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Artificial Intelligence
The human change challenge: How Sanofi gets workforce buy-in for AI
As transformation accelerates, HR leaders should keep their people up to speed, explains Sanofi’s Raj Verma.
French company Sanofi’s website leads with a crisp self-description: “We are an R&D driven, AI-powered biopharma company.” This reflects the focused, compelling digital and AI strategy that Sanofi has pursued across every area of its business since the launch of its first and unique Digital Accelerator in 2022.
“We had clarity before ChatGPT,” explains Raj Verma, the Chief Culture, Inclusion and Experience Officer. “Today, we’re working to embed digital DNA across the company, with a digital horizon to 2030.”
AI’s potential impact on pharma is enormous, particularly in accelerating drug discovery and development, manufacturing, supply chains and across multiple business functions. But, as in any sector, unlocking this requires a complex organizational transformation. People are the key.
Trust is fundamental. Human factors and technical capabilities are more symbiotic than people realize.
Understanding and assuaging employee fears
Employees are always averse to change. However, AI provokes an unusual strength of feeling as people fear losing their roles and livelihoods. HR and people leaders must lead efforts to allay those concerns.
“People ask: ‘Is AI going to replace me entirely? Am I making myself obsolete by training this system?’” Verma explains. Some also harbor deep worries about professional identity, fearing their expertise has been devalued.
Some senior employees also fear losing status if they’re slow to master AI, an important consideration in multigenerational workplaces. Many also worry about loss of autonomy and control, expressing concerns that AI will erode their decision-making authority.
On top of these objections, there are concerns about AI’s accuracy, transparency, and accountability for errors. There are also ethical issues, for example around bias and privacy. As AI takes on tasks previously allocated to entry-level staff, Verma also hears employees raising the possibility that early-career opportunities will die out, with repercussions for wider society.
CHROs should reflect on what lies beneath these concerns, advises Verma: “Fear of job loss and professional identity are the most powerful psychological barriers. But employees rarely articulate them directly. They find other rational reasons to resist.”
Rather than dismiss or ignore employee concerns, leaders should engage with their arguments constructively. Winning employee buy-in is critical to successful AI implementation. “Trust is fundamental. Human factors and technical capabilities are more symbiotic than people realize,” argues Verma. If people don’t trust the outputs, even the most advanced AI systems will fail. But when AI tools and responsible principles are well designed and understood by employees, anxiety drops and positive adoption rises.
“We’ve built inclusive design principles, so AI tools are accessible to all employees.”
The Sanofi strategy
If HR is to help their companies move forward, culture will be key. Organizations that cultivate psychological safety tend to be better adopters of AI, regardless of their level of technical expertise, notes Verma.
Openness and honesty are the foundations for securing employee buy-in. While companies should acknowledge the inevitability that some of today’s jobs will disappear, the real question is how tasks will be allocated internally. “That’s why I talk about job changes, not job losses,” explains Verma.
Across the business, Verma helps with the identification of roles and tasks that AI will transform or diminish, building job architectures that incorporate AI collaboration skills, and developing reskilling strategies. Planning ahead includes positive conversations with employees about future opportunities, and their upskilling and reskilling needs.
Leadership honesty has a critical influence on organizational culture and on employees’ receptiveness to AI. “We’re culture architects,” says Verma. Sanofi emphasizes leadership modelling and storytelling, he explains: “We model vulnerability and learning in our own AI adoption, because humans like to hear from humans – their stories, struggles, and successes are relatable.” Leaders also underline AI’s benefits for patients and partners, framing adoption of the technology as a significant contribution to company purpose.
As part of its digital and AI strategy, Sanofi launched its Global Digital Academy before the advent of ChatGPT. More than 2,500 senior leaders have completed upskilling programs tailored to different proficiency levels, developing both technical skills and an adaptive mindset. The Sanofi Accelerator, meanwhile, sees multidisciplinary teams coming together to experiment with and implement AI using a startup mentality, fostering the Agile and AI adoption mindsets across the organization.
Such initiatives identify three categories of AI in Sanofi, explains Verma. ‘Expert AI’ includes tools to accelerate discovery, development, manufacturing and supply, such as Sanofi’s Target Discovery engines. ‘Snackable AI’ comprises tools available to everyone in the organization in their daily workflow, such as Plai, an app used by over 20,000 Sanofians daily to interact with real-time business performance data. Finally, there’s Generative AI, including Sanofi’s internal ChatGPT-style tool Concierge, which automates tasks, freeing up time for creativity and more considered decision making.
Robust governance and accountability are essential, stresses Verma. The Responsible AI at Sanofi for Everyone (RAISE) platform addresses concerns about AI misinformation, loss of human oversight, liability, lack of transparency, and cybersecurity. It embeds five key principles: that AI should be accountable to outcomes, fair and ethical, transparent and explainable, robust and safe, and eco responsible.
Those principles feed into Verma’s work on inclusion and employee experience, especially employee trust. “We’ve built inclusive design principles, so AI tools are accessible to all employees,” he explains. Systems are designed for and tested across a diverse user population.
He believes that AI tools should enhance the whole employee journey, rather than being a source of frustration. “It’s end-to-end,” says Verma. “AI affects how you promote, reward, hire, and reskill people.”
HR must also develop a robust system for measuring the progress of AI implementation from the people perspective, Verma argues. Sanofi uses both quantitative and qualitative measures, including engagement surveys, pulse checks, and constant feedback. Future metrics might include an AI Psychological Safety Index; an AI Experimentation Ratio, capturing experimentation levels and successes; survey-based AI adoption metrics; and an AI Confidence Index, measuring pre and post training confidence with AI.
Even for a company such as Sanofi with an advanced digital and AI strategy, there’s much still to do. HR and people leaders feel this pressure as much – perhaps more – than most other functions. New technology is creating the imperative for change, but people remain central to success.
“It’s disrupt or be disrupted,” concludes Verma. “This is not just a technology implementation challenge. It’s a human change challenge,”
Expert
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