Keeping diversity and inclusion in the forefront of our operations

Edwards Lifesciences is born out of a simple idea: to provide right and timely treatment to patients with cardiovascular disease. With its advanced medical therapies, the brand, over the years, has cemented its stance as a global leader in the science of heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring. Today, with a diverse and highly talented workforce of over 15,000 employees, the company is present in various geographies, including India, Singapore, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Switzerland.

At Edwards Lifesciences, we have always kept diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our operations. This practice has helped us build an environment for employees to grow and thrive. Keeping safety, inclusivity and agility in sync with our vision, we have successfully implemented policies like global diversity & inclusion, equal opportunity, and prevention of sexual harassment to provide our women employees a safe place to learn, improve, excel and win. We conduct surveys to check the pulse of our organization, understand employee satisfaction level, identify their current needs, and accordingly take the required measures for improvement. In fact, we also have a program to reward diverse groups for long service, thereby keeping everyone satisfied and motivated at every point possible.

Through Edwards Network of Women (ENOW) – our women leadership initiative – we strive to inform, involve and inspire our employees on gender diversity and inclusion. Under this, we organize learning sessions, mentoring programs with female leaders, guest speakers, networking and interactive workshops to help our women employees excel in their careers and build longstanding relationships with likeminded people. Some of the areas we cover through these sessions are Mind your Belief, Power of Emotion, Body Confidence & Inner Strength and Accountability to drive performance.

As part of diversity & inclusion, we also conduct training sessions for both male and female employees to fight against gender bias and inequality. This is reiterated across all our organizational activities, be it annual meeting, sales and marketing council meeting, or leadership meeting. Our 2022 vision focuses on empowerment with key objectives like importance of diversity & inclusion, foster winning, and create leadership pipeline, among others.

In addition to diversity & inclusion, we have also made work-life balance a top priority at Edwards Lifesciences. We have flexible working hours policy that ensures all employees have adequate ‘me’ time for themselves and family after work hours. Apart from this, we conduct wellness programs on topics like financial fitness, physical activity, prevention, nutrition, community service & mind + program. We host online programs on platforms like Walkingspree to promote physical activities, thus keeping everyone fit and healthy, both physically and mentally.

We are committed to keeping women employees safe and healthy through unique offerings like annual health check-ups, heart awareness campaign, employee assistance program, tele-medication & doctor on call facilities. We also allow women employees to extend their maternity leaves if required without impacting their annual merit increase. Also, during the pandemic, we have leveraged tech platforms like MS Teams and provided IT-driven training to all our employees for effective usage of available resources and applications, making remote working more seamless than ever. In short, we at Edwards Lifesciences have been consistently maintaining an inclusive work culture, hence making our office spaces welcoming for people of all backgrounds, giving them enough space and freedom to grow and thrive.