Not every company has a longstanding moral compass it follows to achieve business success.
Not every company has the 135-year history of Johnson & Johnson.
Since 1943, just before the company was first publicly traded, Johnson & Johnson has been guided by the values laid out in Our Credo—a document that spells out the company’s responsibility to put the needs and well-being of the people it serves above all else.
And since its founding, the company has moved forward with the mission of blending heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of human health.
Now, with Johnson & Johnson’s #4 placement on the new Fortune ROL100—a ranking of the top 100 companies on the 2020 Fortune 500 list by “return on leadership” (ROL) as measured by the Indiggo ROL platform—it’s clear that mission is paying off.
To assess ROL, Indiggo looked to see whether a company’s purpose truly drove strategy and operations through data that determined key proof points of leader performance, such as a company’s connection to its stated purpose and its strategic clarity around that purpose.
In honor of this accolade, we’re taking a look at four recent company achievements and how they’re clearly rooted in the beliefs Johnson & Johnson has held since its beginnings.
1.
Purpose proof point: Innovation through vaccine technology
Johnson & Johnson has a legacy of coming to the aid of local and global communities during times of crisis, from natural disasters to disease outbreaks. So it was only natural that after COVID-19 was first reported in early 2020, the company responded to this historic crisis.
The result: Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, which is now authorized for emergency use in many countries around the world.
The technology behind that innovation is the same used to develop and manufacture Janssen’s European Commission approved Ebola vaccine regimen, which, in April, was granted prequalification by the World Health Organization (WHO), helping to facilitate broader access and accelerate registration of the vaccine regimen in African countries most at risk of Ebola Virus Disease.
As part of its mission to make health accessible for everyone, Johnson & Johnson aspires to help eradicate racial and social injustice as a public health threat. That’s why, last fall, the company announced that it would commit $100 million over the next five years to invest and promote health equity solutions through a new initiative: Our Race to Health Equity.
2.
Purpose proof point: A commitment to health equity
The disparities in healthcare between the white and Black communities in the United States have been thrown into stark relief in the last year. A 2020 report, for instance, revealed that an estimated 83,570 excess deaths in the U.S. could be prevented if the Black/white mortality gap could be eliminated.
As part of its mission to make health accessible for everyone, Johnson & Johnson aspires to help eradicate racial and social injustice as a public health threat. That’s why, last fall, the company announced that it would commit $100 million over the next five years to invest in and promote health equity solutions through a new initiative: Our Race to Health Equity.
This commitment will go beyond addressing the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. For instance, Johnson & Johnson is introducing new scholarships, mentoring and non-financial support to improve representation of people of color in medical, scientific and health professions. Already, the company has begun funding mobile health clinics to support COVID-19 testing in high-need and hard-to-reach areas, starting with Detroit and New Orleans, and is actively recruiting diverse enrollment in its clinical trials.
3.
Purpose proof point: Strengthening the front line of healthcare workers
From offering nursing and midwife scholarships and training around the world to funding bright ideas from innovative nurses through its Johnson & Johnson Nurses Innovate QuickFire Challenge series, Johnson & Johnson has long supported the caregivers directly responsible for managing patient care.
Last year, the company announced an investment of $250 million over 10 years toward inspiring, recruiting, training, retaining and mobilizing frontline health workers, guided by the Johnson & Johnson’s Center for Health Worker Innovation.
So far, those efforts have included working with numerous partners—including UNICEF, the WHO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health—to provide personal protective equipment and much-needed mental health support to healthcare workers and help build better-connected health systems by making mobile technology more accessible, among many other initiatives.
It’s all part of Johnson & Johnson’s responsibility to patients and nurses, stated in the first line of Our Credo.
4.
Purpose proof point: Living company values through concrete sustainability goals
Since 2010, Johnson & Johnson has set its Health for Humanity Goals every five years with the aim of driving sustainable social, environmental and economic change around the globe—and showing tangible results.
From global access to medications to environmental stewardship and healthy employees, Johnson & Johnson’s newly released 2020 Health for Humanity Report detailed, among other sustainability disclosures, how the company achieved or exceeded 16 of its 17 goals within the past five years. The Report also set new goals for 2030 around building a more diverse and inclusive workforce, protecting the health of the planet, helping control or eliminate infectious diseases and working toward health equity.
But that’s not all: Beginning in 2016, the company also began making a United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Commitment, choosing specific areas within the UN SDGs to focus on in particular. Johnson & Johnson exceeded four out of the five targets it had set against its UN SDGs Commitment for 2020; for 2030, it will work to create sustainable, scalable impact when it comes to 11 of the 17 UN SDGs, which include Good Health and Well-Being and Gender Equality.
