Bupa Arabia, the Kingdom’s leading health insurance company, has signed an agreement with the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) to hire and train 42 Saudi male and female employees. The signatories were Hisham Linjawi, HRDF Jeddah Branch Manager, and Ali Mansour bin Madi, Administration and Personnel Manager, Bupa Arabia.
The new trainees are required due to Bupa Arabia’s strong growth and on completion of training will work in various departments including the Customer services call centre, Membership, Claims administration and Telesales.
“Our development and growth strategy includes gradual nationalization of our workforce in order to support the Kingdom’s economy and I am happy to say that in our experience the Human Resources Development Fund is the perfect partner to help us achieve our objectives and targets,” said Tal Nazer, Managing Director of Bupa Arabia. “This latest agreement demonstrates our commitment not only to Saudization but also to empowering women to play their part in the Kingdom’s economic development, especially since they are ideally suited to work in health insurance, a business which requires a natural empathy with Bupa Arabia members and their health care needs.”
Bupa Arabia has taken on its first female staff in 2001, and they now make up around 28 percent of the health insurer’s 500 strong workforce, which has already has achieved a staff level of more than 40 per percent Saudi nationals.
To uphold Bupa’s high international standards all new employees go through an intensive 3-months training program implemented by Bupa Arabia’s own in-house training capability, which is staffed by a team of fully certified trainers, supplemented by specialist external trainers when needed.
Bupa Arabia training includes more than 40 courses and selected employees are taught medical terminologies and a basic understanding of medicine and diseases, as well as how to deal with members in distressed emotional states and how to handle crisis situations.
