Brave. Caring. Responsible. Living and breathing Bupa’s new values.

A colleague recently told me about a conversation she had with her young son. She asked him what the word ‘brave’ meant to him. “Not frightened” he said. Caring? “Looking after everyone around you”. And responsible? “An adult”. That response made me laugh.

As part of the transformation journey we have embarked upon at Bupa, we recently refreshed our company values. Brave, caring and responsible are the three core principles we landed on to anchor all 85,000 of us around the world.

Whether our people are working in one of our clinics or care homes, helping customers from our call centres or working on new marketing campaigns from our offices, living and breathing these values is key to helping us achieve our ambition – to become the world’s most customer-centric healthcare organisation.

In choosing new values, we involved leaders from across Bupa. Brave was selected as our first value. With 74-years of history behind us, strong foundations and solid plans, we believe we are more ready than ever to be brave and tackle new challenges head on. We’re going to make new possibilities happen.

The second value we honed in on was caring – a premise absolutely fundamental to Bupa’s origins. In 1947 Bupa was established “to prevent, relieve and cure sickness and ill-health of every kind” and we’ve maintained this caring ethos ever since. It is an attitude and mindset that permeates our unique organisation and one I’m really proud of because it champions acting with empathy and respect.

Responsible was picked as our third value. As a group of adults, it is probably an unsurprising choice for my colleague’s son but it’s one I’m very passionate about because of its layered meaning.

To me, being responsible is about more than being accountable. It’s about acknowledging our collective responsibility to each other and the planet, ensuring that we leave the world in a better place for future generations. Being a responsible business is intrinsically linked to owning your decisions and actions and the impact they make on the people and the environment around you.?

We know that in order to take these from words to tangible action, we need to do more than talk the talk. Walking the walk and embodying these values in everything we do at Bupa is crucial to ensure we deliver on our purpose – helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world.

I’m really amazed to see the new values alive in work already underway.

This week we’ve been brave by kicking off our first ever global #bupahackathon – a fantastic event involving Bupa colleagues from 10 countries harnessing agile working culture to enhance our services. Our ‘hackers’ are getting together to dream up and develop ways to better support our customers, with winning ideas to be selected and championed in the organisation.

Across Asia Pacific, Bupa’s caring nature has shone through recently with the business announcing it had joined the UNICEF VaccinAid initiative. A $5 (AUD) donation will be made for every person across our Asia Pacific businesses who is fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by 31 December. This amount is equivalent to the cost of providing a full COVID-19 vaccine dose and will make a difference to assist those in need.

And we’re moving at pace to ensure we are a responsible and sustainable business. We will soon announce our science based targets and our ambitions to become a net zero business, and just last week, our Chief Medical Officer Dr Paula Franklin launched a joint report alongside other major international healthcare organisations to help businesses identify ways to address the impact climate change is having on people’s health and that of the planet.

To me, our new values aren’t ones we forget when we clock off for the day - they are ones to champion personally as well and I’m so pleased to see people across Bupa taking the opportunity to live and breathe them each and every day.