Strategy in action

Empowering and motivating our people to reach a common goal

To reach its goals, Tadawul requires human resources of the highest calibre, empowered and motivated to fulfil their roles.

Our HR roadmap is aligned with our overarching strategy and implemented through a rigorous system of 17 KPIs covering aspects including manpower costs, promotion rates, and training.

During the year under review, the focus has been on achieving compatibility between the HR strategy and organizational operations:

• Managing, building, and sustaining leadership
• Fostering talent, growth, and advancement
• Building a winning culture

We constantly evaluate the competencies of our staff and when gaps are identified we address them by providing training and development.

 

An internal event held for the employees

The age distribution of our staff demonstrates the importance we give to youth with 40% of our employees being below 30 years of age.

Communicating the Brand

Organizational restructuring has addressed inefficiencies in the supply chain and promoted operational excellence. For instance, we separated our sales and corporate communication teams to foster greater focus and efficiency, and also established a Marketing Division. Derivatives A security or financial instrument whose value is determined by an underlying asset and Market Information are two recently established divisions that are responsible for the respective business development areas including sales and after sales.

The Marketing Division delivered more than 70 assignments to Tadawul, Edaa, and Muqassa Central Counterparty Clearing House . The number of promotional or educational videos created during the year increased from 12 to 28.

Since the establishment of the Marketing Division, the number of marketing deliverables grew significantly. Social media posts grew by 37% (from about 1,600 to about 2,200 posts) covering awareness, advertising and announcements and number of followers grew YoY by 52% to 250,000 across all social media channels.

These announcements, press releases, posts, and events have created a huge demand by all market participants, which is served by Customer Experience Department within Marketing Division. Number of queries grew by 40% YoY to reach approximately 33,000 contacts with customers by phone, email, live chat, and social media. All queries were answered at a 96% rate as per the KPIs assigned (five seconds to answer call and two hours to respond to a tweet). Customer satisfaction, measured by scoring directly to a system, has levelled to 97%. As part of international marketing efforts, Tadawul has an agreement with NASDAQ to use a board at Madison Square Garden, New York for branding and promotion of Tadawul.

In 2018 website traffic grew positively by 12% while the number of unique visitors grew by 16%. Website visitors grew as a result of inclusion in international indices, and Twitter posts have been effectively used as clickable infographics that link visitors directly to the site.

Tadawul’s brand was promoted by a number of diverse channels including:

 

Corporate social responsibility

Through our CSR initiatives we are committed to supporting local communities and contributing to the sustainable development of the Kingdom through four focus areas.

In 2018, we completed 94% of planned corporate social responsibility initiatives in the areas of:

 

 

Our CSR activities have included more than 15 initiatives directly linked to the core strategy of Tadawul. Activities have covered support to Disabled Children's Association as well as capital market related entities such as SOCPA, Chartered Institute of Internal Audit – Saudi Chapter and Chartered Finance Institute – Saudi Chapter.

We have also supported Tadawul’s internal community through offering English courses to security guards helping them to elevate their skills and abilities. We have also helped conserve the environment by adopting tree-saving campaigns. The initiative was later expanded to include Board of Directors’ meetings by adopting a digital solution to replace the paper based decks and briefing packs.

Additionally, we introduced an educational programme named “Invest Wisely” to improve the financial literacy of those who are new to investment and trading in the market. The programme offers a trading simulator which allows participants to gain practical experience in a mock environment. More than 20 workshops have been conducted at Tadawul premises targeting financial literacy of the participants. Invest Wisely has also delivered two competitions one for the public and the other for university students which have drawn more than 20,000 active users.

To mitigate our impact on the environment, we have introduced a paper and plastic recycling programme and facilitated green practices.

Tadawul has shown its commitment to gender equality in its recruitment policies. 30% of leadership/decision-making positions are held by women. Of the current workforce, 23.1% are women, with the percentage having been much higher at recent recruitments. This ensures that the overall percentage of women will increase in future years.

Tadawul’s contribution to economic growth is self-evident, by the fact that its core activity includes raising capital for the private sector. Capital, as one of the main factors of production, is a necessity to ensure future growth and prosperity. The nature of employment it creates is a contribution to decent work.

Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals

In December 2018, Tadawul joined the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) Initiative as a partner exchange. The SSE is a network connecting nearly 80 exchanges globally. Tadawul intends to use its membership of SSE to promote the integration of sustainability considerations within the Saudi Capital Market together with other market participants.

With its commitments under the SSE partnership, Tadawul will promote the following five goals, which are the ones that are most relevant considering its mission.

	Gender equality
	Decent work and economic growth
	Responsible consumption and production
	Climate action
	Partnership to achieve the goals

Investor relations

The investor relations function of Tadawul is two-sided. One is that of facilitating the process of investor relations in issuing companies which has been covered under the Issuers section.

The other aspect is that of Tadawul’s own investor relations in preparation for its upcoming IPO. An Investor Relations Department was set up for this purpose in 2018.