration. Actionable tools and resources are provided for managers and team members to have meaningful conversations focused on impacts and outcomes. In FY23, we again increased the number of manager/team member check-ins and encouraged managers to include a focus on well-being in their discussions to better support our teams holistically.
Our vision of modern, consistent learning experiences was developed to create a centralized approach to funding, resourcing, and deployment, while connecting learning offerings to business priorities. Our offerings for people leaders accelerate leadership capabilities and elevate coaching, inclusion, and engagement skills with a focus on empathy, emotional intelligence, and innovation.
Other career advancement tools offered include professional development programs and resources, tuition reimbursement, and opportunities to volunteer and participate in mentorship programs and employee resource groups.
Other career advancement tools offered include professional development programs and resources, tuition reimbursement, and opportunities to volunteer and participate in mentorship programs and employee resource groups.
To support our team members through our Cencora brand transformation and other enterprise-wide changes, we formed an Enterprise Change Champion Network to empower and listen to our employees. Throughout FY23, we encouraged team members to share their feedback in team meetings, town halls, interviews, and listening sessions. In September, we launched our second enterprise-wide Employee Experience (EX) Survey in 22 languages to all team members globally, which helps shape the employee development resources and programs we deliver.
Health and safety
Our tireless focus on team members' health and safety is embedded in everything we do. In the U.S., distribution center jobs are designed, monitored, and measured with health and safety top of mind. Our U.S. Operations team convenes a National Safety Committee quarterly to review and evaluate data and issue operational excellence scorecards. The distribution centers also leverage a peer-to-peer safety program, encouraging near-miss reporting and providing monthly topics to reinforce environmental, health, and safety (EHS) training and policies. Across our global footprint, we share and celebrate best practices to align EHS efforts worldwide.
The first Environment, Health, and Safety Week was celebrated in September in all UK sites of Alliance Healthcare. Each day focused on a relevant topic, including mental health, recycle and re-use programs, road and safety awareness, and Target Zero Safety Day. Target Zero reinforces the goal of zero accidents across all sites. Going forward, it will be an annual event to highlight safety as a top business priority.
At Alliance Healthcare in Spain, the Pedestrian Alert System was introduced to minimize the risk of accidents by providing wearable tags that vibrate, illuminate, and generate sound to alert pedestrians to an approaching forklift in warehouses. The forklift drivers also receive a sound and light alert, and the equipment velocity decreases according to the distance from the pedestrian. Based on a successful pilot in Viladecans, the solution will be rolled out to other sites in 2024.
A continuous focus on health and safety also resulted in a favorable audit certification for Alliance Healthcare and Alloga, a business within Alliance Healthcare. Every four years, Alliance Healthcare undergoes an audit of its Labor Risk Prevention system per Spanish regulations. The positive outcome was due to projects such as the safety alert program, which generates an accident alert sent to all sites in the country to prevent recurrence.
“It is all about putting our people first and thinking about how, going forward, you can be safer, and we, as an operation, can continue to drive towards Target Zero: zero accidents, zero deviations from the standard, and everybody going home the way they came to work.”
Matt Addison
Operations Director, Alliance Healthcare
