QFCRA receives Mena’s ‘best nationalisation initiative’ award

The Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority (QFCRA) has received the Middle East and North Africa’s “best nationalisation initiative” award at the recently concluded Human Capital Forum in Dubai.The forum rewarded organisations and individuals in the region for their proven excellence and outstanding human resource practices and achievements.The “best nationalisation initiative” award recognised the QFCRA’s learning and development programme, ‘Al Masar’ (The Path), which distinguished itself from the competition to land the top award by demonstrating leading-edge innovation, a comprehensive approach to nationalisation, and quantifiable results.The QFCRA programme leads and supports Qatari employees through five well-defined development stages by delivering a structured approach to the different competencies, professional and management training, technical skills, and mentoring required for each stage of development.‘Al Masar’ is driven by the employee and it is aligned with individual employees’ professional ambition, career objectives and also moves at the pace at which employees seek to realise their ambition. As part of the programme, employees have customised individual development plans to help them achieve their goals, which can include international assignments, local or regional secondments, advanced degrees, and targeted technical and leadership preparation.“Leadership and behavioural assessments, such as psychometric testing, have really helped us to pinpoint the qualities in employees that allows us to plan better for their professional development and, ultimately, their success,” said Eisa Ahmed Abdulla, QFCRA chief operating officer and managing director (Corporate Services), receiving the award.As part of ‘Al Masar’, the QFCRA had also created a proactive succession plan that positioned the organisation’s Qatari employees at the heart of that plan. In 2016, it was expanded to include the more specialised areas of the QFCRA’s work, the commencement of an international secondment programme, with the first employee placed in February 2017, and the development of a financial sector leadership Master’s programme, which will be the first of its kind in the region and one of few similar programmes globally.