Expereo, a major player in the fast-expanding Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) market, just hit a new milestone: its first-ever Great Place to Work UAE certification. For a company known primarily for global connectivity infrastructure—not culture awards—this marks a strategic moment as talent and employee experience become just as central to market growth as network uptime.
And the certification wasn’t earned through committee selection or glossy presentations; it’s based solely on anonymous employee feedback. This year, 94% of Expereo’s UAE workforce said the company is a great place to work, surpassing the benchmark by three points. In today’s competitive tech and telecom talent market—especially in the UAE—those numbers are nothing to shrug at.
The recognition places Expereo among the companies increasingly differentiating themselves not just on technology portfolios, but on the work environments they create for those building and delivering those technologies. That shift isn’t unique to Expereo; it’s part of a bigger industry pattern where employee experience is slowly becoming a competitive moat.
Why This Certification Matters—To More Than Just HR
Great Place to Work is a globally recognized validator of employee experience, culture, and leadership effectiveness. With thousands of tech, telco, and professional services companies participating in its programs each year, the certification has become something of a market shorthand: it signals operational maturity, strong internal systems, and sustainable culture.
For fast-scaling infrastructure companies like Expereo—which now powers connectivity for enterprises across 190+ countries—workplace credibility also plays a tactical role. A strong workplace brand helps attract the specialized talent required to compete in NaaS, where service reliability, automation, and global support operations depend heavily on skilled teams.
As Sarah Lewis-Kulin, VP of Global Recognition at Great Place to Work, put it:
“Certification is the only official recognition determined by real-time employee feedback. By earning this honor, Expereo has clearly distinguished itself as one of the best companies to work for.”
In a market where the war for tech talent is intensifying—especially across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh—Expereo’s certification sends a useful signal: culture is becoming part of the company’s commercial strategy.
A 14-Year UAE Journey Pays Off
CEO Ben Elms attributes the achievement to a long-term investment in building the UAE hub:
“When we opened our Dubai office 14 years ago, our goal was to build an exceptional team and a workplace where people enjoy the colleagues they work with, embrace our culture, and deliver outstanding service every day.”
From an operations standpoint, this matters. Expereo’s Dubai office is not a satellite—it’s part of the company’s global engine, supporting network services and customer operations across the region. That means the UAE team doesn’t just reflect local culture; it contributes to performance, SLAs, and customer experience worldwide.
Managing Director UAE Raed Rached added that the certification validates the consistency of that approach:
“This recognition reflects our team’s dedication, resilience, and commitment to excellence.”
Culture as Infrastructure: Expereo’s 2024–2025 Employee Strategy
Tech companies love to talk about culture, but the details often look vague. Expereo’s recent initiatives, however, offer a clearer picture of what “culture” means in practice—especially in a NaaS environment where operational excellence is non-negotiable.
Here’s a breakdown of the initiatives shaping Expereo’s latest employee experience push:
1. Expereo Heroes & Recognition Awards
A structured recognition program tied to quarterly all-hands. The CEO personally presents awards, which—whether symbolic or strategic—signals cultural buy-in at the top.
2. Talent & Future Leaders Program
Designed to groom the next generation of leaders, not unlike the leadership pipelines we’re seeing across telecom giants and hyperscalers. As NaaS grows more complex, leadership depth becomes essential.
3. Employee Wellbeing Programs
The company has rolled out recurring expert-led sessions covering mental, emotional, financial, and physical health. This aligns with broader GCC trends, where employee wellbeing is increasingly tied to productivity and retention metrics.
4. Community Engagement
The Dubai team partnered with Beit Al Khair as part of Expereo’s global charity day—an expanding trend among global tech companies aiming to build regional community presence, not just commercial presence.
Taken together, these initiatives show a shift: Expereo isn’t only building digital infrastructure; it’s building cultural infrastructure. And given the intensity of service delivery in NaaS, employee resilience, engagement, and leadership capability can directly impact network performance and customer satisfaction.
The Broader Trend: Human Experience as a Performance Metric
Great Place to Work’s research highlights why this certification carries weight:
-
Employees in Certified workplaces are 4.5x more likely to have a great manager.
-
They are 93% more likely to look forward to coming to work.
-
They are 2x more likely to receive fair pay, share profits, and grow with equitable opportunities.
These factors increasingly influence business performance in cloud and NaaS markets. High retention reduces onboarding costs. Stable teams improve service reliability. Motivated teams innovate faster and deliver higher-quality customer experiences.
The certification also reflects a broader acknowledgment within the NaaS market: the “network” isn’t only cables, nodes, and cloud edges—it’s the people running them.
Expereo’s Competitive Positioning
NaaS is one of the most competitive technology sectors of the moment. From traditional telcos pivoting into managed services, to cloud giants offering edge connectivity, to startups pushing automation-first architectures, talent is one of the biggest bottlenecks.
Expereo’s certification gives it a useful differentiator—one its global competitors may eventually need to match. In a market projected to hit $100B+ globally in the coming years, companies that invest deeply in employee experience may find themselves with a more stable operating base as the sector scales.
With this certification, Expereo joins a growing list of infrastructure-focused companies positioning culture as part of their strategic value proposition—an increasingly important differentiator in a sector where service quality and innovation depend heavily on the teams behind them.
Final Thought: Culture Isn’t a Trophy—It’s an Operating System
Expereo’s new badge is more than an accolade. It signals a shift in how the company is framing its growth: through leadership pipelines, recognition, wellbeing, and global community engagement. If the company maintains that trajectory, it may gain something far more valuable than a certification—long-term talent stability in a market where that’s becoming a critical competitive advantage.
And for a company connecting thousands of enterprises globally, stability isn’t a perk; it’s core infrastructure.
Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Public relations, investor relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire for secure and accurate distribution of market-moving news and multimedia. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX network. Business Wire’s global newsrooms are available to meet the needs of communications professionals and news media worldwide.
