Human Resources

Ooredoo wants to bring out the best

The Ooredoo Tower in Doha, the company’s headquarters

Qatar-based telecommunications company Ooredoo is striving to become an employer of choice and provide a broad range of opportunities across its footprint, with the expansion of a range of “talent management” initiatives in 2015.

The company has close to 16,000 employees in the Middle East, North Africa and South-East Asia, with 45 different nationalities across the group and strong national teams in every operation. To support these employees, Ooredoo offers a host of employment advantages, including international mobility assignments, graduate positions, ‘women in the workplace’ initiatives, and specialised programmes for national employees in each of its markets.

“Since 2012, Ooredoo has been building talent management strategies and programmes across the group, with a focus on best practice in mobility, leadership development, and creating a common ‘One Ooredoo’ language to identify and develop talent,” the company said in a release.

“The company partners with a number of best-in-class organisations to enrich their talent management practices on the latest research and offer innovative and effective training and development programmes,” the statement added.

Mohanna Nasser Al Nuaimi, chief human resources officer, Ooredoo Group, highlighted the company’svision to become the region’s leader in talent management.

“Ooredoo is an advanced employer because we focus on employee feedback and embrace best practices to develop innovative offerings for our people. Our culture is one of the reasons why we succeed as a business, and we believe in extending our vision of enriching people’s lives to all our employees. By creating more innovative talent practices, we are investing in getting the most from our employees and in return giving them top-notch development opportunities. It’s a winning combination that delivers more for our customers and provides enriching roles for all.”

Leadership development continues to be a priority. Specially-selected executives from all national operations as well as headquarters have engaged in Ooredoo’s high-performance leader development programme, which is supported by organisations like IMD in Switzerland and the Centre for Creative Leadership. The programmes enable executives in Ooredoo to enhance their leadership skills and business capabilities.

The creation of common competencies also contributes to Ooredoo’s robust approach to long-term succession planning, ensuring that there is a clear path for future leaders at both Group and national operation level.

One of the key initiatives – Ooredoo’s Mobility programme – has created more than 100 international assignments across the group, and helped to fill skill gaps, share knowledge, and enhance expertise throughout the company.

“By introducing unified and aligned talent practices and programmes across our different national operations, we are becoming ‘One Ooredoo’. We are creating more transparency across the group and building stronger capabilities and synergies. As one of the largest employers in several of our markets, we place creating opportunities for educational, social and economic growth at the top of our priorities in the workplace,” Al Nuaimi said.

As well as transfer and leadership opportunities, Ooredoo is strongly committed to gender diversity initiatives.

Ooredoo delivers mobile, fixed, broadband internet and corporate managed services tailored to the needs of consumers and businesses across markets in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

It has a presence in Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Palestine, the Maldives, Myanmar and Indonesia. The company was named “Best Mobile Operator of the Year” at the World Communication Awards 2013.

It reported revenues of $9.1 billion in 2014 and had a consolidated global customer base of more than 107 million people as of 31 December 2014.