In the third episode of the series, Hagai Philipson, Mekorot’s Vice President of Human Resources, sheds light on the lesser-known front of the infrastructure giant: the battle for its people. While engineers ensured that water continued to flow through the pipes, Philipson and his team ensured quite literally that the company’s lifeblood kept circulating.
“In my first week on the job, I encountered something I hadn’t seen in a long time – Zionism. Not as a slogan,” Philipson says emotionally. “People tell you, with a spark in their eyes, that they enable the existence of the state.” This spirit proved critical on the morning of October 7. About 10% of the company’s employees were called up under emergency reserve orders, others were evacuated from their homes, yet the system did not collapse. “Evacuated employees still came to work,” he recalls. “They felt the responsibility.”
Philipson also describes a policy of “human life before water,” a dramatic statement for a company whose mission is uninterrupted supply. Mekorot provided its employees with an “ironclad envelope” of support, including tactical equipment for field teams, close psychological support for families, and even organized volunteer initiatives to maintain morale.
Philipson presents a fascinating hybrid model: a government-owned company with the “soul of a startup” and rigorous business management, investing heavily in developing a managerial pipeline to win the competition for engineers. “We preserve knowledge and provide a future,” he concludes, stressing that even in the age of AI, at the end of the pipeline stands a human being who needs to know there is someone to rely on.
This article was written in cooperation with Mekorot.