Employee Engagement In Saudi Arabia: ‘Being Valued’

Engagesoft’s recent survey of employee engagement in Saudi Arabia shows that ‘Being Valued’ scored lower than the other pillars of employee engagement: Job Engagement and Organizational Engagement.

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In this article, we will dive deeper into the scores of some of the engagement drivers behind this engagement pillar and what you could do as an HR leader to enhance the sense of being valued among the employees of your organization.

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The big picture

The aggregated scores from the employee engagement of the three top pillars are: 

• Job engagement: 8.1 out of 10
• Organizational engagement: 7.9 out of 10
• Being valued: 7.7 out of 10

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As the numbers demonstrate, ‘Being Valued’ scored the lowest. An employee's sense of not being valued at work can have a significant impact on their overall wellbeing, productivity, retention and performance. 

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What drives ‘Being Valued’?

According to Engagesoft’s employee engagement model, employees’ sense of ‘being valued’ is influenced by a range of factors. The recent survey focused on the following ones:

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• Sharing of Opinions: 8.0 out of 10
  Relative to other factors, employees in Saudi Arabia feel comfortable sharing their opinion in the workplace. ‘Sharing of opinions’ is in fact the highest rated under the ‘Being Valued’ pillar.

• Career Growth: 7.8 out of 10
  25% of the respondents aren’t very optimistic about their career growth and development, rating it 6 & under. While the overall score for this attribute is 7.8, recent graduates scored it a 6.8 highlighting that organizations need to pay better attention to them.

• Compensation: 7.6 out of 10
  Employees in Saudi Arabia scored compensation a 7.6 out of 10, giving it a higher position over recognition and feedback. This should provide a strong call to action for HR leaders to pay close attention to the challenges with regards to recognition and feedback. 

• Recognition: 7.5 out of 10

• Performance Feedback: 7.3 out of 10
  Given the low scores given to “recognition” and “performance feedback”, the remainder of this article will focus on these two factors.

Recognition and Performance Feedback

As the numbers above demonstrate, the low sense of being valued among employees in Saudi Arabia may be mostly driven by a sense of lack of recognition as well as not receiving sufficient feedback.

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Recognition

While employees in Saudi Arabia gave ‘Receiving Recognition’ in general a score of 7.5 out of 10, they gave even a lower score of 7.1 when asked about  ‘Recognition by Immediate Manager’. These two scores together confirm the issue and consolidate the need for HR Managers to take action.

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It’s noteworthy to mention that entry level experience (fresh graduated) scored recognition among the lowest segments with 7.0 out of 10. 

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Performance Feedback

As highlighted above, ‘Performance Feedback’ had the lowest score across the categories under the ‘Being valued’ pillar. The survey also asked employees about ‘regular feedback’. Employees in Saudi scored this factor at 7.1 out of 10 indicating that regular feedback is a key issue when it comes to receiving feedback. 

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In terms of the employee segments that felt especially unhappy with ‘performance feedback’, employees in Technology and Consulting sectors both scored 6.6 out of 10 on the ‘regular feedback’ attribute. And among various career levels, entry level employees (fresh graduates) across all industries had the lowest score which is 6.3 out of 10.

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What HR Leaders Could Do 

When employees feel they are being recognized and appreciated and when they receive regular and effective feedback, they will be significantly more engaged in their work. 

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And while all the engagement drivers under the ‘Being Valued’ pillars are important and critical (e.g, career growth, sharing of opinions, compensation and benefits) the recent Engagesoft survey clearly demonstrates that the two areas of recognition and performance feedback represent immediate opportunities for HR leaders to work with their organizations to achieve higher levels of employee engagement. 

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Naturally, these two areas require long and in-depth analysis that go well beyond the scope of this short article. However, we will provide below quick pointers for the HR leaders of Saudi organizations:

• Regular one-on-one meetings
  HR leaders should set systems in place and train line managers to follow a regular rhythm of one-on-ones with their employees. Please refer to this article for a discussion of this topic. 

• Performance feedback system
  Invest in a performance feedback system that automated the workflow of giving feedback across the organization and that ensures full compliance by line managers to provide feedback in line with standard templates (e.g., by linking performance to the company’s values, employee competencies, and goals and objectives)

• Culture of Recognition
  Build a culture of recognition. As an HR leader, work with the top leadership to create role models that inspire other managers to give effective praise and recognition, and work with the managers and train them to increase their level of comfort to publicly recognize their employees.

• Recent Graduates
  Pay attention to your recent graduates and new hires as they could affect your engagement scores significantly. To help this, ensure you have a smooth onboarding process and an effective communication plan in place.

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Next Steps

While the Saudi Arabia employee engagement survey offers a clear call to action for HR leaders to prioritize the area of ‘being valued’, it is important that each organization assess its own levels of employee engagement and tailor its engagement initiatives to the specific needs of its workforce. 

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Organizations should consider conducting their own employee engagement surveys and launch their employee engagement initiatives to get a better understanding of the needs of their employees and where there may be engagement gaps. Baseline and pulse employee engagement surveys can help organizations identify the root causes of engagement issues and to design targeted engagement initiatives that can make a real impact.

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