Business | Opinion
The road ahead for GCC firms
Gulf Cooperation Council economies are experiencing unprecedented growth and liquidity.
- By Sanjiv Anand and Yajat Bindal, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:04 May 28, 2008
Gulf Cooperation Council economies are experiencing unprecedented growth and liquidity.
The GCC-based organisations are therefore putting in aggressive growth plans. New players are also entering the fray, thus increasing the competitive intensity in the region.
The bullishness is based on a fundamental assumption that demand for goods and services will keep pace with planned increases in supply. While this may be true in the long run, supply may actually exceed demand in the medium term, thus putting some organisations at risk.
Hence being future-ready in the GCC means having a strong competitive advantage and differentiating through the organisation's most critical resource - its people.
Firstly, the GCC organisations must build a strong performance culture. Integral to this is having a robust enterprise performance management system in place such as the balanced scorecard.
It needs to be further percolated down by setting individual performance measures (IPMs) for employees. Stretch targets need to be set to truly build a performance culture and be competitive.
The GCC organisations must build a culture of service excellence. The economies are depending on the service sector to drive growth. Tourism, hospitality, education, healthcare, retail and financial services are some of the targeted sectors.
As competition increases it is service excellence which will differentiate an organisation from the competition. To institutionalise this, service excellence measures and rewards also need to be built into the performance management system.
The GCC organisations must build cultural diversity in their workforce. They are putting in aggressive expansion plans outside their countries.
Building diversity provides for a pool of people that can contribute to the organisation's growth in international locations.
Employees deputed to their home countries are better able to understand cultural nuances of both the GCC and their own countries, thereby building trust with joint venture partners and other stakeholders.
Having a multi-cultural environment also provides flexibility to recruit and attract talent irrespective of nationality or cultural background and helps overcome the talent and manpower shortage that is prevalent in the GCC.
While English is the accepted business language in the GCC, organisations must also encourage its non-Arabic speaking employees to learn Arabic.
This will not only build a truly multi-cultural environment, but also prove advantageous in international expansion, especially in Levant and North African countries.
Finally, it is the human resources function that has an important role to play in building this competitive advantage and making organisations future-ready.
The HR function must evolve from its traditional administrative role to a more strategic role. Even where it is involved strategically, HR's inputs are sought towards the latter half of the strategic planning cycle for manpower planning and budgeting.
The HR department must be involved in the organisation's strategic planning process right from inception. This will allow HR to highlight current issues and gaps in the organisation's resource pool to better aid the planning process.
Sanjiv Anand is the managing director and Yajat Bindal is a principal consultant at Cedar Management Consulting International.
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