One of the Best Employers and Training in Saudi Arabia: Zain

Interview with Nedal Yusuf Alobidan, HR Operations Director at Zain Saudi Arabia

Can you tell us about Zain´s HR policy, particularly in terms of saudization?

We are very keen to develop and maintain a high percentage of saudization. This is the general direction of Saudi Arabia and of Zain. The most important asset that Zain has is its people. We are working on the development of our employees within our organisation to make sure we have the talent required for our business. We are investing in Saudis. Right now, we have a saudization rate of 82% and we are working on increasing this number, making sure we have the right capabilities to grow our business.

Right now, we have a saudization rate of 82% and we are working on increasing this number, making sure we have the right capabilities to grow our business.

In terms of looking for the right calibre of employee, we maintain a high standard of talent acquisition. We actively look for our employees, we try to approach them and we extend our services to the Saudi market in terms of holding career days in universities, colleges and institutions. We try to have good relationships with institutions that can provide us with the right calibre of employee. For example, this year we have conducted seven career days in various universities, such as the King Faisal University and the King Saud University, to try to get the right Saudi talent. We have a good relationship with the Ministry of Labour and the labour offices to make sure that we can get the right Saudi employees.

We focus on Saudi youth, mainly because we are a very dynamic organisation. We really believe in developing our youth, making sure that we can invest in them, not only for Zain´s benefit but also for their future career development. Investing in these people is part of Zain´s strategy and objective.

Can you tell us about the training and development programs you have?

Training and development are two very important elements that we have at Zain in Saudi Arabia, simply because we try to provide our employees with the right tools so that they may do their job faster and even better. In the first quarter of 2014, we have conducted 66 different courses, mainly focused on technology and soft skills to make sure that all Zain employees have what it takes to do their job here correctly.

You also have an agreement with Vodafone for training; I personally visited one of the newest branches and talked to the staff who told me they had learnt to put the customers at the centre of their attention. Can you tell us a bit more about this kind of training?

We are trying to use Vodafone´s extensive experience in terms of customer satisfaction and customer orientated behaviour. Vodafone is one of the companies that we are using to help us capture the skills and tools that we may need to reach our objectives. We are also using all sorts of new technology for our training and development. We are placing more emphasis on e-learning methods to make sure that we can deliver our training faster and more easily. Our employees can now get their training at any time, day or night.

Now that Zain is rebranding can you tell us a bit about the developments in HR? How has Zain changed?

Right now, we are trying to transform Zain Saudi Arabia. You can see this when you look at our new image. We tried to find an image that is very clean and related to Saudi Arabia. Zain is a huge organisation that operates all over the world. At Zain Saudi Arabia, we have tried to push our dynamics in simple ways to help us achieve our goals. In the future, we would like to be the operator of choice for customers. We are trying to be excellent employers. Therefore, right now and in the future, we want to be the right choice for our customers and for our employees.

What are the key characteristics that you look for when you recruit?

That is a very good question. We are looking for people who are dynamic, who can understand our business, and who are service orientated. We work with local and foreign customers, and so we need to make sure that everything we deliver to the market is customer orientated.

Can you tell us a bit about women´s empowerment at Zain?

We believe in women and we would like to empower them. We want Zain to be the right environment for that. Right now, 10% of our employees are women. They mainly cover the call centres and some direct sales because they can reach the women customers in the market. We also have certain programs in order to place women in senior positions. We are trying to put women into managerial positions by providing the right training inside the kingdom and abroad to prepare them for their next steps as leaders.

Tell us about the working environment at Zain.

We try to create a dynamic environment. You can do things in many different ways but there are some faster ways of getting things done correctly and this is what we want to achieve within our organisation. Nevertheless, we always try to prioritise the customer experience within the organisation.

You have rebranded and have increased the number of staff per branch from two people to four. You have also included a member of staff to handle networking and technical issues. What is behind these new concepts?

We are trying to deliver the best customer experience possible within the Saudi market. We are increasing our numbers of staff because we want to make sure that every single customer that walks into one of our branches gets the proper attention. We are even extending this service to people who are not Zain customers, as we are willing to help any customer that walks in. We are going to answer their questions and give further information, if required, to solve any problems.

How important is it for you to acquire talent?

Acquiring talent is very important because no business can grow without the right talent. Zain´s policy is not just to employ people; we want to employ talented people. We try to create the kind of environment that provides equal opportunities to all of our employees, men and women.  We make sure that employees at Zain have opportunities to grow with us. Our employees can experience career development, with the help of the HR department, that makes sure they can achieve their personal goals of where they want their career to go.

What is your strategy for the future? What programs will you be implementing in the coming years?

The policy that we have right now is mainly linked to our training and development programs. We have tried to put into place a policy where we by default the customer experience is crucial to every competency that we have here, be it commercial, technical or HR. This is what we are trying to implement at Zain.

We are making sure that every employee and every position here at Zain focuses on the customer experience.

This is the services market so it is likely that other companies are also focusing on customer experience. You have worked with other companies so you can compare Zain to others, what makes Zain different? What makes it the best in terms of HR and staffing?

What we are trying to do at Zain, especially in the HR department, is enhance our environment to attract a lot of talent from outside. As I said, we are not just looking for an employee; we are looking for talented employees. This is what makes us different from any other operator or company. We have tried to make sure that Zain is the best choice for the employees in the market. I believe that we have achieved this, simply because I see that employees come to us from other operators and other companies. These people want to join Zain because they believe that Zain is a success story and they want to be part of it.

You have also increased the wages at Zain to match the competition.

Yes. Every year we try to maintain good wages for our employees and to give them the right benefits. We want to make sure that we are one of the big companies in the market providing the right wages. We carry out salary surveys and we deal with the big companies in the market to make sure that we are providing the right wages in terms of increases, compensation and other employee benefits. We have even tried to come up with programs that are unique to Zain, which will be of benefit to our employees. We are working on engaging our current employees with certain programs. Some programs are going ahead already and some are in the pipeline to be implemented by the end of this year.

What can you tell us about these programs?

Some activities that we want to do will engage the employees´ families. We believe that if we want to engage our employees, then family is key, because family is so important to all of our employees. We are looking to build a family environment within Zain.
Other activities that we want to do involves improving our employees´ skills and knowledge. We have just launched a program, whereby a third party provides us with the most important and renowned books and articles in the world, translated into Arabic and English. In this way, we can make sure that our employees have access to the most up to date skills information in the market. This will help with their technical, managerial and leadership skills.

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

We are focused on reaching our saudization rate and fulfilling our social responsibility. Every year we conduct many training programs. We have come up with our own program, which selects the best of the best talent in the market from universities or colleges and gives them six months of training. Once they have finished the training, they are given the opportunity of joining Zain. In these six months, we evaluate them and we make sure we provide them with the proper technical and soft training to prepare them for the next step in their life after school and university. We think that in this way we are helping the Saudi market and the students to help make up their minds about where they want to start their careers. This program allows the students to see what work in the real world is like. They are given the choice of working with Zain or with anyone else; it is entirely up to them. If they finish their training successfully, then of course we would like them to join Zain. This is one of our important initiatives in terms of talent acquisition.
Another program that we have come up with is a program for the 4G engineers. This program prepares the new engineers with the right knowledge regarding 4G technology. As you know, our market and our field is updated with new technology almost every day. We started with 3G, then it was 4G and now they are talking about 5G. We need to keep up to date with the new technology. This is the idea behind this particular program.