Employees
Human capital
Our new People Strategy
In November 2022, Faisal Jadu became our new Chief People, Culture and Communications Officer (CPCCO), taking over from Yara Anabtawi, who made a considerable contribution to the development of ACWA Power’s strategy and transformation of our HR services into a mature function.
Faisal has extensive experience in strategic planning, change management, human capital, leadership development, governance and controls and organisational effectiveness.
Since his appointment, Faisal has been conducting extensive reviews and is formulating a new strategy, which will become an integrated element of ACWA Power’s new strategic direction that will be launched in 2023.
Focus areas for the new People Strategy are:
- Enhance organisation agility by reinforcing a collaborative and entrepreneurial mindset. The focus will be to build capacity by incorporating Strategic Workforce Planning to anticipate future talent needs and develop our existing workforce while exploring new talent pools and enabling innovative/collaborative forums across the organisation to encourage employees to continue to challenge the norms.
- Develop and rollout ACWA Power’s Employee Value Position, incorporating our culture and values, to attract and retain the right talent to service the organisation's future talent needs.
- Utilise the newly developed ASPIRE performance management framework to align employee goals with organisational objectives and setting clear performance expectations while providing regular and timely feedback, to ensure employees are focused on achieving the organisation’s mission and objectives.
- Build strong leadership and management capabilities by rolling out human-centered leadership and management development programmes, to cultivate a strong pipeline of future leaders, improve employee engagement, and drive business results.
- Continue to support the One ACWA Power culture while fostering an environment that supports physical, mental, and emotional well-being of all our employees and promotes a workplace culture that celebrates and embraces diversity.
- Leverage technology to streamline HR processes, reduce administrative burdens, and provide employees with self-service options for accessing HR services while focusing on employee journeys to deliver a fulfilling employee experience.
- Acknowledge and celebrate our employees for their contributions, achievements, and milestones, while demonstrating that their work is valued and appreciated by rolling out corporate-wide peer‑to‑peer recognition programmes.
Inviting and empowering our people to succeed
To achieve our goal of full energy transition and serve our stakeholders successfully, we rely on a range of talent drawn from the diverse communities where we operate. People being one of the three core values for ACWA Power, we aim to have an inclusive culture where employees have a sense of belonging and feel valued.
The organisation recognises that diversity has many dimensions, including but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, education and socio-economic background, and is working to incorporate all these dimensions in the future People Strategy to enable an Employee Value Proposition to retain and attract diverse talent.
In 2022, our workforce consisted of 4,062 employees spread across the 14 countries shown in the table below. Female employees comprise 7% of the total workforce. By the end of 2022, 8% of manager and director-level roles were occupied by female employees.
The organisation is committed to developing and utilising local talent wherever we operate with a clear focus on uplifting the communities we serve. Our commitment to supporting local workforce was reflected in our employment of 2,446 local employees, representing 65% of the total workforce and an increase of 11% over the past four years.
The following table is another example of ACWA Power’s commitment to developing and utilising local talent, as a result of which the organisation has a high level of local employment in the communities where we operate. The only exception to this is Bahrain where we are exploring additional talent pools to incorporate in our talent acquisition strategy and UAE which is home to ACWA Power’s international office.
Employee life cycle — attract, retain and develop our people
In line with the new people strategy, the organisation is also focusing on providing an amazing employee experience while achieving the end goal of having one talent pool across the organisation.
This is being enabled by implementing a single global HR Information system, with employee and manager self-service capabilities, supported via a knowledge database allowing employees to have easy access to required information and providing them with the ability to service most of their needs independently, without any follow-ups.
In 2021, the organisation moved to the new ASPIRE performance management process which started the shift from conventional, rating-based assessment to a talent management framework which aims to yield insights from staff and stimulate high performance. The rollout of this continues to progress with complete employee population coverage by mid-2023.
As a continuation of the talent assessment and development process, in 2022 the organisation identified successors for our main leadership roles and developed individual development plans to ensure readiness.
The organisation completed talent reviews for 54 senior managers and identified successors for critical and pivotal roles in corporate and project areas, incorporating localisation, diversity and inclusion.
A similar exercise was completed, which involved 204 managers, where successors were identified, and individual development plans were launched to prepare them for future career moves.
Continuous learning is critical to ensuring our talent stays engaged and up to speed on recent developments. Our partnership with LinkedIn provides us with more than 15,000+ digital learning resources on numerous topics, including business and leadership skills, operations management, financial management compliance training and tools.
In 2022, the use of our LinkedIn based learning programme increased by 13%. More than 90 employees undertook 39 external courses, or online learning modules, achieving a cumulative 22,507 learning hours.
In response to the changing workplace, we have transformed our in-person development training into interactive virtual learning experiences by increasing the number of bespoke courses by 50% compared to 2021.
Mishkaty, our Learning Management System Platform, offers more than 1,600 learning resources covering technical, HSSE and behavioural topics. Through Mishkaty, our learning management system, users accessed upskilling sessions and technical competence assurance programmes, achieving a cumulative 109,124 learning hours during the year.
The preceding table presents the training provided through Mishkaty, covering various domains, in 2022. To develop our leaders for tomorrow, our flagship Leadership Development Programme (LDP) was run in partnership with PwC Academy, as part of which 16 participants graduated in 2022.
In collaboration with HULT EF Corporate Education, the organisation also developed and launched the new EMO Accelerator programme under which 15 colleagues were enrolled in the two-year programme.
The organisation has also worked to develop and sponsor multiple different training programmes, some of which are listed below:
- Saudi Graduate Development Programme as part of which 24 Saudi graduates went through on-the-job training, comprehensive rotation and classroom training.
- Workforce Development Programme, supported by the Ministry of Energy, involved 29 candidates, who were trained on topics including HR, business intelligence, renewable energy and HSE.
- Reverse Osmosis Programme which trained 25 candidates on RO technology and maintenance.
- KSA Young National Development Programme as part of which 18 trainees were aligned with business development, portfolio management, finance, engineering and compliance.
- UAE Young National Development Programme as part of which six trainees were aligned with business development, health and safety, engineering and HR.
- Orphans (Waed Programme), supported by the Chairman, to help support 40 orphans to become employable in renewable energy and reverse osmosis sectors.
Supporting our people’s well-being
We give our corporate employees the flexibility to work from home and in their home countries and make digital collaboration tools available to maintain efficiency and productivity.
Since year end, we have rolled out a new policy that gives employees flexibility and empowers line managers to support their teams with the focus on delivery rather than how and from where work is delivered.
Guidelines have been designed to reward tenure with the organisation with the eligibility increasing based on years of service, irrespective of grade. We believe that this new model will bring many benefits to our organisation and our employees.
To enable people to manage changes to the way they live and work, we hosted more than 30 webinars with external experts on a range of issues, including mental health, fitness and stress management. Our global emergency assistance programme, in collaboration with ISOS, provided a 24/7 confidential medical and travel support service to our people and their families.
We have built wellness into our revised HR policies and included wellness and occupational health in our medical insurance benefits. Survey results showed 96% of respondents were satisfied with the support they received and 99% were aware of pandemic-related safety protocols.
Welfare management
In 2021, ACWA Power engaged a third-party to design and implement a due diligence process to assess welfare management at construction projects. This was a pilot programme in Taweelah and Umm Al Quwain projects and covered a comprehensive assessment of welfare management, including labour rights and well-being, compliance with local regulations and other project-specific requirements, internationally approved standards, such as those of the International Finance Corporation and good practice.
In 2022 we used the data acquired to design the ACWA Power Welfare Management System for the development of future projects.
Diversity and inclusion
ACWA Power is committed to presenting equal opportunities for the female workforce on all levels in alignment with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. As part of the 2022 Corporate KPI setting, the organisation has set a target to have a minimum of 10% female representation in KSA and 15% in UAE by end of the year 2023. This target will gradually increase on an annual basis to comply with the targets of Vision 2030.
As part of ACWA Power’s efforts to have a diverse work environment, a specific function was created to oversee diversity in the ACWA Power workforce.
For more information please refer to our Code of Conduct
Anti-discrimination and anti-harassment
ACWA Power has a code of conduct regarding discrimination and harassment and reported 45 incidents during 2022. We have resolved all these cases.
For more information please refer to our Code of Conduct
Grievance procedures
Any internal or external stakeholder (employees, contractors, vendors, etc) is able to file a grievance via the compliance line available on the Company website. To ensure ease of reporting and proper management, the organisation has categorised grievances to ensure timely and relevant action. Any filings are then assessed by Compliance and HR departments and if found to be valid, routed to the organisation disciplinary committee for guidance and feedback on recommended actions.
Each case is monitored for its effective closure.
Employee satisfaction
ACWA Power is monitoring employee satisfaction through engagement surveys measuring different aspects with subsequent action plans to tackle strengths.
