Zain Group announced innovative human resources policy, offering four months of paid maternity leave and flexible schedule for returning to work to female employees who become new mothers.
Zain Group will roll out the new leave policy across the group. Zain Group earlier created a new senior position within the organization, namely chief inclusion and diversity officer, to drive empowerment initiatives.
Zain said flexible working models include six-hour work weeks for mothers with children up to four years old and an optional compressed working week enabling working mothers to work more hours over a compressed week to avail one day off.
Zain’s WE achievement
# Female leadership, director and above grown from 14.5% to 15.5% in one year
# Female recruitment grew from 21% of total recruitment to 29%
# The number of women at Chief level increased from 6 to 11, an 83% increase
# Identified 33 high potential female leaders to form the Centered Leaders program
# Identified 61 Women Empowerment Ambassadors
# Introduced Women Empowerment communications app with 300 employees already using it
# Women Empowerment embedded into the board of director’s agenda and placed on CEO Scorecards
# Sponsored 2 talented women to attend MBA programs at ESADE, Barcelona
Zain Group CEO Bader Al-Kharafi said: “There are very few companies globally that offer a uniform family leave policy and we are proud to be bringing new standards of human resources support and implementation to the region.”
Zain Group’s human resources team will measure the impact of the new HR policy, through annual engagement surveys, the cost benefit involved such recruitment and retention and the number of returning mothers.
Zain said its WE program, since the launch in November 2017, has assisted the group in raising the profile of women in the organization. Zain aims to increase female leadership positions from 14.5 percent to 25 percent by 2020.
