Caring for the mental health and wellbeing of our people

At Novartis, we take a proactive, evidence-informed approach to wellbeing, embedding mental health into our culture, leadership, and ways of working. Our focus is on delivering sustainable impact, fostering inclusion and belonging, and enabling our people to be at their best in work and in life.

Our Wellbeing priorities focus on systematically reducing mental health risks across the organization and are aligned to the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations (2022).

• Reduce:
  Reduce exposure to mental health risks for our people through education, prevention, and the integration of wellbeing into our policies, processes, employee development and ways of working.
• Promote:
  Promote awareness of mental health and wellbeing at work and strengthen skills and capabilities across the organization to build psychologically safe, inclusive, and high-performing teams.
• Support:
  Support our people to participate in and thrive at work, no matter where they sit on the mental health continuum, by ensuring timely, equitable access to personalized care and support.

To achieve our priorities, we’ve focused our objectives on increasing awareness and capability across the organization, expand access to timely support, and strengthen employee wellbeing outcomes over time. We are delivering these objectives through a clear action plan that includes 100% global access to CareConnect, our Employee Care Program, manager and employee training, year-round awareness campaigns, and ongoing measurement of participation, engagement, and wellbeing sentiment.

Novartis’ wellbeing priorities are overseen by senior management, with day-to-day operational responsibility owned by the Global Head of Wellbeing, ensuring strong governance, accountability, and continuous measurement of impact. At Novartis, we recognize that effective information sharing and consultation between senior leadership and employees supports workplace mental health and wellbeing by building trust, strengthening inclusion and fostering a positive working environment.

Promoting awareness of mental health and wellbeing at work

Our goal is to create a culture where our people have the confidence to talk openly about mental health, recognize when they or others may need support, and know where to access it. We actively work to reduce stigma by equipping our people to start conversations and support one another.

To achieve this at scale, we engage regularly with country Wellbeing leads, Wellbeing ERGs, and Mental Health First Aider Community to ensure employee voice directly informs program design and continuous improvement. A coordinated program of global and country-led awareness initiatives is delivered throughout the year ensuring consistent reach while enabling local relevance. This includes flagship campaigns such as Mental Health Awareness Month (May) and Mental Health and Wellbeing Month (October), alongside ongoing communications, engagement and capability building activities. Through this sustained approach, we continue to embed mental health and wellbeing into everyday conversations and ways of working across Novartis.

At a global level, we set clear expectations through consistent communications, leadership engagement, and upskilling opportunities. In 2025, our October Mental Health and Wellbeing campaign drove over 5,000 visits to the Wellbeing Hub, with strong engagement across toolkits and team-based resources.

These messages are complemented by local activation across countries and sites, where communications and engagement are adapted to local contexts, cultures, and languages, with examples including Novartis Czech Republic’s Wellbeing Café series and Novartis India’s in-person Mental Fortitude event which drew 1500 employees.

Supporting our people to enhance their mental health & wellbeing

Across Novartis, our people have access to a comprehensive range of mental health and wellbeing support through our Wellbeing Hub, a central platform providing wellbeing toolkits, self-assessment tools, and learning programs designed to support and enhance mental health across the workforce.

In January 2026, Novartis launched CareConnect, our global Employee Care Program, providing 100% of employees worldwide with access to elevated, on-demand support. This reflects a strategic commitment to accessible, high-quality care, informed by robust internal and external consultation to ensure an evidence-based approach aligned to diverse workforce needs. The program also extends to dependents, broadening access to early intervention, preventative support, and clinical care.

CareConnect establishes a consistent global standard while enabling a shift from reactive, crisis-led care to earlier, preventative, and more personalised support. Launch activities, including leadership messaging, campaign assets, and digital materials achieved close to 100,000 impressions across global and local channels, with content adapted to reflect local contexts and cultures. Over 10% of Novartis employees have already registered and are actively engaging with mental health and wellbeing resources.

Building capability and awareness is a core pillar of our approach. Expectations on mental health and wellbeing are embedded within our leadership and development frameworks, reinforcing accountability for creating psychologically safe work environments. In Q1 2026, over 2000 managers participated in Leading with Care, a dedicated mental health training program. In addition, over 2,500 employees completed training on our Employee Care Program, building mental health awareness, promoting preventative support, and reducing stigma. This is amplified by our global Mental Health First Aider (MHFA) Community.

Reducing mental health risks across our organization

We take an evidence based approach to identifying and assessing psychosocial risks to support employee wellbeing and mental health. Our Wellbeing Index monitors and reports progress against our mental health and wellbeing objectives through key performance indicators including participation in training and awareness initiatives, utilization and impact of wellbeing supports, quarterly employee wellbeing sentiment, and broader workforce indicators such as turnover. Our global employee engagement survey showed a 3-point increase in wellbeing sentiment from 2024 to 2025, bringing us above the global benchmark compared with peer organizations and demonstrating measurable progress and impact across our strategy.

Improvements in engagement, uptake, and sentiment signal positive impact in critical areas such as workload management, inclusive culture, sense of belonging, work design, and psychological safety; indicating meaningful shifts in employee experience.

These insights are used to prioritize our focus areas at a global and local level, ensuring that resources and interventions are directed towards the most significant drivers of mental health risk across our workforce. Feedback is used to continuously review and strengthen our mental health and wellbeing approach, ensuring it remains relevant and responsive to the evolving realities of work. For example, insights from our people have informed the development of our flexible working model, supporting healthier work–life balance, while reinforcing connection, inclusion, and opportunities for growth through purposeful in person collaboration. These actions are complemented by ongoing efforts to strengthen primary prevention through improvements to work design, workload management, team norms, and leadership expectations, ensuring that mental health risks are addressed at source.

Advancing mental health and wellbeing beyond Novartis

Aligned to our purpose to improve and extend people’s lives, Novartis partners with external organizations to advance the topic of mental health and wellbeing. This includes initiatives that impact our patients and society, as well as academic partnerships to enhance mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.

• Novartis is a founding member of The Future of Workforce Health Initiative led by Harvard Medical School. It aims to identify cutting-edge solutions and practices for improving employee health and productivity, with a focus on enhancing mental health and wellbeing.
• Novartis partnered with London School of Economics, University of Zurich and MoreThanNow in academic research to inform ‘Mental Health First Aider’ programs.
• Novartis Slovenia joined UNICEF Slovenia in raising awareness of mental health in children and adolescents.
• Novartis is a Lead Founding Partner of ‘Blitz The Barriers’, working closely with community partners to bring critical perspectives on the role of social workers in prostate cancer care.
• Novartis Foundation is in collaboration with Canton of Basel-Stadt and the University of Basel to support the population cohort study COVCO+ which aims to better understand the biological and environmental factors that influence healthy living, incl. mental health conditions.
• Novartis South Africa supported Dr. Mutshidzi Mulondo’s research into mental health challenges affecting young people and the general public in South Africa.