While the majority of businesses were sending employees home at the beginning of the pandemic, Moderna was rapidly scaling. When the pharmaceutical company joined the race to a vaccine, it grew overnight by more than 2,000 employees. Suddenly every Moderna employee was thrust into the public spotlight, making it more important than ever for leadership to ensure employees and their families felt cared for and supported. In this episode of the PRovoke Media Podcast, Megan Miller, Head of Content Partnerships at PRovoke Media talks with Scott Allison, global chairman & CEO at Allison+Partners and Tracey Franklin, chief human resources officer for Moderna, about the impact of the pandemic on Moderna — a company that was propelled to global notoriety as it worked toward a COVID vaccine — and role culture played in its success. Allison and Franklin discuss the unprecedented value of face-to-face video calls with their people during a crisis, as well as the unexpected ways in which they met the needs of their employees during a time of risk and uncertainty. Moderna’s established culture that already prioritized taking care of its people was put to the test during the pandemic as employees’ needs demanded new types of support that included things like childcare and meal deliveries. It was this commitment to putting people over the work that was instrumental in Moderna’s successful development of a COVID vaccine. Topics like burnout, growth, working from home and handling being a company shot into the global spotlight as Moderna are also discussed.

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