Building the workplace of tomorrow

A captain is only as good as their soldiers. A leader is as good as their team. If that’s true, how are some of the great names in retail creating “rockstars” and “superstars” within their businesses and nurturing those who will comprise the workforce of tomorrow. That was the theme of a session at IMAGES RetailME’s THINK! I CAN! conference – here are a few snippets.

A recent Michael Page survey indicated that 50% of employees across the UAE are actively looking for new jobs, shared session moderator Jonathan Lavender, Head of People, Process & Organizational Design, Sharaf Retail Group. And for the first time, the number one reason why people are looking at changing their job is for work-life balance and company culture. So, how are companies planning to address this issue, he asked.

“I’m not surprised that a lot of people are leaving organisations because of well-being and company culture because I think COVID was a great reality check that there is more to life than work,” shared Sabahatt Habib, Senior Director of People, The Giving Movement. “That’s why people are so focused on well-being and the company culture. Now what we do at The Giving Movement – ‘humanity in motion’ is in our DNA and we are big on transparency because it’s the surprises that tend to have a negative impact on company culture. We’ve also made a clear commitment that more than 5% of our workforce will include people of determination.”

Adding on, Kunal Wadhwani, CHRO, Choithrams Group said that his company is working to ensure generational inclusivity to welcome new generations of talent. “As a retail and distribution company with 73% of our workforce being blue collar shop floor level workforce, over the past few years we’ve worked on certain dimensions that are primarily associated with alignment of our people’s personal goals and how they align with our organisational goals. From the perspective of fairness, we’re working on compensation management, pay equity ratios within the organisation and from diversity perspective, we are working on gender gap management.”

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