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After a thoughtful internal process, Astellas redefined its Values and Behaviors with a clear aim: a sharper focus on VALUE for patients. The challenge, however, was immense: how to make these principles resonate with every employee across the globe.
Three key members who were central to this initiative came together to discuss their mission of "turning words into culture": Tirell Hendley, Executive Director, Human Resources; Pamela Pinela, Employee Experience & Organizational Effectiveness Lead; and Samantha Yuen, Project Lead.
This article continues the story of how Astellas established its new Organization Values and Behaviors. If you missed the first part of their journey, you can catch up here.
--- What was your core strategy for embedding the new Values across such a large, global organization?
Tirell Hendley
Executive Director,
Human Resources
Tirell: A key objective was that we wanted as many people as possible to be trained on these new Values and Behaviors. However, we recognized that mandating this kind of training often has a very regulatory and compliance feel and can easily backfire. So from the beginning training was voluntary, and we deployed e-learning and game applications to help get the messages across. Separate training modules were created for managers and for regular employees, and despite the training being voluntary, we were able to achieve a 92% participation rate.
Pamela Pinela
Employee Experience &
Organizational Effectiveness Lead
Pamela: To embed our Values and Behaviors, we knew they had to be integrated at every stage of the employee lifecycle—even before someone applies. Today, our Values and Behaviors are prominently showcased on our corporate website, setting clear expectations about who we are and how we work.
We then carried that consistency into the hiring process by redesigning our screening and interview guides to include questions that assess how candidates have demonstrated our Values and Behaviors in their previous experiences. This ensures our hiring decisions reflect not just capability, but cultural alignment.
From Day One, new hires are introduced to our Values and Behaviors through onboarding materials that clearly outline their importance and what they look like in practice. We also developed practical toolkits for leaders with simple activities that help teams recognize how these Values appear in daily work and how they can strengthen them.
Samantha Yuen
Project Lead
Samantha: There were a lot of obstacles we needed to overcome in the beginning, including the huge number of behaviors that had evolved and been sanctioned across the company over the years. Rather than just have managers try to impose the new Values, we implemented a bottom-up approach, encouraging employees to embrace these and own them.
We conducted a lot of roadshows hosted by our Representative Director, Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer Katsuyoshi Sugita. The aim was to ensure that employees could see the new Values and Behaviors as more than just theory or bullet points on a PowerPoint slide; that they could see the people side, the personal side, of them.
This was a major undertaking; a huge team effort coordinated across HR and Communications and involving commercial teams right down to individual unit level. We appointed change champions and provided them with toolkits and materials; they then tailored the overall messages so that they would resonate in their particular part of the organization.
--- Can you provide examples of initiatives taken by specific countries or parts of the organization to get the message across?
Samantha: Our Italy organization seized the initiative right from the start. They created their own local tree showing how the new Values and Behaviors could be made relevant in Italy. They also decorated the office with new panels featuring the Values and Behaviors, helping to bring them to life in the workplace. Everything they did was focused on ensuring the new Values and Behaviors would resonate within the local culture.
Pamela: In addition to the inspiring work we saw in countries like Italy, we identified leaders across Astellas who were already modeling our Values. Using insights from engagement surveys, we interviewed leaders who scored highly in demonstrating our Values and Behaviors.
We then interviewed those leaders to better understand what they were doing day to day that enabled their teams to feel so positively about their leadership. Rather than positioning this as a top-down directive, we elevated real examples from within the organization. We consolidated their insights and shared their quotes and practical approaches on our Values & Behaviors hub, creating a space where others could learn from peers who were modeling the culture in action.
This helped reinforce that living our Values is not theoretical—it is happening across the organization, and everyone can see what "good" looks like in practice.
--- How did employees react, and what was the key to overcoming any challenges?
Samantha: I think the most challenging aspect was to simplify the 66 existing behaviors and to distil these into the three new Values and five new Behaviors. I worked with the Communications' leaders and we were careful to relate the slimmed-down list to what they had before; this helped to reduce any resistance to the changes. We also stressed that Astellas as an organization had evolved a lot over the past five years; we managed to shift the narrative to say that this is not some new top-down instruction; this is the new foundation of how we need to work in the future and it is up to each of you to make it work.
Tirell: Indeed. I think it was received very well because employees noticed that we previously had no consistent set of Values and Behaviors, and when we actually highlighted that we were changing a key component of our culture, people really rallied around.
Pamela: I would add that many employees appreciated simplification. Moving from 66 behaviors to three clear Values and five Behaviors made it much easier to understand what truly matters and how it connects to their day-to-day work.
During our leadership workshops, many leaders commented on how naturally these Values and Behaviors were already showing up in their teams. That was an important moment—it reinforced that we were not asking people to become something different, but rather to be more intentional and consistent about what was already working well. The conversation then shifted from "What does this mean?" to "How do we amplify this?"
That sense of simplification, alignment and authenticity really helped employees embrace the change and see it as an enabler rather than another framework layered on top of existing expectations.
--- How did you know the change was working? Were there specific examples of it taking hold?
Tirell: We started to hear employees mentioning the new Values and Behaviors in their everyday communication and talking about creating impact and VALUE for patients. That showed they are really embracing these, rather than just seeing them as something written on a wall somewhere or stored on some shared drive.
Pamela: For me, we knew the change was working when the language began appearing naturally in conversations and meetings. It moved beyond formal communications and became part of how people described success and made decisions.
In workshops, leaders were not asking, "What does this mean?"—they were asking, "How do we role model this more consistently?" That movement from understanding to application was a clear sign that the Values and Behaviors were truly taking hold.
Ultimately, they stopped feeling like an initiative and started becoming shorthand for how we work—and that is when cultural change becomes real.
Samantha: One thing we found that it tended to be the smaller countries and business units that were quicker to adopt the new Values and Behaviors. Italy was one example; others were the Nordic countries, Canada and Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico – I think they saw the new approach as an opportunity for them to grow their business. This was the opposite of what we would normally expect, where larger countries take the lead and the smaller countries follow suit.
Our new Values and Behaviors are beginning to come to life in our daily work. It is our collective actions that shape Astellas' culture and lead to VALUE for patients.
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