Employee talent and diversity

Our approach

Almarai offers one of the largest work environments in the Middle East, with more than 30,000 employees working in its various sectors. At Almarai, we recognize that we are only as strong as our employees, and we are committed to attract, develop, and retain a motivated and diverse workforce. Our aim is to foster a positive working environment in which everyone is part of our growth, where life and work within is defined by the values of the company. We have an internal culture centered around the employees’ progress and evolution. A process of continual feedback is well-established, which delivers constructive guidance for strengthening work culture.

To ensure our employees have the required knowledge and skills to perform their roles effectively, Almarai has a comprehensive training policy. Our training policy addresses all key elements in an annual training cycle, including training needs assessment, training plan, training delivery, training evaluation, and new employee induction. It also addresses education assistance for employees, study leave, and summer and co-op trainee programs.

Our comprehensive Talent Management Process (Project Horizon) enables Almarai to understand its talent portfolio and build a pool of successors for our future business opportunities and challenges. Using leadership potential psychometrics assessments, Talking Talents discussions, and calibration sessions, Almarai targets specific and tailored training needs for its talent.

Established in 2014, the Almarai Academy focuses on leadership development for all management levels. Almarai Academy collaborates with local and global providers to deliver the best-in-class leadership development programs for its employees.

To signify and strengthen our culture, we instituted the ‘WE@Almarai’ initiative which is based on the following pillars derived from our values:

Keeping employees engaged, motivated, and satisfied

As a leading dairy and food company, we aim to be an employer of choice. This is supported by a competitive reward framework which is designed to reinforce the wider business strategy by attracting, retaining, and motivating our people to deliver outstanding performance. Almarai provides a wide range of activities that seek to create a flexible work culture that encourages productive, healthy work/life balance, employee retention, and personal and professional growth opportunities, including:

2021 Performance and Initiatives

Our global diversity and inclusion aim to serve as a foundation to shape local agendas, with specific focus at Group level on gender diversity and preparing for the next generation of talent. We target gender equality in various operational roles, as well as attracting and developing talent at an early career stage. Action plans look at recruitment and retention, pay equity, nondiscrimination, and other arrangements to support an inclusive workplace.

Committed to continuous learning for our people, we continued to transition key trainings from face-to-face to online platforms, to not let learning stop due to pandemic restrictions. Our e-learning platforms, which employees at all levels can access at any time, continue to have high participation. The total number of employees trained remains high despite the challenges of the pandemic. The shift to more self-paced online learning is also a move towards higher responsibility of each employee for their own learning and development. As we look at 2022 and beyond, we will leverage this opportunity and continue to build new ways of learning and development.

Digitalization forms part of our ongoing strategy to create a more efficient and resilient business. We continued to support employees with our app to reduce communication gaps and promote our ‘We @ Almarai’ programs, especially for our workforce working remotely across GCC. This was particularly useful to push forward internal initiatives and information such as our promotion of vaccinations for Covid-19 through our health program.

Individual development plans continued to be of high importance for senior management grades. This followed the successful roll out to junior management and all supervisory and managerial grades at Almarai. The plans are an important part of career development and focus on individual pathways to training, career enhancement, and feedback. To advance the offering to our staff, the employees’ development programs are being built in cooperation with the best educational and training institutions locally and internationally. We have also launched several professional development initiatives such as the Dairy and Food Polytechnic and Almarai Sales Academy, which outline our commitment in investing in human resources by supporting education and training and developing competencies.

Our approach to Human Rights is fully aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and includes a strong commitment, due diligences, remediation measures, and regular engagement with stakeholders at local and global levels. In 2021, we worked to draft our Human Rights Policy, which will outline our expectations and standards applicable in every country where we operate, with action plans to mitigate any issues that are identified. The policy will focus on respecting fundamental human rights including freedom, education and health.

Our 2021 Highlights