Serco recently accepted the NAFIS UAE Award from the Emirati Talent Competitiveness Council in recognition of its 'exceptional efforts to empower Emirati talents and enhance their efficiency during 2023'. What factors do you attribute this increase in Emirati employees to?

As a key part of our strategy, we ensure that we are developing local talent and that we eventually become an employer of choice for nationals.

In the last three years, our numbers have grown by more than 70% in the UAE. We have been recognised with several awards, during this time in recognition of exceeding our target numbers by far, and making sure that we develop and attract local talent.

The increase in Emirati employees at Serco in recent years is a testament to the competitive and supportive policies, as well as the diverse opportunities we offer. This year, we have already significantly surpassed our Emiratisation targets sevenfold, with initiatives to increase nationalisation on existing contracts and high recruitment targets across new projects. This includes increasing the number of female nationals in our business by 133% compared to 2022, and we aim to continue this success further into 2024 and beyond.

Please tell us about how the culture of Serco supports employee development programmes.

Our culture starts with our purpose, which is to impact a better future. We are aligned with the visions of the country, the purpose and meaningful work that drives people and do all the things that drive values, commitment and loyalty of people from different streams of life. Our workforce includes people of determination, women in fields that are male-dominated as well as diverse nationalities. 

From an ESG perspective, we have a strong social impact which impacts our culture.

What initiatives and programmes do you have for women employees? 

Our pay gap is just around 2%, and in some roles and contracts women are even paid higher than men for equal jobs. We look at the fundamentals in terms of pay and equality from a recruitment perspective.  

We have introduced a mentoring programme focused on women, and relaunched it for the rest of the organisation just recently. We have events like Women and Serco, where we talk about the stories of people, the success stories of their growth in Serco and also the challenges that they face, such as, in jobs that are related to shift patterns and challenges related to certain industries. For example, we have an air traffic control contract in Sharjah. where women constitute 50% of the contract and nationals perform 50% of the operational roles, as well, which is a good demonstration of the culture of diversity and nationalisation Serco encourages.

How does Serco ensure energy optimisation?

Sustainability and energy savings are important aspects for Serco.

There are several examples within the organisation, in UAE and in Saudi Arabia, where we ensure that all the energy usage across the contract is aligned to, and exceed the expectations of deadlines.

There are several environmentally focused campaigns shared on different platforms to try and get employees thinking how they can make small changes to make a big difference.  

What initiatives are you implementing with respect to the built environment?

We have an edge from an asset management perspective, which is about tech and driving energy management, driving optimisation of resources, making sure that we provide  businesses across different sectors with sound advice regarding asset management and energy saving. We had some great success stories in our implementations, and we're definitely building on that.

What training and programmes do you have in place for technology advancement? 

From a global perspective, we are always looking at improving the technology infrastructure we have.

There are several global initiatives to improve our digital and tech infrastructure. We use a lot of different functions or work streams, such as AI bidding, AI in recruitment, machine learning and predictions. We launched an innovation sprint a couple of years ago that was looking at the fundamentals in reporting and data management.

There are targets in place for training, in terms of projects and for ROI. And every year in the last three years, we exceeded the ROI from a project perspective, where we go back, validate the savings, and make sure that we upskill people.