Mentoring from Zain -

Creating a Strong Mentoring Presence.

This case study explores the challenges faced by Zain, the solution PushFar offer and the results of implementing a mentoring program.

An introduction

Founded in 1983, Zain is a leading telecommunications operator across the Middle East, with a workforce of over 7,500 employees. After the initiation of their expansion strategy in 2003, they grew swiftly in both the Middle East and Africa. As of 31 March 2021, Zain is the mobile voice and data provider to 48.5 million customers in 8 different countries.

Zain are passionate about creating a diverse and inclusive organisation and have a strong focus on internal innovation, gender diversity, disability inclusion, mental health strategy and youth empowerment.

They have been providing reverse mentoring for its youth empowerment program since 2018 but are now eager to create a strong mentoring presence for all of their employees.

“It’s really rare to find two things within a platform. One, a very friendly user platform and two, the support and resources you get from the PushFar team”

Maryam Saif, Head of Diversity and Inclusion

The Challenges

Zain wanted to create a centralised program around mentoring that could be used throughout all 8 countries they operate in.

They found it “painstakingly difficult” to manage their mentoring program using spreadsheets and needed to find a better solution if they were to succesfully scale and manage it going forward.

Time had to be invested and resources built if Zain were to succesfully build a mentoring culture that hit their targets of getting more employees involved and engaged with the program.

The onboarding process for mentors and mentees needed to be simple and straightforward to ensure engagement remained high while Zain employees adjusted to using an online platform.

It was notably difficult for Zain to measure, track, and monitor the progress of their existing mentoring program.

The Solution

PushFar reached out to Zain at the right time who were exploring the possibilities of creating their own mentoring platform but decided this would take up too much time and resource.

Zain found PushFar to be intuitive and user-friendly.

In addition to this, PushFar's accessible mentoring resources were able to be easily translated into Arabic which supported the Zain team in building out a mentoring culture.

PushFar's reporting capabilities allowed Zain to monitor the progress and success of the program quickly. KPI’s such as the number of mentors and mentees, goals set and the number of registers all of which feed into monthly reviews.

The PushFar team were extremely helpful throughout the process, frequently going above and beyond during the onboarding process and always on hand to offer support to Zain.

The Results

The adoption of a mentoring culture has been accelerated.

Around 388 Zain employees are involved with at least one mentoring program.

An increase in mentoring engagement has been seen amongst the executive management team.

Positive feedback from Zain employees with an increasing number of goals being set each month.

A sharp rise in the number of hours employees spend mentoring and being mentored.

Zain team were able to save time and money which could be reallocated to other projects.

“Employees were able to get everything they needed from the platform”

Maryam Saif, Head of Diversity and Inclusion

What's Next?

Zain is looking to increase the number of mentors to 1750 by end of 2022 (25% of their organisation).

Over the next 12 months, they want to ensure all their mentoring is done via the PushFar platform.