Organizational Change
J&J Shifts Focus to Material Impacts for People, Places, Practices in New 2020 Goals

Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the world’s sixth-largest consumer health company, has released the results from their latest set of five-year goals and announced a new set for 2020. J&J’s Citizenship & Sustainability 2020 Goals represent a shift in how the company measures impact, increasing focus on material impacts as opposed to incremental reductions and year-over-year improvements. Through seven distinct goals with a combined 15 associated targets and metrics, the company aims to help make people and places healthier while creating an internal culture of health and wellbeing.

“For the past several decades, we have generally tended to renew incremental targets from the previous goal period – for example, another 10% reduction in waste, another 10% reduction in water. In 2010, we expanded the scope of our public goals to include areas beyond the environment, such as access to medicines and the impact of our philanthropic efforts,” Paulette Frank, the Vice President of Environment, Health, Safety & Sustainability at J&J, told Sustainable Brands.

“We continue to evolve our approach to goal setting with our 2020 goals, which, instead of continuing to incrementally reduce environmental impacts, are grounded in science (e.g. our carbon footprint goals), innovation (e.g. our goals for increasing revenue from products that have made significant environmental improvements) and risk (e.g. our goal to increase visibility and mitigation of water risks across our manufacturing network).”

• Deliver innovative health care access and training programs that impact a billion lives in underserved areas;
• Fully integrate sustainable design solutions into the product innovation processes;
• Reduce impact on climate and water resources;
• Empower and engage the J&J family of employees to become the healthiest workforce; and
• Collaborate to foster new models of health in key emerging markets, and to accelerate environmental and social improvements across the value chain.

Quantitative targets provide more in-depth insight as to J&J’s intentions for the next five years. For example, the company aims to support ‘People’ by expanding health care access and coverage in emerging markets such as Brazil, China and India, and by producing, donating and delivering various medical treatments, such as:

• 1 billion doses of mebendazole (Vermox®) to treat more than 100 million children at risk for intestinal worms, and reduce infections by 26 million over five years through integrated treatment and prevention;
• HIV/AIDS therapy access to 130,000 adults and 5,000 children, and TB therapy to a cumulative 200,000 patients, saving 148,000 lives;
• 6 million eye care screenings to underserved children, and provide corrective treatments as needed to 100,000 individuals.

The other targets focus more on corporate performance and the company’s product value chain, such as:

• Achieve Earthwards® recognition for new and existing products representing 20 percent of J&J revenue;
• Packaging recyclability: Increase recyclability of consumer product packaging by 90 percent or more in key markets;
• Emissions: Reduce absolute carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050;
• Energy: Produce and/or procure 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020, with an aspiration to power all facilities with renewable energy by 2050;
• Water: Conduct a comprehensive water risk assessment at all manufacturing and research and development (R&D) locations, and implement resource protection plans at the high-risk sites; and
• Procurement: Enroll suppliers covering 80 percent of spend in Sustainable Procurement Program; among other targets.

Not directly mentioned among these targets is J&J’s participation in industry collaborations such as the Chemical Footprint Project, as well as the company’s extensive work to promote recycling, particularly in the U.S., through initiatives including research, behavior change campaigns, and support for recycling infrastructure through the Closed Loop Fund.

The new goals and targets build on those from the previous five-year set, Healthy Future 2015, which began in 2010. Overall, J&J achieved over 70 percent of those goals. Highlight achievements from the company’s 2015 Citizenship & Sustainability Report include:

• Exceeded goal of increasing on-site renewable and clean-technology energy capacity to 50 megawatts with 54 megawatts either installed or in progress;
• Far exceeded goal of 60 Earthwards recognized products with 80 products;
• HIV medicines are now made available in more than 100 countries either at special-effort or reduced pricing, provided local regulatory systems allow import prior to registration;
• Met goal of achieving WHO pre-qualification for several of their products that address diseases of the developing world; and
• Nearly achieved goal (98 percent) of having all strategic suppliers publicly report sustainability goals.

“At the end of the Healthy Future 2015 goal period, while we met many of our goals, a relatively large percentage of our employees were still not fully aware of the goals,” Frank told Sustainable Brands. “Our ambition is that every J&J employee will not only be aware of the 2020 goals, but will clearly see how their role in the organization contributes to achieving our goals.

“To achieve this ambition, we realized we had to fundamentally change how we communicate about our goals and that the key to communicating more effectively is more deliberately and clearly linking the goals to our mission and purpose as a healthcare company. J&J employees come to work because they are committed to helping more people live happier, healthier, longer lives and we believe our C&S 2020 goals is another way we bring that commitment to life, every day at J&J. After all, healthy people need a healthy planet.”