Allan Dinkoff
Compared to March, how do you feel now about Amgen's internal response to COVID-19 as it relates to your specific area of the law, which is employment?
We've taken the same approach since the beginning of the pandemic. I think pandemics, like any crisis, are a crucible through which one can really see the true extent of a company's belief or an individual's belief in their values. Amgen's mission is to serve patients. We're a very science-based organization.
From the very, very beginning, we've had as our No. 1 priority the safety of our staff. Our No. 2 priority has been to ensure that we can continue to serve patients. Amgen ... can honestly say that nobody who needs an Amgen drug has gone without that drug because of any supply shortage on Amgen's part.
One of our core values in the operations area is "every patient, every time." We've been able to continue to serve every patient, every time throughout the pandemic because of the safety precautions we've taken for our staff and because of the dedication of our staff.
In your role, what did you do when the pandemic hit the United States in March?
There were two aspects to it. The first is that I had to continue to lead my team through the pandemic. For me, life is easy; it's my wife, my 14-year old cat who sleeps 22 hours a day and me. For some people who work for me, that's a very different world than having three young children and a working spouse. Trying to get a 6-year-old to do distance learning is, not surprisingly and as I understand it, quite a challenge. It was about keeping my team focused and motivated, keeping us together as a team and keeping us connected as a team.
Also, supporting the organization as it began to deal with the pandemic, and what that meant for our staff and how we were going to go about ensuring the safety of our staff and that we could continue to serve patients. There were obviously a lot of employment issues that arose in that context.
What are some of the main employment issues that arose?
In a sense, my group probably had a little bit of an easier time of it than my colleagues at some other companies because Amgen's approach has been to provide our staff with whatever they need at Amgen's cost.
Anybody who could do their job remotely was told to do their job remotely beginning in mid-March. That has continued since then, and we have told everybody that we will not be coming back any earlier than the end of June. It may of course be longer.
For those whose jobs could not be done remotely — people at our manufacturing facilities, people who work in our research labs — we took all of the precautions we possibly could with respect to keeping them safe. We have been successful in doing that. If people were unable to work because of some medical condition, for example, then we continue to pay them even though they were unable to work.
Amgen's approach has been, "Do what's best for our staff, and let's continue to find a way to serve patients." We've been extremely generous with our staff in terms of leave, in terms of what we call pay continuity for people who cannot perform their job from home and are unable to work for any one of a variety of reasons — either because they were in close contact with somebody who became sick or because they have a medical condition that puts them in a high-risk category so they were unable to work. Whatever it was, we have been accommodating to that since the very beginning.
In times of crisis, the company really shows who it is. Of course we're lucky: Given what we do, there's a lot of physicians and scientists who work for us. It's not like we manufacture coffee or sneakers. We have a lot of doctors, and we're very medically focused. We're actually very lucky to have a former surgeon general of the United States [Steven Galson] as a senior vice president in our company. He, along with our medical director, has been taking the lead in our response. Everybody on the CEO's staff is directly engaged, as is of course our CEO. But in terms of being the point person, we're lucky to have [Galson].
What needs to happen to bring back the majority of your corporate employees to their pre-COVID-19 work environments?
Whether it's safe for us to be in that kind of environment ... if it's safe for people to get together in a conference room. Is it safe for people to sit across the table from each other and have a conversation? We have an open plan environment. If one cannot in fact interact in a meaningful way, then coming back to work on campus is actually counterproductive in terms of productivity. Right now, as painful as it is, everybody can jump on a Webex call.
The key is, can we really bring them back in a way that is safe for them? Until that's possible, then it probably is not going to make a lot of sense to bring people back.
What are the legal risks that accompany bringing everyone back to the pre-pandemic office setting?
It's required by law to have a safe environment for your employees, given the nature of what you do. If you believe that you can in fact bring people back safely — and there presumably would be ways to bring people back safely — then I think you're in compliance with the law.
I think the broader issue is, how safe is it really? It might be safe enough to satisfy your obligations under OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration], but how do you feel about getting people to do that? Secondly, how effective and productive can they be?
Regarding the rollout of the vaccines, do you have a plan in place for that yet?
No, we do not. We are examining that question right now. As a legal matter, I think there's fairly broad consensus that we will be able to require people coming on campus or our staff members to obtain a vaccine, subject to religious objections and medical contraindications. The EEOC [U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] recently confirmed this advice. That's the easy question and the answer to the easy question.
The hard question is, How do you feel about requiring your staff to get vaccinated, given I believe two things? One, some people's unease about taking the vaccine. And I think there's a diversity component to that because Black people in this country for very, very good reason are far more skeptical than other groups about trusting the health care profession. I think that's another factor that one needs to consider in thinking about how one approaches requiring your staff to get vaccinated. Doesn't mean you don't ultimately come to the conclusion that you are in fact going to require it. But I think you need to really be sensitive to those issues and factor in how you're going to address them if in fact you do require your staff to become vaccinated. That's the hard question, and that's the one that we're exploring right now.
Is another concern about backlash from employees if the company did decide to require employees to be vaccinated?
I wouldn't phrase it as a backlash. I would phrase it as what I said before, which is that there are certainly going to be staff members who for any one of a variety of reasons may be reluctant to take the vaccine. There are people who are opposed to vaccines, period. But the fact that we're a science company suggests that that's probably not a very significant part of our population.
Even people who are not anti-vaxxers as a general proposition and who have themselves been vaccinated and are vaccinating their children, there is some skepticism or some reluctance in the population to take a vaccine that has been developed so quickly, that has been tested over a very limited period. There is a part of the population that is nervous about that. Therefore, there will be a portion of your population that is going to be reluctant to take the vaccine, even if you're not an anti-vaxxer as a general proposition.
And even if the senior scientists at Amgen say that they've reviewed the data and have confidence in the vaccine and of themselves being vaccinated, that will undoubtedly go a long way with a good portion of our population, quite frankly. But there will certainly be a portion of the population for whom that will not be sufficient.
Besides the vaccine and return-to-office issues, are there other employment considerations related to COVID-19 that you expect you will deal with during the first half of 2021?
I think we will all continue to deal with questions around how we continue to navigate the long-term impact of people working from home, as opposed to at the company: people being isolated in the way they are because they're not able to socialize or engage in the activities that they would normally engage in. That mental health aspect, which I think every company is struggling to help their staff deal with.
You're in charge of both employment law and employee benefits from a legal perspective. Were there certain new benefits or anything that you extended to your employees in 2020 or plan to offer in 2021?
We have been from Day One providing pay continuity for those who are unable to work from home and are unable to come to their job.
We have certainly dramatically emphasized ergonomics for those working from home. We provide a free ergonomic assessment for anybody working from home, and we provide them with whatever they need to have an ergonomically safe and correct environment in their home. If they need a chair, we get them a chair. If they need a standing desk, we get them a standing desk. If they need a laptop stand, we get them a laptop stand. Whatever it is that they need in order to work in an ergonomically-safe way from home, we provide.
What have discussions been about field sales calling on doctors' offices and hospitals during the pandemic?
Of course much of that is driven by the physicians' offices or hospitals that we would visit since each of them has their own rules. Much of the contact during this period has been virtual. When things were loosening up a little bit and to the extent that it was safe, some of our salespeople were visiting doctors' offices, I believe.
Thinking broadly about your role, is there any other way your job has been different this year than maybe it hadn't been in the past?
I think it's about the need to just be even more present for people, even more present for your team, even more present for your clients.
--Editing by Brian Baresch.
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