Responsibility policy
As one of the world’s leading specialty biopharmaceutical companies, Shire is focused on a single purpose: to enable people with life-altering conditions to lead better lives.
Through our Shire Human Genetic Therapies (HGT) business, we pursue opportunities on behalf of patients facing rare diseases such as Fabry disease, Hunter syndrome, Gaucher disease, hereditary angioedema, and metachromatic leukodystrophy. Through our Specialty Pharmaceuticals (SP) business, we focus on providing an innovative portfolio of treatments for patients with ADHD, gastro-intestinal conditions such as ulcerative colitis, and end-stage renal disease. Our commitment throughout is on symptomatic diseases, treated by specialist physicians.
We conduct our business based on our values - integrity, acting on the needs of patients, trust and openness, taking measured risks, avoiding complacency and ensuring global collaboration and teamwork. We care for the interests of those with whom we have relationships – our patients, our customers, our suppliers, our shareholders, our employees, the environment and the communities where we conduct our activities. The operation of a profitable business is a priority and that means investing for growth as well as providing returns to our shareholders.
To achieve this, Shire recognises the importance of operating in a responsible manner and we are committed to ensuring that our employees and all our stakeholders are aware of how Responsibility is embedded in our daily actions and approaches. Our overall approach to Responsibility enables us to conduct our business effectively and manage risk as well as strive to achieve continuous improvement.
Our Responsibility Coordination Team provides leadership and guidance to our business in the advancement of the Responsibility goals that we set and works collaboratively to ensure effective and appropriate execution of our overall CR strategy. The members of this Team act as Sponsors for Shire’s key Responsibility focus areas (listed below) which are driven by champions within the business. The Team is led by a member of Shire’s Leadership Team (currently the General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Global Legal Affairs) and the Team keeps the Leadership Team and Board appraised of Shire’s Responsibility progress as needed.
Shire’s Responsibility focus areas are organized into 13 areas, all of them directly related to the way the company operates day-to-day.
Access to medicines
It is our goal where possible to make our medications available to patients through Patient Assistance Programs/Compassionate Use programs for those who may not be able to afford them or through Named Patient Supply Programs for patients in locations where our medications may not be available.
Geographic expansion
One of our goals is to expand our business globally. We have to manage this rapid expansion in a way that does not just make commercial sense but respects both international best practice and local customs.
Stewardship of partners and suppliers
Shire’s activities such as distribution and manufacture are outsourced, unless there is real value in keeping them in-house, such as the manufacturing of our HGT biologic therapies. Our relationship with third parties is managed very carefully to maintain our standards and protect our brand.
Public/patient education on ADHD
Shire is a leader in the provision of ADHD treatment, few have a more detailed knowledge of this challenging and often traumatic condition than we do and we make every effort to promote a more balanced understanding of the real prevalence of ADHD and the various options available to manage it. It is our goal to manage this condition in a sensitive and appropriate way.
Conduct and transparency of clinical trials
We observe all the relevant protocols when conducting our own trials, and ensure that sub-contractors observe our own standards whenever we outsource this work. We’re committed to complete transparency about the outcomes of our trials, and publish the results on public websites like ClinicalTrials.gov and ClinicalStudyResults.org.
Product safety and pharmacovigilance
We are totally committed to the safety of our products and we constantly collect information from physicians and patients about our products, including about how well our drugs are working and whether they interact with any other medications. We engage in regular dialogue with these stakeholders to ensure we understand their needs and views and to ensure we undertake the right actions to satisfy them. Our Pharmacovigilance department reviews all data and reports relevant information to regulators.
Ethical sales and marketing
We follow all relevant sales and marketing guidelines in force in the markets we operate in, including, for example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. These guidelines cover issues such as the sort of material that can be used in advertising and how our sales representatives should behave. We also have extremely rigorous internal procedures governing the way we produce and issue marketing and promotional materials and undertake our selling and marketing activities. All our sales reps receive detailed training before they go into the field, and are supported on the job by our Global Medical Affairs department.
Click here to view our Code of Ethics
Bioethics and animal testing
Regulatory authorities around the world require all pharmaceutical companies to thoroughly evaluate new products in animals during the drug development process. If a particular program involves animal testing, we expect our specialist contractors to be sensitive to the well-being and humane treatment of animals, and follow our animal welfare policy.
View our Animal Testing policy here
Environmental impact of operations and environmental stewardship
We work to manage down our environmental impacts and manage up our environmental performance. We are working to implement a environmental, health and safety management system that is compatible with international standards such as ISO 14001 that will help us minimize our impacts and deliver continuous improvement in performance.
View our Environmental, Health & Safety policy here
Occupational health and safety
At Shire we are committed to maintaining a level of health and safety performance that is among the leaders in the specialty biopharmaceutical industry. We have teams of Health & Safety specialists and occupational health nurses at our main sites, who work with our employees to keep them safe and healthy and we are implementing a global environmental, health and safety management system to identify and reduce our health and safety risks and improve our performance.
View our Environmental, Health and Safety policy here
People engagement
We like to think Shire is a special place to work, with a distinctive culture, strong values, an appreciation of diversity and a commitment to achieving everyone’s full potential. We believe passionately in having a progressive, collaborative and positive workplace in which everyone feels valued and everyone is treated fairly, and that’s reflected in the way we work together, every day.
Human Rights
We believe in the value of employing people with a diverse range of backgrounds and we support the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognise the obligation to promote universal respect for an observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to ethnicity, origin, religion, gender, language or disability.
Management of M&A
Shire has grown its business through mergers and acquisitions. Managing a successful merger or acquisition is not just about achieving the business and strategic objectives. We are also committed to ensuring full attention is given to how the process is run and how the broader social, environmental and employment issues are handled as well as the integration process.
Public policy
We are committed to expanding internationally and becoming an increasingly significant player in our industry. With size comes responsibility and we are stepping up to the challenge of engaging more actively in the public policy debate on issues such as health, access to medicines and the regulatory framework.
Community
Shire aims to ensure that the communities in which we operate benefit directly from our presence through the wealth and jobs created, and the investment of our time and money in the community.
Shire adopts clear parameters as to the charities it chooses to support favouring projects and causes that reflect our values and priorities. Key stakeholders in our communities are patient groups and medical/healthcare education bodies as well as established not-for-profit organizations that are linked with our therapy areas of focus and related research bodies
We encourage and support employees with their own activities within the community, with our Volunteer Day (every employee is granted a day each year to work with an organisation of their choice) and by contributing to their own fund raising efforts for a variety of charities.
Click here to view our Community Policy
Corporate Governance
Shire is committed to high standards of corporate governance and supports the provisions and principles set out in The Combined Code on Corporate Governanceissued by the UK Financial Reporting Council.
As a NASDAQ company we are subject to the rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and to comply with Section 404 of that Act, Shire, with all Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regulated companies, reviews its material financial reporting processes and then documents, reviews and tests all material internal controls over our SEC financial reporting to ensure that these operate effectively.
