The 5th of 17 Sustainable Development Goals of UN is related to Gender Equality - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. One of the key areas for realizing this goal is related to the workplace – aiming to progressively eliminate the salary gap and the gender barriers and implement policies that ensure women's rights and empowerment. We believe that the big multinational companies have even higher responsibility and impact on this ambition. Therefore one of the goals in AstraZeneca annual scorecard is: “Strengthen a culture of Inclusion and Diversity by role modelling inclusive leadership, fostering diversity and building a trustful work environment where speak-up is encouraged.”

The initiative is targeting the company’s current employees, potential candidates on job openings of AstraZeneca as well as graduates who we aim to provide with opportunities for career development in company where diversity, inclusion and equality are leading values. As of today there are more than 180 female colleagues in AstraZeneca Balkans with more than 60 ladies having joined just in the past 2022.

Our activities towards building a culture of D&I, gender equality, female leadership are not just a one-off initiative but a continuous strategic priority for the whole company. We believe that only through constant efforts in this area we can achieve the important goal that is a part of our Sustainable development agenda as well as a key pillar in the HR Strategy. The latter contains the following main streamlines: Life-long Learning, Employee Experience, Attracting talents and D&I.

In 2022 the following initiatives have been organized aiming to foster female growth and to build a culture of diversity and inclusion: 1. Access to Women as Leaders program 2. Participation in Development without borders program 3. Participation in the awareness campaigns Girls Belong Here, Power of Diversity, Break The Bias 4. Regular feedbacks and development conversations with line managers and HR 5. Specialized trainings for building leadership competencies in all people managers so that they can manage diverse teams, ensure pay equity and prevent any kind of biases at work 6. Including gender pay equity as a quantitative KPI in the annual scorecard 7. Regular Townhall meetings between the management and all colleagues, devoted to inclusion and diversity topics where speak up and interactive participation is being encouraged

Overview of the results achieved through the activities related to our strategic priority on inclusion and diversity: - 60% of the managers in AstraZeneca Balkans are women - AstraZeneca Balkans has attracted employees from 9 nationalities - Balanced distribution between field based and office based positions - Role model for generation mix at work with 58% millennials and 42% gen X - Almost 60 colleagues having a career development (lateral or vertical) and 74% of them being ladies - 82% of all employees with favorable response to the questions in Diversity and Inclusion category within the regular employee satisfaction survey - More than 10 different initiatives on the topic of Inclusion and diversity being realized within 2022