Imagine going to work every day knowing that what you do directly contributes to improving the lives of people with rare and life-limiting conditions.
That’s what life is like for Bénédicte Verley-Hudry and her 200 colleagues at global biopharmaceutical company Ipsen’s Irish site in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. Twelve months after she took up her role in Ireland, the Frenchwoman is fully settled in and already celebrating some significant milestones at the pioneering organisation.
Ipsen brings medicines to patients in more than 85 countries worldwide. It focuses on three therapeutic areas: oncology, rare diseases and neuroscience. With a presence in Ireland since 1989, the Irish site now plays a critical role in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for use in its medicines worldwide.
The unique expertise and consistent quality at Ipsen’s Irish site were recognised last year in the form of the distinguished Shingo Prize, which is the world’s highest standard for organisational excellence. Known as “the Nobel Prize for manufacturing”, this was a “huge achievement” for everyone working at the site, Verley-Hudry says.
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“The Shingo award was really recognising and celebrating the mindset and behaviour around excellence of execution at our site,” she says. “It has really shown the alignment between the mindset and behaviour values, and our focus on collaboration.”
In recent years between one and three Shingo prizes have been awarded annually to businesses across the world, and the significance of Ipsen Ireland’s win is not lost on Verley-Hudry, who says Ipsen will now seek to build on this achievement.
More than 20 site visits by representatives from other companies hoping to learn from Ipsen’s achievements will now take place, and she says Ipsen is looking forward to welcoming them.
Of course, Ireland’s prowess is globally recognised in biopharmaceutical innovation, development and manufacturing, and Ipsen has continued to invest in the crucial activity at its Irish site, upgrading and expanding its operations.
“We announced a €52 million investment in 2022 to allow us to maintain the right level of capabilities for the busy Irish site and to ensure that we are delivering drugs for patients on time and at the highest quality,” Verley-Hudry says.
The investment is already starting to bear fruit: the past two years have seen production volumes at the site increase by 15 per cent.
A culture of innovation also underpins the manufacturing activity, with strong R&D activity on site.
“While we are fuelled by external innovation, we are also innovating on site, with a team of analysts, chemists and technicians focused on finding and innovating for patients in rare diseases and niche areas of oncology,” says Verley-Hudry, who notes that the R&D team at the Irish site has grown from a concentrated team of two people in 2005 to a team of 22 dedicated experts today.
Ipsen is also celebrating the recently published results of its annual employee engagement survey, the People Experience Survey, which saw the Irish site achieve the biggest increase in engagement score of any Ipsen site worldwide.
But Verley-Hudry says this is no surprise, given that Ipsen has already been designated as a Great Place to Work in 28 different countries. She attributes this to the strong sense of purpose shared by its people, noting that her own decision to join Ipsen six years ago was primarily based on its ethos of helping people with serious conditions for which there may be no alternative option.
“It was really to be part of this story and offer innovative treatments for patients that are suffering from extremely rare diseases – at an international level Ipsen is developing and producing medicines for some of the rarest diseases in the world: we are talking about very small and underserved patient populations,” she says. “That is a cause that is close to my heart.”
This inherent sense of purpose fuels the company culture, which Verley-Hudry says is based on collaboration and excellence. And as a midsize company, she points out that there are myriad options for career progression: “Eighty per cent of senior positions on site were filled by our own talent.”
Diversity and inclusion are also priorities for the organisation, which includes people of more than 20 different nationalities among its team at the Dublin site.
Work-life balance is a priority for its people and Ipsen is also focused on helping its valued employees through various life milestones, with generous family leave entitlements as well as a comprehensive menopause policy.
“Here we tell people they can be their own selves. Everyone is encouraged to speak up and be part of our story – that is so important.”
Ipsen commissioned and provided editorial content for this article
