Actelion

About Actelion

Founded in 1997, Actelion is an innovative and rapidly expanding pharmaceutical business, listed at the Swiss stock exchange, which creates and develops drugs for high-unmet medical needs which are then distributed throughout their 22 worldwide offices.

A fully integrated approach to research, development and marketing is in place, which provides for an environment focussed on innovation. This enables Actelion to attract and retain the best employees and enable them to fully utilise their expertise to discover, develop and market novel drugs.

The case for Flexible Benefits

Actelion Pharmaceuticals UK is essentially a sales and marketing operation and approached Redbourne in 2005 to develop a modern employee benefit package to enable them to compete for key UK employees working in the pharmaceutical sector, mostly for larger organisations like GSK and Pfizer. One of the key challenges was the number of employees. With around 30 employees in the UK office Actelion UK found that Redbourne was one of the few providers able to deliver a commercially viable solution without compromising on the quality of the solution. Successfully launched in the summer of 2006, Actelion UK now has an effective tool to aid their recruitment drive in the UK whilst also experiencing high levels of positive employee feedback from those already in the plan.

Design – Redbourne’s consulting team, working with Actelion’s HR advisers, was able to develop a plan design which provided a framework within which various elements of previous salary and benefits packages could be valued and accommodated to attract new recruits.

Implementation – Redbourne’s complete service proposition enabled Actelion to progress the project with a single provider from initial feasibility and review of contracts, through to employee launch communicaiton and also the placing of the benefits with best of breed providers.

Ongoing support – finally, with the plan successfully launched, Redbourne provides a fully outsourced administration service centred on their online benefits management system. Employees are also provided with full support through help lines and access to personal advice where needed.

Benefits

• Achieved the key aim of providing a flexible and highly valued reward offering to support their growth strategy in the UK.
• Implemented a full flexible benefits plan on a cost effective basis for a 30 employee organisation.
• Outsourced all benefit related administration within a fixed price service.

Client feedback

Beth Talbot, Finance Manager at Actelion UK says "We wanted to provide our staff with a meaningful and attractive benefits package. Working with Redbourne has resulted in an innovative and flexible solution which optimises the value of our investment and provides access to 'top- notch' suppliers such as PruHealth and Imagine childcare vouchers. We are great believers in outsourcing - wherever it benefits our business to do it and this is an excellent example of an area where working with external experts brings a convenient and cost-effective solution while saving me a lot of time and legwork".

For more information, please contact us.