JEDDAH, 2 May 2005 — As the launch of mobily’s telephone service in Saudi Arabia nears, final preparations are well under way with its heavy investment in human resources.
Mobily family members, carefully handpicked for the job, are working diligently to ensure that network and service deployment are in accordance with the highest industry standards, according to Hamed Al-Kharji, human resources (HR) executive manager.
Describing the process of selecting the company’s staff as “the fruit of teamwork to headhunt the best expertise from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East,” Al-Kharji said the Saudization rate had so far reached 79 percent, which means four Saudis have been hired vis-a-vis every non-Saudi. “We aspire to further increase this ratio as we intend to conduct effective, on-going training programs to deliver prime services to our customers while enriching the knowledge base of our employees,” Al-Kharji added.
As soon as the news about Etihad Etisalat winning the new bid for the second mobile telephone license in the Kingdom was publicized in the media, the company received as many as 70,000 job applications from around the world. The HR team screened the applications and shortlisted the candidates with qualifications in line with the company’s vision to provide top customer service. “The toughest challenge facing the HR department has been to recruit Saudis with experience in competitive telecommunication markets,” he said, adding that services in a competitive market differ completely from those provided in a monopolistic situation.
With Mobily winning the first such license in Saudi Arabia’s history, the notion of competition has made the challenge of finding experienced people in the field even greater. Mobily has implemented a transparent recruitment policy. While focusing on recruiting as many qualified Saudis as possible in their respective fields — be they IT, engineering, customer service, sales, and others — support had to come from Middle Eastern countries where telecommunication competition had already taken root.
“Mobily’s strategy is to capitalize on non-Saudi expertise to train Saudis with the objective of the latter gradually replacing the former over the coming years with the hope of realizing a Saudization rate above 80 percent,” Al-Kharji said.
Mobily has to date recruited 634 male and female employees of which Saudis constitute 79 percent. The ratio of Saudi female employees to their Saudi male counterparts is 27 percent to 73 percent. Saudi females comprise 98 percent of all females working at Mobily while Saudi males make 78 percent vis-a-vis the overall number of the company’s male work force.
Training is being provided in both theory and practical. “The total number of training days so far completed has reached 10,865 days. This is considered a record achievement given the large number of employees and the short time span during which such massive preparations for quality customer service training took place,” Al-Kharji said.
Mobily is the official brand name of Etihad Etisalat, the new mobile service provider in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Established in accordance with a 2004 royal decree, the ownership of the company is two-fold — a Saudi ownership, comprising public investors holding 20 percent of the company’s shareholding, while private investors own a 45 percent stake. The UAE-based Etisalat owns the balance of 35 percent.
Etihad Etisalat, which has won the award for Islamic finance deal of the year at the Euromoney Islamic Finance Awards held in London, recently launched its customer call center (CC) in Jeddah considered the most advanced facility of its kind in the region. The CCC is designed to provide efficient services that respond to queries for information on Mobily services. The center will act as a hub for Saudi Arabia’s call centers that will soon see an addition in Alkhobar.
According to Mobily Customer Service Manager Yasser Maher, the center serves to provide an array of choices. “Our commitment is to be there for our customers round-the-clock and Kingdomwide via a designated toll-free number,” he said.
Meanwhile, the new mobile operator’s process of testing its services Kingdomwide is currently on. The testing phase marks the company’s preparations to launch its services across the Kingdom. A limited number of Mobily SIM-cards has been distributed to a group of predetermined users for testing the services the company intends to roll out.