Established in 1997, Bupa Arabia is headquartered in Jeddah and part of the global Bupa network. It offers health insurance products and services that cater to the needs of Saudi Arabia’s corporations, government institutions, small and medium-sized enterprises and those they employ.
The organisation prides itself on its commitment to the wellbeing and development of its employees, providing them with the same standard of care, support and professionalism that it expects to be delivered to its customers.
What is the challenge?
The company has ambitions to build on its leadership position to be the greatest healthcare company in the Arab world. Its vision is a healthier and happier life for whoever the organisation reaches, whether a member, an employee or part of the community.
The company’s mission is to be an employer of choice, where people feel valued and involved, have opportunities to develop and ultimately become the future leaders of the organisation.
What are the objectives?
To meet this challenge, Bupa Arabia set out the following strategic objectives:
- Attract talent. Recruit the top Saudi and diverse talent in the market.
- Retain talent. Keep hold of the company’s best performers.
- Develop talent. Identify, develop and empower talent to enable succession and build future capabilities.
- Build engagement. Enable a performance-driven culture where people feel motivated, engaged and enthused to help the company achieve its goals.
What did it do?
Following the Bupa Global model, Bupa Arabia developed and implemented a number of initiatives to address its four core objectives.
Attract talent
- Launched a 17-week training programme for its recruiters focusing on business acumen and competency-based interviewing workshops.
- Partnered with international and local organisations to focus on its employer branding.
- Invited students to visit the company’s corporate headquarters, giving them the opportunity to witness first hand Bupa Arabia’s dynamic environment and collaborative spirit.
- Introduced a diversity and inclusion framework, consisting of three main pillars – Inclusive Culture, Inclusive Leadership and Inclusive Practices. Bupa Arabia implemented targeted interventions and initiatives against each of these areas.
- Created a nurturing talents programme, offering structured training, immersive experiences and empowering workshops for aspiring employees.
- Introduced new apprenticeship programmes.
Retain talent
- Implemented the People Growth Project to revamp the company’s grading and reward structure. This aims to remunerate employees fairly, provide them with opportunities to grow and highlight advancement potential.
- Held an internal career fair, showcasing horizontal and vertical career opportunities to employees.
- Introduced employee benefits schemes, including a savings programme and parents insurance initiative.
Develop talent
- Business expansion and growth at N1 and N2 levels. Bupa Arabia witnessed major growth, expanding its reach to establish the first digital healthcare provider under an insurance company. All N1, N2 and N3 transferred and grew from within with no impact on the core company:
- ‘CareConnect’ was established as a new company centred on digital healthcare services under Bupa Arabia.
- New CareConnect CEO appointed internally from Bupa Arabia’s N1s.
- 295 employees were smoothly integrated into CareConnect without any disruption to Bupa Arabia.
- Six N3s were promoted to N2s. With a healthy pipeline of N2 talent, there was no need to hire externally.
- One cohesive merger of two departments, Information Technology and Digital Transformation, was led by an N2 talent in Bupa Arabia supporting CareConnect.
- As part of the business expansion, the finance function was split into two (Finance and Investment), creating two new functional chief roles. From this, two N2s were promoted to N1s.
- Progressing our four core objectives through a growth initiative. Thorough data analysis of exit surveys, pulse survey comments, feedback from ongoing talent council discussions (succession planning) and performance calibration meetings with key stakeholders helped identify what employees want. The key insights include:
- consistent negative sentiments in pulse engagement surveys around lack of growth, promotions and pay concerns
- 10-year-old grading structure with only eight career levels resulting in limited career growth opportunities
- 85% of the workforce were compressed into two career levels (entry level and junior managers), which made it very hard to create growth opportunities for talent and retain it
- 1,800 employees over just eight grades, and three of those grades were not utilised effectively
- average time at one level to promotion was more than 6.5 years
- pay for junior employees was below market.
- Robust leadership pipeline through intensive succession planning. One of the major annual people check-ins is the talent council – a meeting with N2s and N1s to ensure succession availability for their key critical and leadership roles, development of succession risk mitigation plans for all areas with high succession risk and ensure closure of agreed actions.
- Introduction of new D&I framework and diversity outstanding achievements. For the first time in Bupa Arabia’s history, a new framework was established in alignment with Saudi Arabia’s 2030 vision, with KPIs to measure achievements on:
- Inclusive culture:
- Created a female network through the ‘600 Connect’ call, with the CEO as keynote speaker and other chief officers. Participants gathered virtually to tackle topics of their interest and take part in fun activities.
- 40% overall female representation in workforce; female engagement score (employer of choice) = 83 and connection engagement score = 88 (benchmark).
- Inclusive leadership:
- Enrolled all women on succession-into-leadership development programmes and all female people managers into coaching/mentoring programmes.
- 16% representation at leadership level.
- Inclusive practices:
- Introduced eight empowering policies to help retain and attract diverse talent and established a local diversity committee.
- Representation of minority groups and zero gender pay gap.
- Launch of four leadership development programmes. Creating a connection between all management levels.
- Emerging leaders programme. To accelerate talent development in emerging leaders through a blended learning experience.
- Accelerator programme. To equip high-potential middle management with the practical skills needed to boost business performance, execute strategy and accelerate readiness to take on senior roles.
- Transformational leaders programme. To sharpen the skills of senior management through a 6 month+ modular experience.
- Executive coaching programme. To develop the mindsets and skills needed to succeed, to boost performance and working relationships, and build a healthy succession pipeline.
Build engagement
Bupa Arabia developed a clear and comprehensive employee engagement framework, following the Bupa Global model, with three main steps:
- Listening to employees by giving them the opportunity to share their opinions. This is done through a biannual pulse survey measuring 19 different aspects of employee engagement.
- Understanding what people want and need by analysing the survey data and identifying both the positive and negative trends that impact on employees’ journeys.
- Acting by aligning and implementing resources with projects to deliver the most positive results. This was done via a four-way approach:
- organisation-wide initiatives that are inclusive of everyone working at Bupa Arabia
- department-specific initiatives developed by business leaders and their teams to tackle the top three departmental challenges
- region-specific initiatives dedicated to the different needs of Saudi Arabia’s provinces
- low-engaging leaders’ initiatives to support business leaders who have low/inconsistent engagement scores.
Under these four streams, Bupa Arabia implemented over 35 initiatives, including:
- employee benefits programme
- years-of-service recognition
- flexible-working strategy
- people care programme
- health and fitness initiatives
- mental health programmes
- leadership mentoring scheme
- regional HR roadshow
- sustainability assessment and education programme
- cultural diversity day
- national holidays celebration.
What outcomes have been achieved so far?
Attract talent
- Female representation. Bupa Arabia achieved its 2023 target of 39% overall female representation and 13% across leadership levels. Half of the company's HR managers are female.
- Cultural diversity. Bupa Arabia is proud to have 26 different nationalities represented in its workforce, while at the same time being compliant with nationalisation quotas. In 2023, it achieved a rate of 81% vs a target of 80%.
- Talent attraction, progression and mobility:
- of the new joiners in 2023, 62% were female, up from 33% in 2020
- 35% of promotions were women vs 34% in 2020
- 30% of women were on succession plans vs 23% in 2020
- 100% compliance with the 'no gender pay gap philosophy'.
Retain talent
- Staff turnover rate in 2023 was 7% vs 10% target.
Develop talent
- After a major restructure, Growth 2.0 began in 2023, consisting of:
- shifting allowances structure from current fixed allowance (per grade) to a % based allowance (of basic salaries)
- adjusting the salaries of 1496 employees
- promoting 21% of workforce vs 7% in 2020
- promotions including seven promotions to executive director, six to senior director – two of which were women, eight promotions to director to ensure career progression included leadership levels
- more opportunities for its people, with 250 internal transfers setting a historical record in the organisation.
The Growth 2.0 project provided ample opportunities for employees to grow. By nurturing talent internally, it demonstrated the commitment to reward hard work, thereby bolstering motivation and job satisfaction.
- Key milestones from the 2023 talent councils meetings:
- despite the confined 7% increase in leadership roles, Bupa Arabia identified 86% confirmed successors for its 266 critical and leadership roles, exceeding the target of 78%
- talent identified as successors for critical and leadership roles was 329, 29% of which were female
- identified talent classified as ready now or developing; from these, 90% were retained
- commitment towards internal talent to ensure growth from within. From 41 critical and leadership role opportunities, 80% were promoted from within vs 20% from external recruitment. In 2020, this was 68% internal vs 32% external.
- Talent development initiatives have contributed to improvements in employee engagement and productivity. This has enhanced innovation, motivation and commitment within Bupa Arabia, resulting in a more successful workforce and top-talent referrals into the organisation.
- Increase in growth score in the employee pulse survey. Employees have demonstrated more accountability for their development and progression.
Building engagement
Having executed all of the over 35 initiatives in the span of a year, Bupa Arabia was able to achieve and in many cases exceed its employee engagement targets:
- e-sat target vs 2023 achievement: 80% vs 88%
- company prospects target vs 2023 achievement: 84% vs 93%
- Speak Up target vs 2023 achievement: 85% vs 85%
- sustainability target vs 2023 achievement: 86% vs 87%
- customer-focus target v. 2023 achievement: 82% vs 91%
- challenge status quo target vs 2023 achievement: 74% vs 88%
- wellbeing target vs 2023 achievement: 81% vs 90%
- manager – inspiration target vs 2023 achievement: 87% vs 87%
- collaboration target vs 2023 achievement: 72% vs 85%
- civerse perspective target vs 2023 achievement: 82% vs 84%
- values target vs 2023 achievement: 78% vs 88%
- career opportunities target vs 2023 achievement: 76% vs 80%
- career conversations target vs 2023 achievement: 79% vs 83%
- connection target vs 2023 achievement: 88% vs 88%
Bupa Arabia’s three-year aspiration from 2020–23 was to reach an overall employee engagement score of 83%, based on the Glint global benchmark score of organisations considered as ‘employer of choice’. It comfortably exceeded this ambition, achieving 88% by 2023.
Key learnings
- Utilise lessons learned. Review best practice, as well as what works well and what can be done better. This is invaluable in preparing an effective and carefully devised roadmap that creates true impact for employees and the wider organisation.
- Don’t shy away from failures. Collect information on why certain programmes are unsuccessful and try to leverage these learnings in future initiatives.
- Be agile and responsive in introducing new ideas quickly. Agility can be enhanced through cross-functional efforts and working under one strategy.
- Find out what matters to your employees. Carry out regular engagement surveys and actively communicate the results to company leaders.
- Proactive, regular and inspirational communication. This is fundamental to a successful corporate culture.
- Digital infrastructure is key. Being able to launch multiple initiatives through different digital platforms enables a bigger and more effective outreach to employees across the organisation.
- Collaborate with best-in-class partners.
