How Emircom uses ZenHR to stay ahead as a market leader in Saudi Arabia
As its Saudi workforce doubled from 400 to 800, Emircom moved leave, HR letters and geo-attendance onto ZenHR, freeing HR leaders to focus on compliance and strategy.
This is a platform an HR team can strongly rely on. Easily run a report, submit requests, track attendance. The system is super easy.
For a market leader, HR can’t slow the business down
Emircom has been building the region’s networks since 1984. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, with operations across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it is one of the Gulf’s most established systems integrators, a Cisco Gold Partner, and part of International Holding Company since 2022. In March 2024 it opened its Intelligent Security Operations Center in Riyadh.
Over three to four years, Emircom’s Saudi workforce doubled from around 400 to 800 employees, often growing in project-sized groups. Around 80% are engineers and white-collar staff and 20% field teams. That growth put pressure on the HR team’s day-to-day capacity and on its ability to keep up with a demanding regulatory environment.
“Our main resources are people.” — Arun Varughese, Head of HR
Why ZenHR
Emircom runs a strong group-wide platform, “My Emircom”. But Saudi Arabia’s regulatory environment, from the Ministry of Labour to GOSI and Saudization reporting, calls for a locally established HR system. The Saudi HR team chose ZenHR to work alongside the group’s own systems, not replace them.
“There was no question; we knew ZenHR was the right way to go.”
From manual processes to “super easy”
Emircom’s Saudi operation went live in March 2024. Around 800 employees across two entities are managed in ZenHR, and roughly 80% use the platform themselves. Three areas made the biggest difference:
- Leave management: employees submit requests and see their records without back-and-forth with HR.
- Employee requests: HR letters and documents are requested and tracked in the system, with every request logged as a trackable report for compliance.
- Attendance with geolocation: accurate attendance for office and field employees alike.
“We were doing quite manual processes here before ZenHR. That made our life quite easy, and now we can focus on other activities.”
The results
- Less time on manual HR administration, so routine work no longer consumes the team’s week.
- More independence for employees through easy self-service.
- More time for higher-impact work: strategy, engagement, Saudization and compliance.
- Stronger business continuity through a better everyday employee experience.
- Room to grow as the workforce expanded from about 400 to 800 employees.
“If we are giving a very easy platform for our teams to use, then the people are happy with the organisation and our internal processes. That helps us in business continuity.”
