São Paulo – Fabiana Dutra, from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, always knew she would follow a career in Business Administration. After graduating, she had a stint in marketing, but it was at Fiat that she discovered her true professional focus: people management.
“I always wanted to study Business Administration, and my first experience was at a telecommunications company in marketing. While there, I had the opportunity to lead the business monitoring area within commercial and financial planning,” she recalls.
She stayed there for 13 years, gaining international experience that shaped her view on corporate culture and behavior. Later, upon changing jobs and taking the director role at the engineering consultancy Timenow, the position deepened her perspective on operations, project management, and people management.
At the end of 2022, her career took an unexpected leap. A Timenow client based in Dubai requested support for a project involving sending Brazilians to work in the United Arab Emirates. Fully engaged in the initiative, Dutra stayed in the country for two weeks, studying labor laws, local culture, management practices, and the dynamics of industrial projects.
The immersion revealed a scenario very different from what she had imagined. “Dubai proved to be extremely organized, with a strong planning culture and unmatched speed of execution. After this analysis, I was certain that Brazilian workers would adapt, because they’re multitaskers, proactive, and highly adaptable,” Dutra explains.
After delivering the full report to the client, she returned to an issue that had long concerned her: the employee experience within companies. “Every company is born to solve a problem, and I wanted to solve the problem of the employee experience. I wanted that experience to be as smooth as possible, both in their relationship with their boss and in the environment they’re in, so that they could increase their productivity,” she explains.
Company founding and international experience
Determined to transform this reality, Dutra attended the Executive Human Resources program at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Her next step was founding Elox Employee Experience, a company created to redesign the employee journey from the very first contact with the company to their exit.
Today, Elox operates in several Brazilian states, including Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo, as well as in some regions of the Northeast, with projects ranging from three to 36 months. Its services include organizational design, performance bottleneck identification, and comprehensive employee experience solutions.
“We work with all aspects of employee experience, high-performance culture, strategic human resources management, creative lab, and organizational design”, Dutra explains.
Dutra says the results are clear: in a global scenario of declining engagement, companies investing in their employees’ journey are already seeing tangible improvements in performance, belonging, and retention.
During her time in the UAE, Dutra also visited a company in Jordan, spending three days assessing management and operational differences. The experience broadened her perspective on business in the Middle East and confirmed the region’s potential for future partnerships.
“My plans through 2030 are to have a base in the United States and the UAE, as well as in Argentina in Latin America,” the professional projects. In the UAE, the focus is on Dubai.
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Report by Rebecca Vettore, in collaboration with ANBA
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
