Interview: CEO of Edenred UAE

Interview with Anouar Bourakkadi Idrissi, CEO of Edenred UAE

Julie Leblan, one of the WIIN founders, had the privilege to interview Anouar about his views and ideas on how to empower women in the incentives and loyalty industry.

How do you support women in your organisation?

Being in a Fintech space, we have a great opportunity to increase female representation in the industry. We achieve this through a strong diversity and inclusion agenda focused on equality in the recruitment, promotions and mobility processes. Ensuring shortlists have at least 50% representation, female interviewers, mandatory training etc.

We try to create a workplace that acknowledges the biological and other differences in gender roles, we strive to create flexibility to allow for family responsibilities and fairness in all practices.

We provide maternity and paternity benefits surpassing the minimum regulatory requirements. We have reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees eg parking bays etc and provide onsite nursing facilities.

Our HQ offers formal diversity mentorship programs to assist in building the female leadership pipeline. We also offer internships and other talent development programs aimed to increase female representation in predominantly male tech related roles. 

 
What can we do more?

There is a lot more to do, in terms of education and awareness of unconscious bias in the workplace. In creating a culture that understands the more sophisticated elements of diversity and inclusion, that extends beyond the female, male narrative. We plan to address this topic with deliberate change interventions, knowledge exchange and endorsing a progressive work environment that celebrates individualism. 

What is the future of incentives according to you? 

The future of incentive is very related to the digital platforms and the way to drive engagement and performance at the workplace, having flexible reward solutions coupled with social features for HR and Managers to incentive their employees is the future. Redemption should be enabled via online, plastic or virtual payment and merchants needs to be selected based on the interests.