On 7 May 2026, Alert International brought its Knowledge Series to Dubai for the very first time. At the Hilton Palm Jumeirah, HR professionals and leaders gathered for a hands-on morning session, not a lecture, but a genuine working session, on how culture and values sit at the heart of every talent decision an organisation makes.
Together with Anna Dashkovskaya, MCIPD-certified HR Director and Consultant with over 20 years of experience across the GCC, CIS, and beyond, we explored why values-based hiring is not a trend, but a strategic necessity.
The session opened with a question that landed hard: if 3 in 4 employees are open to leaving right now, and 1 in 3 hires in the UAE fails on culture fit rather than skills, where do you actually start fixing the problem?
The answer Anna returned to throughout the morning: not with attraction. With culture.
Most organisations invest in employer branding, job ads, and recruitment campaigns when they struggle to hire or retain talent. But when culture is misaligned, no messaging will fix what people experience on the inside. This insight set the tone for everything that followed.
The morning covered three themes, each grounded in real cases from Anna’s consulting practice across the GCC and beyond.
We explored how to identify the type of culture an organisation actually has, and whether that matches what it claims to be. The gap between the culture you put in your employer brand and the one people experience day-to-day is where many talent problems quietly begin.
Participants worked through a diagnostic exercise and reflected honestly on their own organisations. The debrief conversations that followed were among the most valuable moments of the morning.
One of the most energising parts of the session was seeing how values can move beyond the poster on the wall. Anna shared a real-world case in which a company engaged colleagues across multiple countries to co-create the behaviours behind their core values, turning abstract principles into something people could recognise and act on in daily work.
Participants got a live taste of this approach themselves, making the theory immediately tangible.
The final case study connected culture and values directly to the recruitment process. A well-developed Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that reflects what people genuinely experience is a far more powerful hiring tool than one crafted purely for marketing purposes.
When the story you tell candidates matches the story your employees live, that is when values-based hiring truly starts working, and when the right people start saying yes.
What made the morning work was the openness of the people in it. Participants came ready to share, reflect, and challenge assumptions, and the conversations between exercises were just as valuable as the content itself.
That is exactly what the Alert Knowledge Series is built for: not passive listening, but real exchange between practitioners navigating the same questions in different contexts.
This was Alert International’s first Knowledge Series event in the UAE, and it felt like exactly the right moment. The themes of culture, values, and talent strategy are just as urgent in the region as anywhere, perhaps more so, given the pace of growth and the diversity of teams operating here.
We are grateful to Anna Dashkovskaya for bringing both depth and warmth to the room, and to every participant who showed up with honesty and energy.
want to explore how these insights apply to your organisation?
If values-based hiring, culture diagnostics, or EVP development are on your agenda, we would love to continue the conversation.
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