Zain Bahrain, a leading telecoms operator in the Kingdom, hosted Zain Group’s second-quarter Diversity and Inclusion workshops, welcoming female ambassadors from across the company to discuss progress towards diversity and inclusion in line with the overall group direction and the United Nations guidelines, and future plans for providing opportunities and augmentations with the support they need to succeed in their careers.
Zain is working towards ambitious targets that will see an increase in gender diversity throughout the company, within its leadership roles. By 2020, Zain aims to realize its goal of women holding 25% of leadership roles.
At the Diversity and Inclusions workshops, more than 70 WE Ambassadors shared the company’s progress towards gender diversity over the last year, highlighting key achievements and challenges.
Topics discussed during the forum included Unconscious Bias and how to overcome it, and the resources required to be courageous in the face of resistance. Zain’s Centered Leaders, a select group of high potential women who have been identified to assume leadership roles within the company, deliberated over team effectiveness, trust, and communication as important tools within the workplace.
Maryam Saif, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer of Zain Group, said: “The benefits of creating a gender diverse workforce are myriad and extend well beyond our company. We recognize the value in providing opportunities for women to succeed within Zain Group – not only for our own business, but for the good of the community and, ultimately, to the advantage of the economy as well. Zain has a long-standing commitment to ensuring that everyone within the company understands the importance and need for diversity & inclusion.”
The Diversity and Inclusion workshops bring together a group of driven ambassadors and future leaders from across the Zain Group to analyze progress and to determine new strategies for fostering diversity & inclusion. This is in line with Zain’s three-stage strategy towards creating a gender diverse workforce. Stage one includes creating awareness as a core understanding; stage two is a realization of gender diversity as a vital topic on board agendas, coupled with initiating programs that substantiate the business rationale for diversity & inclusion, and stage three – where Zain is at present – includes diversity and inclusion as a competitive advantage that resides at the core of the company.