Management Approach

As a global company, BD has a strong commitment to those with whom we interact worldwide – at work, in the marketplace and in the community. This commitment earns us the trust and dedication of our associates and customers. Providing safe working conditions and promoting safe behaviors in the workplace for our associates and customers is a critical part of running our business. It is one of the “keys” to our manufacturing operation and is the first topic at every shift start-up meeting (which take place at the beginning of each shift at every BD manufacturing facility).

• We value our associates, and in many cases compensate them beyond what is locally required. Their individual success is as important to us as the success of the business as a whole. We provide our associates with the opportunity to attend courses and workshops, reinforcing BD as a “teaching, coaching and learning organization,” in line with our belief that a correlation exists between companies with cultures that value teaching, coaching and learning and better business performance.
  
  
• BD is also committed to fostering a culture that values and respects each individual, offering diversity awareness workshops worldwide and integrating related concepts and principles into our human resource systems.

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Employment

BD employs more than 28,000 associates worldwide in approximately 185 locations in nearly 50 countries. The Company aspires to become a great company, and one of the elements of achieving greatness is being a great place to work.

Throughout the world, BD provides associate benefits that meet or exceed local standards. For example, in approximately 30 countries, BD offers a Global Share Investment Program (GSIP), a matching program that promotes associate savings and ownership of BD shares. BD is continually expanding the program to include more countries and associates.

Examples of country-specific benefits that go beyond what are locally required include:
In Canada, BD provides associates with a broad range of benefits, including an employee assistance program, an on-site fitness center, a savings incentive plan, education assistance, flexible working hours, summer hours and financial assistance for maternity leave.

In Nogales, Mexico, BD associates benefit from assistance to first-time home owners, credit assistance for general services, an in-house doctor, matrimonial ceremony assistance (three days of paid leave), funeral assistance, petty cash loans for emergencies (up to $200 interest free), drug intervention assistance, a subsidized day care center, a subsidized cafeteria and bus transportation.

In Oxford, England , associates receive free private medical coverage and reduced rates for dependent medical care, a free associate assistance program, on-site gym facilities and annual flu shots.

In the United States, BD provides associates with numerous benefits, including a family resource program, a savings incentive plan (SIP/401(k)), education assistance, a matching gift plan and access to fitness centers at many sites.

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Occupational Health and Safety BD has implemented a Safety Process Model that is built on best practices drawn from our worldwide safety specialists. The model’s four-pronged approach is designed to address the conditions and behaviors at our sites that could result in an incident and take preventative active to eliminate their occurrence. The model includes the following focus areas: Prompt close-out of findings from monthly safety inspections of all work areas Identification and correction of the root causes of all near miss, first aid and recordable events Addressing trends identified from tracking near miss incidents Implementing the recommendations developed from risk assessments completed for all site equipment, tasks and operations The results of the Safety Process Model generate a Safety Index, which can be tracked to measure the progress in addressing these leading indicators of safety performance. BD also uses more traditional measures of safety performance such as an illness and injury rate. BD collects information from manufacturing, research and development sites worldwide on recordable cases, lost workday cases and days out of work. Recordable cases include all injuries or illnesses at the workplace that require more than first aid. Lost workday cases include injuries or illnesses at the workplace that involve time away from work. For both metrics, the case rate is based on the number of cases per 100 associates. Lost workday/days out include the total number of days away from work. The severity rate is the total number of days away from work per 100 associates. As the charts indicate, BD’s safety performance has been improving in terms of recordable case rates. We are committed to better understanding and improving our performance with regard to lost workday cases and believe complete implementation of the Safety Process Model will help further focus our safety measures. BD sites around the world support numerous programs to protect the health and safety of our associates. For example, new associates attend safety orientation, and existing associates participate in periodic safety awareness and training updates. Site safety coordinators conduct regular safety inspections, and ergonomics specialists conduct workplace ergonomic evaluations. Health Services provides programs to promote ongoing health and wellness for associates. Site emergency response teams train regularly to respond to incidents and medical emergencies. Facilities across the globe organize health and safety committees to improve our performance, and many of these committees include joint membership by management and line workers. Furthermore, we developed the Lean Daily Management System (LDMS) for our manufacturing sites to more thoroughly integrate safety into the workplace as well as to track our performance. LDMS consists of shift start-up meetings, primary visual display boards, 20 key strategies (each with five levels of compliance) action sheets and metrics to track progress. The Company audits facilities worldwide to ensure compliance with local workplace health and safety standards. In addition, all sites use the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards for reporting workplace accidents, illnesses and injuries. BD’s first Worldwide Safety Summit in November 2006 convened 64 associates from 44 locations to discuss and focus on the importance of safety. BD Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Ludwig and other senior managers addressed the summit participants. As a result of this experience, attendees are helping facility-based environment, health and safety (EHS) teams identify areas of underperformance and ways to achieve improvement. Return to Top

Training and Education

Our corporate learning initiative, BD University (BDU), is strengthening our organizational and individual capabilities.  Founded in 2000, BDU represents the Company’s formal commitment to ensure ongoing learning and development. In 2007, 12,000 associates participated in over 400 BDU programs, ranging from negotiation skills to ethics to how to conduct a training course. The instructional design approach in all of BDU's programming is to engage participants in the learning environment and subsequently apply the learning.

BDU is unique in that Company leaders teach approximately 90 percent of all courses. This strongly reinforces BD as a “teaching, coaching and learning organization.” BD believes that a correlation exists between better business performance and companies with cultures that value teaching, coaching and learning. We further believe that engaging leaders in teaching improves their own capabilities as well as those of the associates in their classes. Structurally, BDU is organized into five “colleges:”
Leadership

• Business Skills
• Operational Effectiveness
• Career Assessment and Development
• Sales

BDU is integrated with other key levers for leadership development, including talent acquisition and HR planning, creating a robust engine for the identification and development of current and future leaders. In 2007, ASTD, the world’s largest professional society focusing on workplace learning and performance, recognized BD with a “BEST” Award and ranked BD in the top five submissions from over 100 companies from eight countries.

BD emphasizes formal learning – through programs such as BDU – and also encourages assignment-based development, which is rooted in the principle of placing associates in the right job, with the right challenge and the right timing.

Career Development

BD recognizes the importance of all associates receiving ongoing coaching and annual performance reviews and is committed to creating a coaching and performance management culture. Managers and associates both play roles in creating a partnership that delivers on this commitment. BD's Performance Management Process (PMP) emphasizes coaching and developing all BD associates on an ongoing basis. The PMP Process consists of six interconnected steps:

• Form a coaching partnership
• Establish individual impact goals
• Prepare an individual development plan
• Provide ongoing feedback
• Discuss and document performance evaluation
• Continue coaching process

The Company offers other avenues for ongoing learning and personal/professional development. For example, we offer tuition reimbursement in the U.S. and encourage associates to participate in professional societies and associations globally.

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Diversity and Equal Opportunity

Diversity

Diversity is a crucial component of BD’s success. We have implemented the BD Diversity Inclusion initiative to help us become a more inclusive work environment. We welcome people of diverse ethnicity, culture, gender, religion, age, personal style, sexual orientation, physical ability, appearance and tenure, as well as people of diverse opinions, perspectives, lifestyles, ideas, thinking and being.

Within our Company, diversity is about understanding and respecting differences and using them effectively to BD’s competitive advantage. This means developing a deeper knowledge of the world, having a greater understanding of the needs and the markets we serve and strategically engaging a variety of individuals and perspectives.

Great companies all have one thing in common: great people who embrace change. As BD strives to become a great company, we respect each individual as we celebrate the richness of our diversity. Always seeking to improve, BD will become more innovative as different ideas and thinking are nurtured. In an innovative environment, our associates will take responsibility for their personal development and growth, seek new challenges and drive performance. Striving toward our common goal, our differences will form the basis for our strength.

Members of BD’s Board of Directors include two women and directors with African-American, Jamaican and  Egyptian backgrounds. BD counts four women among our corporate officers.

Talent Management

Talent Management at BD is the process whereby diverse and talented individuals are recruited, hired and retained. It is responsible for guiding, developing and mentoring associates with an eye toward opportunities for growth and expansion as they move throughout their careers at BD. In short, it is the process that facilitates the full utilization of our greatest resource, our associates and encourages associate engagement at all levels.

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