Building a Global Signature Leadership Development Program at Takeda

With leaders spread out across the world, Takeda needed to give them access to flexible learning opportunities.

Takeda is committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to people worldwide.

The Global Manufacturing, Supply and Quality team is made up of 17,000+ people who play a vital role in Takeda’s patient-focused, values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical work. In an ever-changing business environment, Takeda’s team is always developing new skills that make a strong impact.

How do you provide the right learning opportunities at the right time, at the right pace, and at scale?

Takeda needed a signature leadership development program that could work for globally-dispersed talent — that went beyond just scratching the surface on concepts that were most important to the company. They also wanted to ensure that learning didn’t end when the lectures did. Rather, they wanted their team to explore concepts that could be applied to real business projects.

“The key success factors for us were the full support from our senior executives, communication with participants and active engagement of their managers, an asynchronized, blended learning approach, and a close partnership with the ExecOnline team.” – Nicola Greenway, SVP Head of HR Global Manufacturing & Supply and Global Quality

With ExecOnline’s expertise and premium experiences, Takeda created its Leadership 4.0 and Management 4.0 programs.

Designed to align with Takeda’s key business priorities, each business program consists of four ExecOnline courses. Leadership 4.0 and Management 4.0 are aimed at senior leaders and middle management, respectively, and complement Takeda’s broader suite of development opportunities that can be accessed by all levels of leadership.

There was no “one size fits all” in this strategy.

With employees located across 35 manufacturing locations, all of whom have diverse learning needs, Takeda pushed boundaries and brought development opportunities to leaders worldwide through nine ExecOnline programs, and, as a result, have seen incredible success.

• 57 participants in 2019
• 374 participants in 2020
• 96% had an “Excellent”, “Very Good”, or “Good” experience
• 95% “Highly Likely” or “Likely” to apply learnings to their work

It has even led to dedicated study days.

In order to ensure that all participants have time to devote to ExecOnline’s experiences, Takeda created study days participants can take at any point during the program. The experiences were so well received that Takeda has since expanded them to include the R&D, Commercial and Corporate functions.