Exclusive Partnership

Thomas International, the leading global provider of talent assessment tools and the HR advisory services provider PROCAPITA, today announced an exclusive new partnership for the GCC and Middle East region.

PROCAPITA is one of the most prominent HR consulting firms that provide exceptional HR advisory services to private and public organizations, as well as NGOs. As a leading firm in the MENA and GCC region, PROCAPITA operates in three key business areas: HR Consulting, Recruitment Advisory, and HR Outsourcing Services.

 “We are delighted to enter into a strategic partnership with the market leader, Thomas International. This partnership is clear evidence of our continued success in the GCC and MENA region,” said Mohammad Abu Al-Rob, CEO of PROCAPITA. “We believe that the successful growth and continuity of any firm relies on the quality of its employees. The employee assessment tools that Thomas International provides will surely assist our clients in identifying, recruiting, and developing the right talents.” Abu Al-Rob continued.

Guy Ballantine, CEO of Thomas International, said: “We are very excited to start this partnership with PROCAPITA MENA as one of the GCC and MENA region's most significant and professional HR consulting firms. We believe that PROCAPITA is the right partner for Thomas International to collaborate within this exciting region, to accelerate further our existing presence in the region and global expansion plans. Furthermore, PROCAPITA’s more recent investments in HR Intelligence through its technology arm, ZENITHR Intelligence Solution, is very impressive and will support our joint plans in the region even further.”

توماس إنترناشيونال وبروكابيتا يعلنان عن شراكة حصرية

أعلنت شركة توماس إنترناشيونال، الرائدة عالمياً في تقديم منصات أدوات تقييم المواهب، اليوم عن شراكة حصرية جديدة لمنطقة الخليج العربي والشرق الأوسط مع شركة بروكابيتا للخدمات الإدارية واستشارات الموارد البشرية.

تعتبر شركة بروكابيتا واحدة من أبرز الشركات الاستشارية في منطقة الخليج العربي والشرق الأوسط، حيث تقدم خدمات استثنائية في الاستشارات الإدارية والموارد البشرية للمؤسسات الخاصة والحكومية. وتتضمن مجالات العمل الرئيسية للشركة ما يلي: استشارات الموارد البشرية، وخدمات الاستعانة بمصادر خارجية للموارد البشرية، واستشارات التوظيف، بالإضافة إلى استثمارها في أحدث الابتكارات التكنولوجيا للموارد البشرية من خلال شركة زينثر ZENITHR Intelligence Solution.

وعن هذه الشراكة، صرح الرئيس التنفيذي لشركة بروكابيتا السيد محمد أبو الرب :"نحن سعداء بالبدء في الشراكة الاستراتيجية مع شركة توماس إنترناشيونال". كما أضاف: "أن هذه الشراكة دليل واضح على نجاحنا المستمر في منطقة الخليج  العربي والشرق الأوسط،  حيث نؤمن أن النمو الناجح لأي شركة واستمراريتها يعتمد على جودة وكفاءة موظفيها. ومن المؤكد أن أدوات تقييم الموظفين التي توفرها شركة توماس ستساعد عملائنا في تحديد المواهب المناسبة وتوظيفها وتطويرها باستمرار".

ومن جانبه أعرب الرئيس التنفيذي لشركة توماس إنترناشيونال السيد غاي بالانتين: "نحن متحمسون للغاية لبدء هذه الشراكة مع شركة بروكابيتا باعتبارها واحدة من أهم الشركات الاستشارية في منطقة الخليج العربي والشرق الأوسط. ونحن نؤمن بأن شركة بروكابيتا هي الشريك الأنسب للتعاون معنا لتعزيز تواجدنا الحالي وتطبيق خطط التوسع في هذه المنطقة المهمة. علاوة على ذلك ، فإن استثمارات بروكابيتا الأحدث في ابتكارات أنظمة الموارد البشرية، ZENITHR Intelligence Solution  ، سيكون لها دور في دعم خططنا المشتركة في المنطقة بشكل أكبر."

7 Benefits of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement has become a crucial part of an organization’s sustainability. Companies are starting to realize that to make your customers happy and your business successful; you need to make your employees happy and engaged. 

While on the other hand, in the US alone, employee disengagement costs companies over $500 billion annually.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is a two-way communication and commitment that is based on trust and integrity. It is an effort to enhance the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. This includes involving employees in decisions and meetings and making them feel as they are part of a team, and most importantly, listening to them and their suggestions.

Why is employee engagement so important?

Employee engagement has several benefits for both the organization and the employee. Amongst those are these 7 benefits:

1. Higher Employee Satisfaction
2. Higher Retention and Lower Turnover Rate
3. Higher Productivity
4. Higher Innovation
5. Increased Profitability
6. Increased Employee Loyalty
7. Less Absenteeism

Employees who are highly engaged at work not only provide greater value to the organization but they experience a better quality of life at work and feel energized by their work, which helps them maintain positive mental health. They show more loyalty towards their organization and would put in extra effort to see it successful.

Certain methods can be used by organizations to engage employees in the workplace:

1. Appropriate Onboarding
2. Frequent Feedback
3. Constant Recognition
4. Personal Growth Opportunities
5. Being Transparent
6. Focus on Perks and Benefits

Several companies reach out to their employees and engage them through engagement surveys. This method is considered to be a simple and accurate way to measure the engagement and to understand what impacts the engagement of employees and help drive action over time.

Sources:

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekappel/2018/01/04/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-employee-engagement/#7152c74d8dc4
• https://explorance.com/blog/6-ways-you-can-benefit-from-employee-engagement-2/

The Impact of Coronavirus on The Global Economy

The Netflix Culture: What’s the Big Fuss About?

Several articles, pretty long ones too, have been written about how Netflix has a great work culture, and how it reinvented HR years ago.

In 2018, Netflix announced a record-breaking $11 billion in revenue and in 2020, it has 158.3 million worldwide subscribers. They’re clearly doing many things right, and amongst those things is HR.

Not only is it one of the greatest entertainment platforms to have existed, but it also turns out that due to its articulate workplace culture, it is a place where several employees would like to be (here’s where great employer branding comes into play).

Netflix, like any other company, cares to hire only the best and place a lot of value on integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration. However, what makes Netflix’s culture special is how much they:

1. encourage independent decision-making by employees
2. share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
3. are extraordinarily candid with each other
4. keep only our highly effective people
5. avoid rules

Furthermore, Netflix has seven aspects of its culture, and amongst those aspects are values they actually value and apply at the workplace while also looking for people who embody these nine values: 

1. Judgment 
2. Communication 
3. Impact 
4. Curiosity 
5. Innovation 
6. Courage 
7. Passion 
8. Honesty 
9. Selflessness

So, how is Netflix unique in its culture?

Feedback is highly appreciated anytime, anywhere

Management, as well as entry-level employees, share direct, not anonymous, feedback openly about anything related to the workplace. The feedback is random and not formal, where it comes across like a constructive note that enhances the harmony between teams and colleagues. Given Netflix’s culture that values transparency, communication, and ownership, feedback is a very crucial habit. It creates this dream team mentality where it’s easy to communicate and share your thoughts and feelings.

The type of feedback given focuses on behavior rather than certain characterizations of a person, such as “you’re unfocused”. The feedback given to employees about one another should not be sent across as a personal attack, but rather one that includes giving specific examples, and being clear about any expectations and actions going forward. Moreover, it should be about an action rather than about the person himself. According to Patty McCord in her book “Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility”, companies that “fostered honest feedback and hard more open communication” had a 270% better ROI over a 10 year period that those who didn’t.

Decision-making is easy
Netflix created this term, “Informed Captains”, where each employee is responsible for his/her own ship, where the employee makes a judgment call after sharing and digesting others’ views. Rather than having committees take decisions, they have group meetings where a discussion takes place, but in the end, only the “informed caption” makes a decision, no matter what position that employee has.  

Employees are given the full responsibility and freedom to make decisions when they are reasonably confident of the right bet for managers to take, where the managers trust their team members and take that bet. Afterward, when the impact of the decision can be measured, they reflect on that decision and see if they can do better in the future.

This heightened sense of responsibility and accountability speeds up the decision-making process, enabling a fast-moving environment based on trust and openness. It’s important to note that each job level is responsible for making their own decisions while keeping in mind that certain strategic decisions that affect the organization's needs the responsible person to take.  

‘Management in context, not control’ environment
Managers provide their employees with all the information they need to make informed decisions. They spend time talking to their team members about what they are trying to achieve and then give people real responsibility to get it done without any interference and lots of flexibility and freedom. 

Employees are trusted to make the right decisions especially because they are the expert in what they’re handling. They believe that the job of the manager is to liberate the employee and to remove any barrier that would limit effectiveness, rather than paralyze situations where decisions are not being taken, and actions are needing too much time to be applied.

Freedom and Responsibility

This aspect is a culture of Netflix that’s applied in literally everything they do, whether it’s work, the work schedule or taking vacations. They believe that the employee has the freedom to do whatever he wants, and they bear the responsibility.

It’s similar to entrepreneurship but within a corporate environment as the employee is responsible for their own resources and how they should manage them. This empowers people to find what they want to do and how they want to do it while aiming to be the best version of themselves in their professional role. It’s the manager’s responsibility to empower their team, support them and remove any barriers in order to liberate them.

Flexibility around work schedule and vacation
There is great flexibility provided for the employees, as long as they know they have their work organized and covered. The employee has the freedom to choose when he starts and ends his day or when he takes a vacation depending on their work progress.

According to Netflix employees, if they had a certain time to start and leave, they would not be in the same place of motivation and level of execution. It helps their mindset knowing that they can take a few days off when they need to. It pushes them to get the job done and feel motivated, and then reward themselves with some time off to come back more productive and fresher.

Measuring Job Performance

They don’t do it as most companies do it, and this may not apply to all companies; however, they do not define a certain set of KPIs to measure success, nor do they have a specific process or any performance improvement plans or compensation reviews based on performance. Netflix defines itself as a “high-performance culture”, meaning that every employee is expected to perform not only excellent, but way beyond, and hence why they don’t measure performance.

Employees are rather measured by their teams and cross-functional partners, and most importantly measured by themselves, as Netflix attracts people who want to do the best of their ability. They pick their employees based on their talent and the mindset they carry (making sure they embody Netflix’s values).

 Everyone at Netflix is just looking for what brings it forward rather than what makes them as an individual grow. They believe that with KPIs, people will only want to hit the target and they will forget about taking risks, being creative and thinking outside the box - especially at Netflix, where they have the mentality of testing things where other companies don’t. 

For Netflix, culture is not static, as they constantly need to make sure that the culture still fits for everyone by always taking feedback from their employees. This adds an element of growth and creates an evolving culture that is not fixated in any way. They believe culture is ever-changing as one learns more about people and teams.

 “Our culture is a work in progress. Every year we try to refine our culture further as we learn more”

For more information about Netflix’s culture, check out its culture deck.

Source: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

Author:
Diala Al-Otaibi
Senior Executive - Copywriting & Research 
PROCAPITA
2020

Why You Should Benchmark in HR

What is Benchmarking?

Benchmarking is a systematic process that uses quantitative or qualitative data to make comparisons between different organizations or sections of an organization. It is a continuous procedure in which organizations periodically identify, measure, challenge, and improve their practices for better ones. In accordance, HR benchmarking is done when HR policies, practices, and metrics are measured and compared with those of other organizations.
 

What is the importance of Benchmarking in HR?

Knowing where you stand in the market compared to your peers is critical in order to keep you in the game whether internally or externally. If used wisely and correctly, Benchmarking can transform an organization’s HR and workforce management strategies by proving that HR practices can impact affect an organization’s performance and success.

What will Benchmarking assist in?

• Identifying areas of weakness and how to improve them
• Identifying areas of strength and how to maintain them
• Creating strategies for improvement
• New or alternative ways to perform activities

What can be benchmarked?

It’s crucial to wisely choose what you want to benchmark as benchmarking everything may end up diluting your focus and shifting your attention away from what matters most. Identifying which aspects of your HR activities to benchmark may be slightly tricky, but it’s important to choose those that have a significant financial and organizational effect on your business’ success. A few examples are:

• Total Costs
• Workers’ Compensation
• Paid Leave
• Recruitment Processes (ex: cost, time and speed of hiring a candidate)
• Training (ex: training costs and number of training days per employee)
• Retention rates
• Absenteeism

How to benchmark?

1- Data Collection and Analysis:

The process starts with collecting data for certain aspects and analyzing it, either manually or using certain HR intelligence solutions. Once this process has been completed, you would need to determine what the analyzed data will be compared against. Data for comparison can be found in online/offline databases, reports, books and tools that collect metrics from a wide range of organizations.

2- Assessment and Comparison: 

You may want to use the expertise of an HR consulting company to assess your HR functions and compare them to your peers in the market in order to deliver ready reports with no hassle from your end. Nevertheless, if you choose to complete this process internally, you will need to select the right organizations to compare yours with or else you could get an imprecise depiction of the status, therefore leading you to take wrong actions.
 

Internal vs External Benchmarking 

Benchmarking is not necessarily external only (comparing your organization to other ones) but can also be internal (comparing your organization’s departments with one another). Raising the standard to your best performing units and upgrading all units internally improves performance and is usually met with less resistance from managers. However; internal benchmarking may not answer certain questions such as why your employee retention is lower than that of a competitor.

Key Takeaway:

Benchmarking is a tool that empowers your organization and allows you to gain a competitive advantage in the market if done accurately. It is a practice that must be done cautiously and wisely without making any assumptions about the market, statistics, and ratios. Knowing how your competitors are implementing certain actions, benefits or strategies can be incredibly advantageous to your organization.

Author:
Diala Al-Otaibi
Senior Executive - Copywriting & Research 
PROCAPITA

https://www.alltrustinsurance.com/blog/best-human-resource-practice-importance-benchmarking
https://www.bpir.com/benchmarking-what-is-benchmarking-bpir.com.html