We take our responsibility seriously and seek dialogue with all our stakeholders to find out what really matters to them, through efforts such as our materiality assessment, our sustainability survey, and stakeholder-specific engagement activities.
As Idorsia becomes a commercial company and expands its geographical reach – adding complexity to our organization and increasing our impact on many fronts – our commitment to sustainability remains as important as ever.
We are building Idorsia with a long-term focus and ambitious aspirations. We will run the company in a responsible and sustainable way.
Jean-Paul Clozel, Chairman, on the establishment of the company
From the beginning, Idorsia’s leadership has emphasized that sustainability is central to how we define our success. The company was founded with a strong governance framework in place, including a broad range of policies, standard operating procedures, and guidelines to drive a culture of integrity. Our commitment to sustainability has been reinforced over the years. Furthermore, with our transformation into a commercial company, we have expanded oversight, employee training, and other measures to ensure that our business is conducted ethically and in line with relevant legal and regulatory requirements in all the markets in which we operate.
The Board of Directors is responsible for providing direction and approval of the organization’s purpose, values, and strategic priorities, which serve as the guiding principles for the company’s sustainability efforts. The Board is responsible for monitoring Idorsia’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy, targets, and progress. ESG is one of the four main categories of Idorsia’s annual objectives. These objectives are approved by the Board at the beginning of each year, progress is tracked regularly throughout the year, and the objective is assessed by the Board at the end of the year. The annual incentive for employees is also tied to the achievement of this target (in countries where relevant and permitted).
Risks are inherent to all businesses, and our success is dependent on our ability to foresee and mitigate these effectively. We have put in place an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) system to reduce risks and ensure business continuity throughout the organization.
In line with new reporting expectations on the part of external stakeholders and regulators, as well as our continuous attention to sustainability issues, we have evolved our ERM system to include non‑financial matters (environmental, social, and employee matters, respect for human rights, anti‑corruption efforts) as part of the company’s risk reporting.
Climate-related risks are a key element in this updated risk reporting, and Idorsia has already made an initial assessment of these risks in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate‑related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
We acknowledge that our business activities have wide-reaching implications and can have a range of effects on society and the environment. We strive to align our activities with the expectations of our shareholders, stakeholders, and society as a whole. To this end, we have determined a set of material sustainability topics by considering Idorsia’s impact on people (including human rights), the environment, and the economy (impact – or “inside-out” – materiality).
In our materiality analysis, we identified impacts across our value chain and categorized them as potential, actual, negative, or positive. This also helps us to understand potential ESG risks to our business and better meet our stakeholders’ expectations.
In line with the new Global Reporting Initiative Standards (GRI 2021), our process involved interactions with stakeholders and experts. The interaction with stakeholders and experts allowed us to set a threshold for determining the most significant impacts (14 in total), which were then grouped into four material topics: Advancing science & healthcare, Safeguarding and developing talent and fostering diversity, Compliance and business ethics, and Environmental impact management.
The full materiality process and a description of our impacts and material topics can be found in the 2023 Sustainability Report.
Through our engagement activities and materiality assessment, we know that our stakeholders believe that, in order to achieve sustainable value creation, we must continue to focus our efforts on three pillars: push the boundaries for patients, build on our talents, and lead an ethical business.
We understand that to deliver a sustainable future for our company, these three pillars need to be equally strong. Each pillar is dependent on the others – for example, our ability to build on our talent rests on successful innovation and responsible business practices. Only by succeeding in all three of these areas can we guarantee our future.
Our stakeholders also believe that we need to achieve this in an environmentally friendly manner.