A time to reflect and give thanks

Like many of my colleagues, peers, friends and family in the US, we now start to gear-up for the start of the holiday season; although I’m sure everyone has seen our local stores and advertising already start to be ready for this as soon as the Halloween decorations went away.

This year, many families will also be looking forward excitedly to being able to gather in person and be around the same table for the first time in what feels like forever. I know my own family has been looking forward to having their grandma's here at home with us.

So, all of this has caused me to pause and reflect on what this year has brought us; as a community and in particular what we have experienced here at BVI.

We talk often about how at BVI we are a purpose-built organization, with a portfolio of products and services that have been brought together by design, not by chance. This also includes how we have built our teams around the globe. And at the start of 2021, we embarked on our OneBVI journey to truly bring our purpose-built company, together with our purpose-built culture.

The strategic intent for OneBVI is to bring us together as one company and to maximize our efficiency and effectiveness focused on the following pillars:

???????One common culture & value proposition

???????Aligned processes that enable greater working efficiencies

???????Consistent identity, branding and communications

All of these would then be underpinned by having consistent and harmonized ways of working – with clear and effective decision making.

So why do this now – hadn’t we had enough on our minds without “another initiative” coming at us; well, the answer was simple. For us to deliver on the promise we make to our customers and patients alike, we needed to make sure that we were coming together to be the best company we could be.

Our core values of Integrity, Collective Intelligence, Accountability & Agility were the starting point, and we used them as a rallying cry to galvanize our global teams. With the addition of new companies joining the BVI family over the years, our values have evolved over time to include the learnings and culture from these teams to ensure we are representing the best of everyone.

Our official launch started with “OneBVI Week”, which quickly came and went…but what followed was fuel for inspiration throughout the year.

By providing general guardrails and suggestions to the team, as befits our entrepreneurial spirit here; our colleagues around the globe embraced this in their own ways. Whether that was our social media star who made his own COVID safety video, to choregraphed dancing in our China facility, or the video of a day in the life of our colleagues in Juarez, it quickly spread to more and more engagement and ideas – and frankly, some amazing pictures and videos from our colleagues around the globe. What was important to note, was that we didn’t place restrictions on this, we let creativity shine and celebrated often. And along the way, we made clear improvements to the way we work by listening to our people.

Quickly, OneBVI transitioned from being “an initiative” to being a movement that everyone wanted to be a part of and it became a new part of our vocabulary! By leaning-in with a passion to bring this to life, we were able to ensure it was a real representation of who we are as a company, and importantly, where we want to continue to grow as we move forward.

Over the past year, this movement has made a great impact across the company. You only must look back through some of the posts our people have shared on social media to see what this looks like. But more importantly, its how it makes people feel and what it has meant to them. This has shown up in the feedback we receive via our regular pulse surveys, and via our new hires who have told us that it was a big part of why they chose to join us.

The passion, but also the pride that people bring to work each day is clear to see. And through our teams, and our focus, our strong core values have helped us reintroduce ourselves and keep everyone aligned to keeping the Future in Focus.

So, this Thanksgiving, I want to celebrate and give thanks to everyone at BVI who helped bring this to life; especially the working team who drove this forward in addition to their daily work. I’m excited to see and share what we do next in 2022!

Happy Thanksgiving,