To be fit and healthy you need to be physically active. Regular physical activity can help protect you from serious diseases such as obesity, heart disease, cancer, mental illness, diabetes and arthritis. Riding your bicycle regularly is one of the best ways to reduce your risk of health problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle. It also helps your environment and reduces air pollution.

Riding to work or the shops is one of the most time-efficient ways to combine regular exercise with your everyday routine. An estimated one billion people ride bicycles every day – for transport, recreation and sport.

Cycling is a healthy, low-impact exercise that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, from young children to older adults. It is also fun, cheap and good for the environment.

That's why from July 2017 our employees have an opportunity to rent a company’s bicycles, also available after hours and during weekends :)

What started out as the extended hand of the financial department in Cracow has now developed into a unit encompassing many different business functions. The new name, ALK Global Business Services Cracow reflects the shift. European Accounting Center (EAC), is now part of ALK Global Business Services Cracow (ALK GBSC), and continues to be the largest unit.

“When we started three years ago, we launched what we called the European Accounting Center with around 26 employees. We did not have a concrete plan of where to take it, but it was always meant to be the start of something bigger”, says Jesper Vestergaard, SVP Global Finance. Since then, the office has grown from 26 employees in the European Accounting Center (EAC), to 53 employees in the newly named umbrella ALK Global Business Services Cracow. EAC continues to be the biggest with 31 employees, working under the supervision of Jesper Vestergaard, in conjunction with Pawel Zawrzykraj, the director of EAC. The rest of the employees are new additions, and are independent business functions that report to a manager in a different location. These business functions include colleagues from Global IT, Global HR, Commercial Excellence and more.

With the addition of the new employees, ALK has a business center with a wider interface and with multiple functions. The rationale behind establishing a center like this is not only that it makes sense fiscally, but it also provides ALK with a critical mass that would ensure a more dynamic accounting service, with data collected and processed in one place. “Before, we had one or two accountants in every country, which was very fragile, now we have an opportunity to cover a larger part of the organization and at the same time ensure that there is opportunity for personal growth for the employees. With the addition of the new functions, we have opened up the potential for growth and synergy between the different departments,” says Jesper Vestergaard.

Every year at the beginning of December ALK GBSC takes part in Polish charity campaign called “Szlachetna Paczka” which supports a chosen family with food, clothes, detergents and other needed products. Unlike to other companies, in addition to traditionally collected products and gifts, our employees prepare by themselves a list of "services" and their valuation, which during the office auction becomes a tool not only to collect money, but it is also an element of integration and fun. Like each year, the parcel has been handed over to the chosen family and we do hope it will be not only a material support but also source of joy and happiness before the Christmas time :)

The new strategy aims to transform ALK into a broader-based allergy company by building upon and accelerating our core allergy immunotherapy business – especially in North America, and expanding our presence into new adjacent business areas with complementary products and services, primarily by connecting with more people with allergy in the moments they need us the most.

Committed to helping many more people

CEO Carsten Hellmann says: ‘The world has changed for ALK compared to where we were two years ago. In that time, we have significantly grown our European business, we have invested heavily in North America and also in our legacy business. We believe that we can build further on these foundations to establish a bigger, more robust ALK, which is why we have decided, with support from our principal shareholder, to strengthen our financing to sustain the required high investment levels, predominantly in the USA.’

He continues: ‘We have successfully developed a new generation of SLIT-tablets and we believe that these products have the potential to make a major difference for people who suffer with severe allergies and related asthma. However, the fact is that the vast majority of people with allergies never receive AIT treatment while, for those who do, our products are typically a last resort after years of trying other solutions. In light of this, our goal is to build an effective future growth platform for these core products, and to leverage our profound expertise more effectively, engaging with patients earlier in their disease so that we can help many more people than we do today. It does not make sense to ignore 99% of the people suffering from allergies all around the world.’

The four pillars in the strategy

The new strategy has four key elements focusing on leveraging ALK’s unique expertise within allergy, our relationship with the allergy specialist community and our understanding of patients’ needs, to create growth and success for ALK.

Our Aspiration

We want to be the world leader in allergy. By building a broader presence in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of allergy, we want to help as many people with allergy as possible by connecting with them in moments they need us the most.

Our Promise

Building upon our strong heritage as a pioneer in allergy immunotherapy, we will continue to innovate, develop and market new products and solutions for people with allergy, and for the healthcare professionals who help them.

Our Purpose

We strive today to make a better tomorrow for those we care about most – people living with allergy, in everything we do, we want to provide solutions that make life with allergy surprisingly simple.

The new Lighthouse symbolises the start of our transformation from a company specialised in allergy immunotherapy to the world leader in allergy.

Establishing the culture necessary to support this transformation will require new behaviours from all of us, and new leadership skills from our leaders.

We introduce three new cultural beliefs that build upon our aspiration, promise and purpose:

1. Do the right thing

Doing the right thing means making the right decisions and taking action. It means doing what is right for ALK and doing it with a quality mindset. 

Doing the right thing means demonstrating commitment to a decision, speaking up if you experience something that is not right – and doing something about it! It means taking responsibility for making things happen – and being accountable for the results.

2. Pursue growth

Pursuing growth means applying a business mindset, asking yourself: ‘how can we provide solutions that make life better for people with allergy – and be a profitable business at the same time?’

Pursuing growth is about being able to prioritise and focus on value-creating activities and adapting to changes when required – and it is about using change to accelerate progress.

Pursuing growth means looking for new opportunities and better ways of doing things, without being afraid of to make mistakes while doing it.

3. Build bridges

Building bridges means seeking mutual understanding. It means appreciating that ALK is a place where everyone is connected. It means reaching out to colleagues, and believing that we can create better results together than we can alone.

Building bridges means trusting that everybody is acting with the best of intentions, and it means communicating clearly so that everyone is on the same page.

Today, we celebrate a new era in ALK’s history of firsts: the launch of our new online universe and new sister brand Klarify.me, reaching out to help many more people with allergies to an improved life.

Klarify.me, is a one-stop-shop and guidance website for people affected by allergy

klarify.me’s mission is to make living with allergy as simple as possible by:

• Selling products within allergy avoidance, -prevention, and -relief
• Providing content to ease life with an allergy

CEO Carsten Hellmann says: ‘This is really exciting news for ALK. We know that it takes 8-10 years on average for people with allergies to get to immunotherapy treatment. With the new online platform, we have the opportunity to reach out to them earlier on their journey, offering them both guidance and products to improve their quality of life. This is just the beginning for us; entering the broader allergy field, we will soon have more non-description allergy products in our online store and with the possibility of also engaging with the patients via our new and improved patient websites, it will be interesting to see how much of this can lead to more patients on allergy immunotherapy.

Dni kariery (Career Fair) is one of the biggest job fairs in Poland which takes place once a year for over 25 years. During this event companies have a chance to show and promote themselves, meet candidates in person and gain knowledge about changes on the labor market .

This time over 300 companies participated in the event including ALK-Abello. We met with a lot of interest from students who doesn't have any professional experience yet just as from people who already knew about our company and wanted to know more. Our employees gladly shared their experience with participants who were very keen to hear more about our office and career possibilities. During the fair we met with new candidates for our open positions and collected interesting CV’s. 

The event takes place every year in September. Created by Foundation Polish Business Run in 2016 to help people with disabilities of the musculoskeletal system. Foundation spreads knowledge about people with disabilities and tries to change people’s perception of disability. In September the Foundation organizes events in a few main cities in Poland which are designed for companies. Every employee runs 3,8 km and profit from these events is intended for the Foundation.
ALK-Abello managed to create 3 teams with 5 people in each team. They were all brave and did everything they could to run fast and effectively. We are very proud of our representatives and we hope for an even bigger number of teams next year.

We are grateful for so many gifts that we’ve received and so many good memories we’ve made this year. Unfortunately, not everybody is so lucky, that’s why we are grateful that we were able to support Szlachetna Paczka. December is well known as a month of sharing and giving so we did our best to chose a family which needed our help. This time we chose a married couple who takes care of a disabled son. A few years ago after a long treatment, their daughter passed away and left them with enormous pain and emptiness in their hearts. Nowadays as only one of the family members is working they can’t afford very basic everyday’s needs. Their story moved us so we decided to do our best to give them happy moments during Christmas time so we started to collect money which later we spent on groceries, cosmetics, detergents, and also gifts for the family. In addition to collecting money, we also made an office auction during which employees were buying items and services from other employees. Of course, the most popular item which everybody bid for was an additional day off given by our Director. There were also many other interesting offers such as homemade soups, individual session training, massages. In the end, we collected enough money to buy everything for the chosen family they needed.
We hope that our support gave them a bit of happiness and we are sure that we will support Szlachetna Paczka next year also because we know that it worth helping people whose life didn’t go in the direction they wished for.