GSK CEO Emma Walmsley’s $13 million salary is predicated on picking the right people to steer cutting-edge drug development for the world’s most challenging diseases.
During her eight years at the helm of the pharmaceutical group, Walmsley is starting to get the hang of how to effectively recruit and retain that talent, and when to cut loose.
“When I’ve made mistakes on people, it’s usually for cultural reasons,” Walmsley told Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen on his In Good Company podcast.
Walmsley says GSK is “incredibly intentional” in how the company recruits and trains talent. The company’s management has worked on ways to reduce their rate of misses when it comes to recruitment—Walmsley is a fan of informal referencing and surveys.
GSK also performs what it calls 180s across its departments, which provides employees with the opportunity to give anonymous feedback on their colleagues. CEO Walmsley isn’t exempt from this procedure.
While she declined to share exactly what appeared in her feedback notes, Walmsley did give a hint of a shortcoming that her colleagues may have noticed about her.
“I could do a better job of saying thank you and well done,” Walmsley told Tangen.
“I have a habit, which I’m sure is all deeply rooted in my childhood, of looking up the mountain of how much more we have to do rather than occasionally enjoying the view.
“Everybody needs to celebrate the wins along the way, so I could probably do a bit more of that.”
It would be easy to get lost in the big picture while helming one of Europe’s largest pharmaceutical companies, which raked in more than $37 billion of revenue in 2023. During her conversation with Tangen, Walmsley touched on GSK’s fights against HIV, future pandemics, cancer, dementia, and antimicrobial resistance.
At the same time, GSK is in the midst of a technological overhaul that seeks to harness AI to hasten drug discovery. Walmsley sits on the board of Microsoft, while GSK’s chief digital and technology officer, Shobie Ramakrishnan, is a Silicon Valley veteran.
Walmsley, though, was at pains to emphasize that breeding a strong company culture was among the most important things the company could do to ensure it competes with the world’s biggest pharma companies.
Walmsley said the overhaul of talent at GSK is one of the most “radical” things the company has done, filtering through from a restructured bonus structure for execs down to the lowest levels of seniority across the company.
“Culture is not an HR issue, it’s not something we write on the wall. It is literally the job of the leadership of the company, it’s CEO first,” said Walmsley.
“It’s people that define culture, it’s the way they show up every day.”
“You promote for it, and you fire for it,” Walmsley elaborated.
“Every single country [office] where I go and visit, I ask for a session on culture explicitly.”
Walmsley could receive annual compensation of £21.6 million ($27.2 million) if she helps GSK hit a range of performance-related targets in the coming years, including increasing the company’s share price by 50%.
While Walmsley acknowledged she could do with a bit more living in the moment, she is still looking to the future.
“I spend a lot of time looking at succession planning,” Walmsley told Tangen. She recently spent three days with what she called the company’s “next generation top 30,” which focused on development with a focus on company culture.
