The challenge
Building a people-first culture that attracts and retains local talent
Georges Chalouhi, Executive Manager at Gulf Taleed, was looking to leverage technology to align employees with Gulf Taleed’s core cultural values while driving employee engagement and retention through an exciting reward and recognition program.
One of the key priorities was meeting the Saudi Arabian Government’s mandate of having 30% of staff from the local population - which required Gulf Taleed to build an environment where top local talent wanted to stay. At the same time, their centralized recognition program ‘Rockstars’ lacked consistency, carried the risk of bias, and wasn’t generating the kind of positive, widespread response the leadership team was hoping for.
Gulf Taleed needed a solution that could connect a distributed workforce, give every employee a voice, and make recognition a daily habit - not a quarterly event.
- Local talent retention, attracting and retaining the right local talent to meet the Saudi Arabian Government’s mandate of having 30% of staff from the local population.
- Consistent, unbiased recognition, delivering a consistent experience, eliminating bias, and generating a positive response from employees for Gulf Taleed’s centralized recognition program ‘Rockstars’.
- Values-led culture, creating a people-first culture and strategically improving engagement by aligning employees with the company’s core values.
The solution
One platform for communication, recognition, surveys, and engagement
To create a people-first culture and improve engagement, Gulf Taleed turned to Empuls to streamline communication, rewards, and recognition while aligning employees with the company’s values.
Empuls became the single channel for employee communication, connection, feedback, celebration, and engagement at Gulf Taleed - connecting, aligning, empowering, and motivating employees through a holistic engagement approach.
- Social intranet for distributed teams, Gulf Taleed found Empuls to be the perfect social intranet that reinforces its values of diversity and inclusion. They switched from email-only communication to inter-team networking, sharing news, updates, business highlights, company announcements, customer wins, and success stories on Empuls.
- Engagement surveys to capture employee voice, engagement surveys helped Gulf Taleed understand the relationship between recognition, engagement, and retention. New joiner surveys gave a fresh perspective on company culture. The most recent engagement survey saw a 70% completion rate within just seven days of launch.
- Decentralized peer-to-peer recognition, Empuls’ unique recognition experience allowed Gulf Taleed to decentralize their ‘Rockstars’ program, remove bias, and make it a powerful motivation tool. With peer-to-peer recognition, multiple award categories, customizable reward workflows, and a global rewards catalog, every employee can applaud great work in the moment.
The results
90% active adoption. 300+ peer recognitions. 91.58% reaction rate.
90%
Active adoption of Empuls by employees
70%
Completed the engagement survey in 7 days
300+
Peer recognition cases in 6 months
91.58%
Reaction rate on over 550 townhall posts
Empuls adoption gained momentum quickly at Gulf Taleed. By empowering line managers to recognize every small and big achievement, Gulf Taleed moved from giving three awards per quarter to over 300 appreciations in six months.
Georges Chalouhi says, “Empuls adoption is gaining momentum, and the engagement levels are high. There has been a positive impact on team retention, morale, motivation, job efficiency, empowerment, and appreciation.”
With the positive response from employees, Gulf Taleed intends to keep the momentum going - using Empuls to continue reminding people about the power of recognition and celebrating people’s achievements and success.