Inspiring and empowering our people

People with specialised expertise, highly motivated by making a difference, are attracted to our platform and the opportunity to improve the lives of patients and their families.

The life sciences investment team members have deep technical scientific backgrounds, supplemented by strong commercial experience ranging from venture capital investment to pharmaceutical launch and the operational expertise required to found and build companies around exciting innovation. This multi disciplined skill set is fundamental to our business model and the team’s track record has resulted in a strong network in life science, enabling the best talent to be attracted to our portfolio companies.

Employee welfare and well being

Career development

We seek to invest in our people and to develop our future leaders. Our structure lends itself to small teams with shared responsibility, allowing junior staff to learn on-the-job with significant exposure to the senior team and senior industry leaders outside Syncona. Team members receive increasing exposure to the facets of their role ensuring progression is attainable and unrestrained.

Working at Syncona 

We believe providing a supportive working environment is crucial to the wellbeing and satisfaction of our team. We offer competitive remuneration, including a long-term incentive scheme linked to the performance of our investments. 

Formal benefits
In line with our desire to attract and retain our talented team, the team are provided with competitive remuneration, including a long-term incentive scheme linked to the performance of our investments. Employee benefits include:

• Life assurance
• Income protection
• Pension contributions
• Comprehensive private medical insurance
• Mentoring and development through external partnerships
• Hybrid working
• Family-friendly benefits (six months fully paid maternity, paternity leave, bereavement and compassionate leave)

Syncona is committed to building upon its position as a great place to work for its employees, and continually looks for areas for improvement.

Flexible working
We strive to have flexible working policies that meet the needs of our people and support our business. We have a hybrid working model with team members combining working days between the office and home, depending on their department and business projects. Emphasis is placed on strong communication between employees and their line managers, underlined by a clear foundation of trust that employees should be able to best manage their time and ongoing priorities.

Mental health and employee assistance
We place increasing importance on mental wellbeing and have been acutely aware of the strains on our people as we navigate through increasingly challenging times. Along with support structures which are in place at Syncona, team members have access to professional support, as needed, from our private medical insurance providers.

Engaging our people
In FY2022/3 we conducted our first Employee Engagement Survey, ‘Be Heard’. Outputs from the survey were discussed by the Leadership Team and a summary provided to the Syncona Board, with members of the Syncona team also engaged to understand how these outputs could drive changes in processes within the business. These have been incorporated into the broader focus during FY2023/4 on developing a new operational model to deliver on Syncona’s strategy. A number of changes which have been implemented include:

• Introduction of regular town halls and a full company weekly meeting to enable efficient communication of key news and updates
• Increased formal and informal career development for team members, including through the introduction of a ‘fireside chat’ series of events with senior leaders from the world of biotech
• Simplification of processes to enable improved cross-functional collaboration

During FY2023/4, Syncona evolved its approach to Quarterly Business Reviews, with these now taking place away from the Syncona offices and incorporating a broader review of progress across the business. This has enabled increased awareness across the full Syncona team of progress against strategy.

The Syncona Board has also increased its engagement with the Syncona team, primarily through Gian Piero Reverberi as the Non-Executive Director who leads employee engagement. Throughout the year Gian Piero met team members at quarterly lunches where he was able to remain informally updated on the culture at Syncona.

Equal opportunities and diversity

We are an equal opportunities employer and recruit, promote and reward based on merit. We believe that a diverse and inclusive team is vital to our success and aim to embed these values within our culture.

Gender diversity

We monitor gender diversity across Syncona and we are pleased with the progress to date, particularly in the composition of the Board and the Syncona team as a whole. However we recognise there is more to be done, in order to ensure that we are accessing and supporting as broad a range of talent as possible.

Diversity and inclusion framework

• Women in leadership
  
  • Increase representation of women at Board, Lead Investor and senior leadership levels
  • Empower women in leadership roles by providing access to mentorship, coaching programmes and, most importantly, peer access support
  • Encourage participation in global leadership network groups focused on connecting and supporting women executive leaders, such as Level20
• Family support
  • A large proportion of Syncona’s workforce are parents or carers
  • We believe parents will be an important part of our workforce for years to come and want to ensure our culture supports them in being able to deliver their best work
• Global talent
  • To maintain our world-class reputation we are increasingly aware of the need to access global talent
  • We are committed to accessing talent across the globe to enrich our thinking and to ensure we have the strongest workforce possible
• Socioeconomic breadth
  • We are committed to hiring people from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds
  • We believe that as with all diversity, this strengthens our thinking, and therefore our competitive advantage
  • We are committed to increasing socioeconomic diversity in the life science industry