Gone are the days of HR as a back-office function. At Moderna, Chief Human Resources Officer Tracey Franklin is leading the charge in building a high-performing, diverse workforce that fuels groundbreaking discoveries. Her strategic approach goes beyond traditional HR practices. By fostering a culture of inclusion and empowering employees, Moderna has been ranked the Best Places to Work for three consecutive years.
In this exclusive interview with The HR Digest, Franklin dives into her unique talent management strategies, and how they’re propelling Moderna to the forefront of medical innovation. Let’s find out how she harnesses the power of every individual to drive strategic decision-making and unlock the full potential of their workforce.
Building on Moderna’s renowned innovation focus, how does the HR department actively cultivate a culture of innovation within its own function, and how does this translate into attracting, developing, and retaining talent?
Moderna is a company that is constantly building and rebuilding… its core to who we are as a company. As CHRO, I always reinforce with my HR team that we are the architects of not only the employee experience but the structure of the organization and the operating model. There are a lot of well-established practices we can learn from externally but I’m all about creating things specifically for Moderna – even if that means we need to throw out the traditional leadership handbooks – and embrace non-linear methods of management – letting people be who they are and giving them the space to do amazing things.
Being part of a team that is driven by our Mission “to deliver the greatest possible impact to people through mRNA medicines” creates meaning and a strong sense of purpose among our people. We are also dedicated to creating an environment where all employees feel they belong, have an equal opportunity to contribute to our success, and can do their best work.
For us, a major way we’ve kept our culture grounded in the values and ways of working we’ve followed since our founding is through the Moderna Mindsets, a set of tools that codify what’s unique to Moderna’s culture. These Mindsets not only guide decision-making, but they are also designed to make it clear to new hires what company leadership cares about and how we work together.
While ‘belonging’ is a personal experience, how do you approach creating a work environment where diverse employees feel valued, connected, and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives?
We look to our people to assist in creating an environment where everyone feels like they belong, which is especially important while we continue to build Moderna.
We understand the demands of our high-performance culture and the amount of time and energy our employees give to our Mission for patients, so we want to help our people achieve balance and well-being in their lives. While we’ve grown, we’ve taken steps to provide quality, equitable, and timely resources to our global workforce.
As our teams work to make the impossible possible, the company has worked to support them through a variety of ways:
- We are focused on creating an environment where everyone feels like they belong. In our 2022 ESG report we stated that our diverse workforce represents 34 different nationalities. Our workforce is 49 percent female, and women make up 39% of our executives.
- Moderna also conducted a global pay equity study in 2022 and 2023 on the basis of gender globally and race and ethnicity in the U.S., and the data confirmed pay parity at all levels for all roles globally.
- We have nine employee resource groups, which receive strong support from leadership sponsors and the broader organization.
- Our defined Mindsets help to attract a team of people who rally around a way of working, therefore allow them to be their authentic self and thrive in our environment.
- When building our high-performing teams, are there core values that are essential for key hires? If so, could you share these values and elaborate on why they are non-negotiable?
Our core Values and Mindsets not only guide decision-making, they are designed to make it clear to new hires what company leadership cares about and how we work together, so they are an important tool throughout the employee lifecycle, helping us hire, develop, and motivate our people and grounding them in our culture. We are deliberate at providing realistic job previews as part of the interview process as this is critical to ensure new hires have a realistic preview of what we are building at Moderna so there are no surprises when they join.
Beyond ensuring clear communication and rationale, how do you encourage employees to actively engage with and contribute to the implementation of strategic decisions?
As an example of the Mindsets in practice – one of our Moderna Mindsets is “we behave like owners.” What this means to our employees is that they have their thumbprint on what we are doing every day and thus have a personal stake in executing on our mission for patients, which makes Moderna a unique place to work in the best way. This means all employees should be thinking strategically in their respective functions, or “act with dynamic range,” which is another one of our Mindsets.
When making strategic decisions, that is the balance you consider between short-term needs and long-term vision for the organization?
Because of where we are as an organization, operating as relatively new to a commercial market, we are always thinking long-term about the future of our platform. We have a long term plan as a company but ‘pivot in the face of new data’ (another mindset) when we need to for short-term needs. Since our founding, we knew that we could change the way medicine is made by using mRNA to teach the body to make its own medicine. And while other companies are also pursuing mRNA research, we are employing the same innovative platform technology we used to successfully create our COVID-19 vaccine to further the development of a robust pipeline of mRNA medicines that span both prevention and treatment. That obsession with innovation at its core is what drives decision-making across the Company.
Could you share some of the core values that most significantly influence your approach to decision-making, and how do they align with Moderna’s overall values?
I’ve talked a lot about the Mindsets, but our core values are also critical to contextualizing all of our decision-making and strategy. As an organization, we aim to be Bold, Curious, Collaborative and Relentless. I identify most strongly right now with Relentless – We are tenacious in pursuit of our mission to bring medicines to patients and are undaunted by challenges and look to build and rebuild this organization.
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Tracey Franklin Chief Human Resources Officer at Moderna Tracey Franklin leads Moderna’s talent and organizational strategy. Ms. Franklin joins Moderna following 15 years at Merck & Co., Inc. where she most recently led Merck’s global talent strategy as Vice President, HR Chief Talent and Strategy Officer and served on Merck’s HR Leadership Team. Photo: Moderna |
This profile was published in the April 2024 issue of The HR Digest.