According to the Novo Nordisk Way of Management, the continuous development of the employees and the organisation is an important factor in ensuring future competitiveness. We see teams and empowerment as two methods for achieving this and we will illustrate how in the following cases from Denmark and Brazil.

Empowerment makes it possible to upgrade the performance of an organisation through greater delegation of authority. Over the last few years we have worked towards pushing initiative and accountability as far out in the organisation as possible, believing that this will lead to better and faster problem-solving. Of course, individuals or whole teams can be empowered.

With regard to teams, we believe that production teams can be put together in such a way that they are able to take daily responsibility for the output of their particular operation.

The essence of a team is shared commitment. Without it, people perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit. This is not to say that a team is ideal for all types of work but there are clear advantages in production.

Pilot project in Health Care
In 1994, Health Care Product Supply, which employs more than one fifth of Novo Nordisk's total workforce, began to work with various pilot projects concerning team structures vis-à-vis traditional production structures.

At the end of 1997, the pilot projects were evaluated in terms of product supply, quality, productivity and job satisfaction. They scored highly on all these parameters and the management came out strongly in favour of teams.

The potential benefits
By implementing team structures, Health Care Product Supply hopes to achieve a number of benefits. By creating a better work environment with reduced monotony and a greater delegation of authority, Novo Nordisk hopes to attract and retain the most talented employees at the same time as stimulating individual development.

The use of innovations in information technology as well as production technology should improve and productivity should increase. We believe that these changes will come about as the teams become more clearly focused on results and optimise production processes. Finally, teams can improve the flexibility of employees to change in response to market developments and future needs.

On this basis, Health Care Product Supply decided to draw up development plans for all its production sites worldwide to adopt team structures in the coming years. Within the next three to five years, directions will be given for teams and targets will be set.

The plans for implementing teams vary slightly from one Health Care Product Supply site to another. In the next case we outline the experience from the new NovoLet^® production facility in Denmark.