At the Employee Engagement Forum, held last month in Dubai, panelists agreed that building trust through communication is a primary avenue for retaining employees and keeping them engaged. "Trust is a key component in companies and good communication is how you can build that trust," said Ahsan Qureshi, senior vice president of human capital at Mubadala. "Keep your employees informed at all levels about what you are doing and be honest with them. Keep communicating and that will lead to higher levels of employee engagement, which leads to employees feeling that they are valued, and that is job security in itself.” However, this communication must be viewed as a two-way street. Employees must also feel as if they have a voice and that their voice will be heard by the organization. One way to accomplish this, according to Robin Windley, senior vice president of human capital at DP World, is through engagement surveys. These surveys should be designed with employee feedback in mind, and the data collected should be acted upon. “If you collect that data and then do nothing with it, people aren't going to bother filling a survey the next time they get it,” he cautioned.