Boby Rahman Executive Class July 2011 Special Project: Assessing Which Influence Strategy to Persuade Management to Subsidize

e Vaccination Cost for Employee and Family ================================================================ Situation One of vaccines produced by our company is a varicella/chicken pox vaccine. The vaccines promoted to doctors by sales team (often called as medical representatives). There were a lot of requests from employee especially from sales team (since they are facing customers directly) on vaccination program from employee. Sales team feel they can exhibit very high confidence of the product need and benefits of the vaccines if they themselves get vaccinated. We from commercial team, therefore, want to propose to top management to subsidize vaccination cost for our sales team. Since it relates to employee benefit, the scope for non commercial team (HR, Finance, medical, etc) and family of employees need to be discussed. HR Director was reluctant as he is worried on big jump in medical cost (may affect his departments performance). Annual medical allowance for employee in average is Rp. 5.000.000, while total vaccination cost (2 series of vaccination) is Rp. 800.000. Only male employee can get medical reimbursement for family members. While top management despite showing resonate to support the program has same concern on cost implication to the company. Another concern is the timeline of the program implementation. Finance director propose the program implementation on second semester when financial performance looks in positive trend.

The Objectives To persuade key stakeholders and top management to approve the program and program to be implemented in first quarter

Influence Strategies To do stakeholders mapping (The Who) Rational Persuasion and Coalitions To prepare detailed of the program (The What) To prepare data and supporting arguments (The Why)

Stakeholders Mapping Management Team consist of President Director, HR Director, Finance Director, Commercial Director, Regulatory Director and Medical Director. Key findings about their interest of the program during one-on-one informal discussion Director President Director Interest to program High interest on the program, he viewed the program has dual benefits i,e benefits for employee and promotion tool HR Director Finance Director Neutral, seems to be positive but showed Support/concern Despite his interest, he showed high concern on the funding and impact to profit target Impact on medical budget

high concern on impact to medical budget. Positive Can we do it second semester when we have clear picture on

Regulatory Director Medical Director

She is very positive to support the program Very positive and supportive

our business performance? Can the company cover for my children? I need to protect my 3

children Based on this finding, we can identify that we can leverage the supports of Regulatory Director and Medical Director through coalitions.

Rational Persuasion and Coalitions Based on those initial findings, the rational persuasion approach will be emphasized on logical arguments and factual evidence to persuade (logic and impact of the program). Logical Arguments: The cost and profit implication, the comparison of treatment cost versus vaccination cost. And how this program can increase employee productivity and motivation, if they are motivated they can be a wonderful vaccines ambassador for their friends/neighbourhood. When our sales team have themselves/their family vaccinated, they can strongly express their belief on the product to their customers. Factual Evidence: To highlight data on the burden of varicella and the risk for employee. It will be an irony if we advise doctors/society to take action to prevent varicella while we as the company do not actively take action to prevent our employee and their family against varicella. Addressing the timeline concern through logical arguments and factual evidence by showing the data that employee may acquire this disease anytime throughout their lives with risk of getting complications, no one can predict thus the earlier they get vaccination the better. We will make a coalition with Medical Director to help emphasize this argument.

Program Preparation

Data required for analysis is gathered from personnel manager (number of employee, and employees family), accounting manager (cost of goods, tax, distribution margin), sales team (doctors consultation/vaccination fee). We also gathered information from other countries on similar program. After the data is gathered, we do brainstorm session involving commercial team, Accounting Manager, Compliance Manager, personnel manager. As principle we agree company should not gain profit for this program nor suffer loss. During the session we discussed several scenarios e.g component to be subsidized (only vaccine component, include doctors consultation fee and screening), subsidy percentage (range 50-80%), should we differentiate based on employee grading (the higher the grading, the bigger medical allowance or should we give more subsidy to lower grade?), can employee claims for their children? The session also cover discussion on execution part, if management approve how are we going to execute it nationwide, how we will communicate to the employee (it should cover not only about good news on company subsidy but also about employee as ambassador of the vaccine). Three scenarios then prepared for presentation to management. The presentation will start on burden of disease, risk for all employee, cost of getting the disease, why we as company developed the vaccine, our commitment to help cross-out the disease, the program, emotional impact, three scenarios recommended, and the financial impact for company. We consult the three scenarios to Regulatory and Medical Director. This is to ensure the program follow company and government regulation and to get the buy-in (coalitions) from the two directors. With all the preparations we feel we are now ready to present to management and to have the proposal approved.

Summary Rational persuasion and coalitions require proper planning in knowing who we want to persuade, how to persuade them and who can help to persuade them. A lot of alternatives and supporting data will be required especially when it is related with number/financial. However it will be also important to put emotional element to persuade.