EGA Employs Women as Utility Operators for the First Time

Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), the UAE's largest industrial business outside of the oil and gas industry, has made history by selecting women as utility operators for the first time in the company's more than four-decade history. This decision is part of EGA's firm commitment to promoting gender diversity at all levels of the organization.

EGA has set lofty goals for gender diversity, aiming for women to hold 15% of all roles inside the organization by 2026. Furthermore, they intend to boost the share of women in supervisory posts to 25% by 2025, a significant increase from the present 20%.

In EGA's industrial operations, utility operators are non-supervisory frontline staff. The organization has been a pioneer in the Gulf area in recruiting women for such jobs, demanding unique international recruitment techniques.

EGA has committed significant resources to support more gender diversity, from creating new worker accommodation tactics to constructing facilities for women in portions of its operations that were not originally built to accommodate them.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, CEO of Emirates Global Aluminium, emphasized the importance of diversity in both business performance and society, stating that EGA is paving new paths for women within the company, aligning with the UAE's broader goals and setting a precedent for others to follow.

EGA launched National Training programs for women in technical roles in industrial operations in 2022, with 11 young UAE National women enrolling during the year. The firm now employs 75 graduate trainees, 49 of them are women, who are pursuing supervisory roles in corporate functions or industrial operations.

In recent years, EGA has also appointed women to nine seats on subsidiary boards and is a partner of Aurora50, an organization in the UAE that trains women for board-level responsibilities, thus contributing to the advancement of gender diversity and equality in the workplace.