Introduction

Oman Telecommunication Company (Omantel and also referred to as Oman Mobile) is the
leading service provider in the area of telecommunication in the Sultanate of Oman. Not only
business is done differently but also the digital society is developed in Oman thanks to
Omantel. To put it in simpler terms, its main role is to provide its customers with both
entertainment and information at the same time. Compared to the other telecommunication
companies in Oman, Omantel is the pioneer as far as the network coverage and the services of
the art provided. Since 1970, both the businesses and people of Oman have benefited from an
adequate rainbow of solutions in the telecommunication area. Wholesale clients, enterprises,
consumers, and also government represent the customers of Omantel. The company’s point is
to shorten the space between businesses, individuals, regions, and families by the use of
technology in order to communicate.

Being the leading company in the area of telecommunication, Omantel won the Human
Resource (HR) Excellence Award for Employee Engagement in Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) in 2015. Omantel was honored for giving specific priority to engaging its
employees by making use of transparency, team building flexibility, recognition and most
importantly surveys on employee engagement. As a matter of fact, the basic Human Resource
strategy used by Omantel is employee engagement. The 2015 award can only be a translation
of the promise of Omantel to introduce efficient eagerness to encourage both loyalty and
employee engagement and to boost the environment at the workplace. The HR strategy of
Omantel is to provide effective processes and to make solid the teamwork in a way to provide
the customers with services of high quality (Garavan et al, 1999). The program of employee
engagement within Omantel encompasses the amelioration of some crucial elements like job
loyalty and career-path advising, development, and training programs. Also, in a way to
respond to the needs of the employees, different sports and social activities are being held by
Omantel.

This paper tries to account for Omantel strategy of employee engagement and its relation with
the company’s policies and overall performance. Also, it gives a SWOT analysis of the HR
strategy. Finally, it suggests some change management strategies that can be used by Omantel
to continuously improve its effectiveness.

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Omantel HR Strategies in Relation to the Company’s Policies

As we discussed earlier, Omantel HR strategy is that of employee engagement. In simpler

words, Omantel believes in its people. The HR directors at Omantel are conscious about the
fact the company is experiencing an important change that is of high rapidity (Dewettinck &
Wouters, 2001). This explains why they are eager to revolting against the old beliefs
regarding human resources; i.e. they perceive HR management as part and parcel of the
company’s business itself. The strategy of employee engagement succeeded in the last years
to turn Omantel from its former situation into a powerful digital telecommunication company
and henceforth to become the first employer in the whole Sultanate but by choice; i.e.
customers have other choices in the market but still prefer to choose Omantel.

In few years, the company became the pioneer in digital telecommunication in the national
market thanks to the combination between the company’s old expertise in terms of
telecommunication and the introduction of new IT functions. To do so, Omantel only needed
change and innovation. In this vein, Dr Ghalib Al Hosni, the vice president of HR at Omantel
says that by focusing on employee engagement, ‘we created a team of 25 people from
different units across the company and across different levels – so employee level, team
leaders and more senior executives from various departments came together to ensure we got
a mixed flavor’ . What is important about this HR strategy is that its functioning does not
depend on the guidelines generally given by the consultants or the directors; rather, the staff
divided to teams has the right to freely use their expertise to put into practice the engagement
strategy. This could have only positive effects on the HR strategy being implemented making
it stronger and stronger (De Fong et al, 1999). As a matter of fact, Omantel became used to
hear different points of view and different opinions both positive and negative since the
strategy implementation emanates from the employees themselves. Not only positive
feedback but also negative one is welcomed. This diversity of perception can only bring
positive effects on the company as a whole. It is the company that brings on board and hears
from its entire people, both positive and negative one without exception (Ellinger et al, 2008).

Omantel HR strategy, namely that of employee engagement, does not stand out by its own. As
a matter of fact, it is part and parcel of the company’s overall policies. Engagement can only
be the milestone of the firm as a whole especially as it encompasses more than 2,600
employees. It is true that the 2015 MENA Excellence Award for Employee Engagement was
won by Omantel, but this represents only some part of the company’s policy of employee

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engagement. For instance, we have some programs like Omantel Talent. Competitions in
writing poems, Quran recital, shooting, and also singing are held within this program.
Employees are encouraged not only to be involved but also to involve their own families and
to experience the engagement even outside the doors of the company for more than five
months. In addition to Omantel Talent, we find also the Omantel Olympics where chess,
football, cricket, and volleyball competitions are held in a way to boost a healthy way of
acting and to develop the employee attitude. In this competition also employees are
encouraged to engage their families as well (Bond & McCracken, 2005). Doing such helps
promote the communication between employees even at work. Omantel policy of employee
engagement had a special effect not only on the business but also on the relationship between
the employees themselves. In this sense, Omantel HR Vice President calls up the example of
one of his employees who, after a very recent event, told him that his work is much more
rapid now. He does not have to spend hours just waiting for an answer for his mail from some
employees in other departments. He said that thanks to the competitions held by the company
he met most of the colleagues he is in contact with by mails and now he only he to call them
by phone to tell them that he is waiting for their response. As such, Omantel policy of
employee engagement does not have its effect only on the work but also on the social
connections between its employees.

Omantel HR Strategies in Relation to the Company’s Overall Performance and the

VMGO of the Company

Whilst employee satisfaction is one of the most important outcomes of the HR strategy of
employee engagement, the business benefit remains the prominent interest of any company
(Francis & Keegan, 2006). In fact, there has been a rapid growth of the revenue in Omantel,
that of 9% in the beginning of 2016. In addition to that, the complaints of the staff reduced by
2.5%. Employees are happier about their company. One more area which has known a real
growth is that of the training opportunities. Up to 2011, Omantel used to train only 800
employees. In the recent years, more training opportunities are available and almost 95% of
the company’s staff are benefiting from it. It is by talking to the employees and searching for
their desires and needs that this training growth has become true. From 2015 and on, Omantel
started to accept all the training demands because it became convinced that these trainings
would have magic effects on the employees and on the business as a whole. What is also
important about the Omantel trainings is that it is the employee who requests the scope of
training he wants to enroll in. Only the worker knows what he wants to achieve from the
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training. The employee is not forced by the company to do training in whatever specialty
(Kalafaties et al, 2000). Rather it is the employee who asks for it and this can only ensure that
he would benefit from it to the maximum. The image of Omantel has changed thanks to this
synergetic approach based on the sharing of power with the employees. Omantel has
successfully become ‘an employer of choice’; it is the first telecommunication giant in Oman.
Omantel HR image has also developed. The employees are considering their HR department
as worth of their trust and not simply driven by the overall process of the company. To put it
in simple terms, partnership with unions, employees, and executives was the magic key to
attain all this. As a matter of fact, Omantel has got used to conduct interviews with its
employees all along the year to know about what they really need from their HR department.
The feedback they got, whether positive or negative, has been used to change the situation.
Worthy to note is that the HR directors believe that progress is still and will always be
possible since everything is changing all around us. Improvement is permanent and at no
point perfection can be reached. What the HR department directors wanted to achieve is to
change how the employees think of their employee relation team.

Omantel HR strategy of employee engagement is part and parcel of the Vision, Mission, and
Objectives of the company as a whole (Tulgan, 2001). Indeed, Omantel’s vision consists in
making your connectivity as simplest as possible. Omantel is able to do so thanks to its
position geographically speaking. From 2011, the vision of the company has been becoming
the telecommunication company that connects the East with the West; in other words
becoming the center not only for the Middle East but also for the rest of the regions. As far as
the mission of Omantel, it is to provide the customers with strong and good services
especially in the most difficult telecommunication markets. This can only happen by making
the customer satisfied with his experience with Omantel. We come now to the goals and
objectives of Omantel. The company’s first objective is to be an outstanding company that is
respected not only by the employees and clients but also by the partners and communities
where Omantel’s services are delivered. Also, it wants to be the market leader at the level of
client retention. This can only be achieved by creating an environment where the company’s
staff can develop. Henceforth, Omantel’s strategy of employee engagement can in any way be
separated from the company’s VMGO. Everything is interconnected and this is what explains
the success that the company has achieved.

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Omantel HR Strategies and SWOT

The health of a given company is well studied within a SWOT analysis. Not only the
strengths at the level of resource are analyzed but also the major weaknesses the company
suffers from. In the case of telecommunication companies like Omantel such weaknesses
concern how information and data is both sent and received via antennas, networks, and fiber-
optic cables; i.e. the quality of the services provided by the company (Balmer & Gray, 2003).
In addition to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the company, a SWOT analysis
tries to study the future of the company by finding out the possible opportunities and threats
that are able either to support or to present a challenge for the firm as a whole (Macneil,
2001).

Strengths

- Strong Financial Performance: Omantel succeeded to achieve a 6.9% rate of growth in

the last few years. ‘A3’ and ‘BBB’ rated Omantel as Moody’s and S&P accordingly.
- Government Support: Omantel is one of the companies that is characterized by general
stability and support of the government since the latter is a major stakeholder in the
company with 51%. The best infrastructure and numerous resources are available for
Omantel to invest. This also encourages other investors to invest their money in the
company. Henceforth, the company will be stronger and stronger.
- Number One Omani Telco: Thanks to sharing more or less 60% of mobile networks in
Oman, Omantel is considered the number one telecommunication company in the
Sultanate. More importantly, its network reaches other regions.

Weaknesses

- The growth of subscriber is low. For instance, in 2015, it lessened to 1.3%. What
Omantel needs to do is to speed up the subscriber growth to be able to compete with
the other telecommunication companies in the market.
- Despite being the leader in the market, Omantel is still working only in the Sultanate.
It had not been able to conquer other markets in the worlds or even in the Middle East.

Opportunities

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 - Omantel’s concern is to have the biggest and the best network coverage. To do so,
Omantel is working on how to take over the small telecommunication companies in
order for it to widen more and more.
- Alliances with some outstanding companies like Huawei and Ericsson can only be
beneficial for Omantel. Many opportunities and horizons would be possible thanks to
this kind of partnerships.

Threats

- The Omani telecom market is witnessing a great development. Many new companies
are becoming part of the industry image. The most important ones are Ooredoo Oman
and also Awaser-Oman. Competition increased and this requires greater efforts to be
made by Omantel.
- In case oil prices fell, business in Oman as one of the Middle East countries will be
affected. Likewise, this will have great impact on the telecom sector in Oman
including Omantel.
- Because of the high interest rates in the market of Sukuk, Omantel was obliged to call
off its offering in 2016. If the rates continue to rise, Omantel will face the risk of not
being able to benefit from the Sukuk market funds.

Change Management Strategies

Change management has become a very serious concept despite the fact that it is to be
included in the management of the business as a whole. But the continuous development of
information technology made of it an interesting topic on its own. A good change
management plan is the secret behind the success of a given company. Change management is
vital for Omantel to be able to compete with other telecom companies. In addition to the
implementation of a new approach, change management is about the control of the efficiency
of the changes implemented. It is important to implement some changes in a given company
but the most important thing is to control the effectiveness of such changes. In order to be
able to afford its customers with rapid connection, speedy GPRS, and good network quality,
Omantel has to undergo some changes related to problem solutions in the long term. It also
has to take into consideration internal as well as external stakeholders. Moreover, in a way to
improve in the future, Omantel has to focus more on the customers at the international
markets. It has to study the consumer behavior of such customers and try all its best to attract

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them and to make them choose Omantel out of other international telecom companies.
Omantel has also to have deeper relationships with their employees. It is true that Omantel
employees are engaged in the business, but engaging them more and more is a need.
Employees have to feel that they are part of the business. As an example, Omantel can use the
strategy of profit sharing. Indeed, the employees would have the ability to have a given
percentage of the profit in addition to their salaries. This would keep the workers motivated to
give their maximum in order to gain more money at the end of the month. Moreover, it would
build a sense of competition between the employees of who will have the highest profit. But
before enrolling in any change management plan, Omantel has to study in scrutiny both the
advantages and drawbacks of the present and suggested system.

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that Omantel is the leader company in the industry of
telecommunication in the Sultanate of Oman. In 2015, it won the Human Resource Excellence
Award for Employee Engagement in Middle East and North Africa. The major HR strategy
used by Omantel is that of employee engagement which includes the enhancement of loyalty
among employees as well as the development of training programs. Worthy to note that this
HR strategy does not stand on its own; it is part and parcel of the policies of the company in
general. In addition, it has had a great effect on the overall performance of Omantel. Indeed,
the company has known a 9% revenue growth in the beginning of 2016. Yet, despite all these
positive impacts of Omantel HR strategy, change management is still needed in order to
compete more and more with the new demands of the industry market.

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