At Bupa Arabia, we acknowledge that our employees are at the heart of operations, delivering exceptional services to our customers. As a result, we remain committed to both hiring and retaining top talent, while creating a conducive culture for growth. With this aim in mind, our Human Resources (HR) team continuously develops and implements policies which help our people to remain engaged and are groomed to become the next layer of future leaders.

Our HR team’s hard work continued into 2022 as continued to deliver its targets of the 1Bupa 2023 business strategy.

Overview of Bupa Arabia’s workforce

Learning and Development Initiatives

In 2022, Bupa Arabia invested SR 6,9 million in employee training and development. Our focus remains on offering best-in-class leadership development programs across all management levels. We partnered with both internal and external vendors to offer a combined 28,000 man-hours of training spanning the dimensions of personal effectiveness, technical skills and leadership development during the year.

Moreover, Bupa Arabia undertook significant tangible reform initiatives to enhance employee career growth prospects, an area of concern among the workforce.A few key initiatives included:

1. Adjustments in basic pay for junior level employees
2. An average 20% salary hike across 1,550 employees
• 1230 employees participated in diverse development initiatives
• +260 leadership development initiatives participants

Employee Engagement, Benefits and Wellbeing

Bupa Arabia conducts bi-annual employee engagement surveys to gauge overall satisfaction and engagement across a wide spectrum of benchmarks including the 13 additional drivers including collaboration, empowerment, sustainability, personal growth, and wellbeing. We have achieved the highest engagement score (e-sat) at 88% and with 95% participation rate. This People Pulse survey is being handled by independent company, Glint. We also empower our people to raise grievances or resolve disputes through mechanisms such as the “SPEAK UP” hotline, which allows them to inform of any policy violations or concerns.

We offer our staff a wide range of benefits, some of which are:

• Service awards
• Recognition programs
• Relocation allowances
• Ticket allowances
• Business travel benefits
• Life insurance
• Children education allowance
• End of service

We recognize the growing importance of mental health and employee wellbeing, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, which enabled a rethinking of the workplace. We partnered with a reputed local entity to offer individualized mental wellness support to our employees.

Further, we are rolling out our flexi strategy across the organization, which would enable all employees of Bupa Arabia to enjoy a degree of flexibility based on the nature of their work. We have introduced 14 policies under the three categories of place, time and leave to guide the flexi initiative, and strongly believe it will offer greater work-life balance for our employees. In particular, we now provide an option for mothers to opt for ‘work from home’ flexibility for a month following the completion of maternity leave.