Earning the Best Place to Work for HR Practices in Saudi Arabia for 2025 certification represents a significant milestone for Bahri—one that reflects a sustained commitment to people, leadership excellence, and forward-looking HR strategy. This recognition is the outcome of a deliberate effort to translate organizational vision and values into tangible, measurable practices that shape meaningful employee experiences and drive long-term business performance.
From vision to reality: Embedding a people-first culture
At Bahri, leadership vision is firmly rooted in a people-first culture guided by a clearly defined Employee Value Proposition (EVP). This EVP is built on four foundational pillars—Belonging & Ownership, Career Growth, Total Rewards, and Wellbeing—which serve as the cornerstone for all HR strategies and people-related decisions.
A key differentiator in bringing this vision to life is Bahri’s Employee Journey Framework, a comprehensive model structured around five critical stages: pre-onboarding, onboarding, ongoing development and growth, offboarding, and post-employment. Rather than focusing solely on isolated moments, the framework views employment as a continuous relationship.
By intentionally embedding care, recognition, and development opportunities at each stage, Bahri ensures that employees feel valued from their very first interaction and throughout their professional journey. This structured yet human-centered approach strengthens empathy, inclusion, and a strong sense of belonging across the organization.
The impact is measurable. The Employee Journey Framework has contributed to reduced early-stage turnover, improved onboarding satisfaction, and accelerated new-hire productivity—directly supporting operational excellence and overall organizational performance.
Employee Engagement and Retention as Strategic Priorities
Employee engagement and retention are central to Bahri’s definition of a great workplace. To effectively measure and enhance engagement, the organization adopts a balanced approach that combines robust quantitative metrics with continuous qualitative feedback.
Quantitative measures include Organization Health Index (OHI) scores, employee engagement pulse survey results, retention and early turnover rates, onboarding satisfaction percentages, and internal promotion ratios. These data points provide clear visibility into workforce health and trends.
Equally important are qualitative insights, gathered through multiple listening channels across all levels of the organization. These include workshops, listening circles, townhalls, manager feedback, and the Your Voice Matters platform—a dedicated space where employees can openly share feedback, ideas, and suggestions.
This comprehensive listening ecosystem enables real-time insights, fosters transparency, and strengthens trust. The Your Voice Matters platform, in particular, has become a vital tool in identifying emerging issues, reducing attrition, and reinforcing retention. As a result, Bahri consistently records one of the highest engagement indices in its sector, strengthening its ability to attract and retain top talent on a global scale.
The strength of Bahri’s engagement and retention strategy has been recognized internationally through several prestigious awards, including:
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Best Retention Initiative – Employee Happiness Awards
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Best Employee Engagement Initiative – CIPD Middle East People Awards
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SHRM MENA Gold Award for Excellence in Health & Wellbeing
These accolades reinforce the effectiveness of Bahri’s people-centric approach and its focus on sustainable, people-powered success.
Culture and Leadership Alignment Across the Organization
At Bahri, culture is not defined by policy alone—it is shaped and sustained through daily leadership behaviors and employee experiences. Ownership of culture is shared across the organization, from executive leadership to frontline managers.
Managers play a critical role in fostering a positive and supportive work environment by leading with integrity, empathy, recognition, and motivation. Open dialogue and continuous feedback are actively encouraged, ensuring alignment between leadership intent and employee experience.
Leadership effectiveness is assessed through 360-degree feedback and leadership capability assessments, promoting accountability, authenticity, and continuous learning. Bahri’s leadership development ecosystem is closely aligned with its succession planning strategy, enabling the organization to grow leaders internally while ensuring long-term stability and resilience.
To remain progressive and globally competitive, Bahri partners with leading international HR experts in benchmarking, leadership development, and strategic refinement. This ensures that cultural practices remain aligned with global best standards while staying relevant to local and organizational needs.
Innovation and Adaptability in HR
In a rapidly evolving workplace landscape, innovation is central to Bahri’s HR philosophy. The organization has prioritized HR digitalization and AI adoption to simplify processes, enhance accessibility, and elevate the employee experience.
Bahri’s HR Digitalization Roadmap integrates initiatives across data and analytics, digital efficiency, and employee experience. This framework enables closer connection with employees, real-time insight into engagement and performance, and the foundation for data-informed and predictive HR decision-making.
By leveraging digital innovation strategically, Bahri is building a future-ready HR function—one capable of anticipating evolving employee expectations while continuing to set benchmarks in modern workplace transformation.
Shaping the Future of Work at Bahri
Looking ahead, Bahri’s long-term vision for the future of work is to create an environment where purpose meets performance, empowering employees to grow, innovate, and thrive.
The organization will continue to expand and enhance its employee benefits portfolio to support wellbeing and work-life balance, while advancing AI-enabled HR transformation to deliver seamless, people-centric experiences. In parallel, Bahri is investing in leadership development and future-skills programs to prepare its talent pipeline for emerging industry needs, ensuring resilience and continuity across teams.
Aligned with Bahri’s ESG commitments, the Social dimension plays a central role in its people strategy. By nurturing young talent and building strong capabilities across the maritime and logistics sectors, Bahri embeds sustainability and long-term societal impact directly into its workplace strategy.
Building a Workplace for Long-Term Careers
Bahri’s ambition extends beyond achieving recognition as a great place to work. Through purposeful engagement, continuous development, and disciplined, data-driven decision-making, the organization is creating an environment where employees can build meaningful, long-term careers.
This integrated and future-focused approach ensures that Bahri not only earns its Best Place to Work for HR Practices in Saudi Arabia for 2025 certification—but continues to define excellence in people practices for years to come.
