Change needed to boost career transitioning

When we talk about the barriers to entry and market drivers that enable careers to flourish, and for that matter cause careers to flounder, we must understand the multiple combinations of factors, their significance and how to manage them.

At the very least, it is important to be aware of the difficulties, because you need a good roadmap to help you navigate.

Career-path decision-making will take into account many things matters such as family commitments, perhaps choice in companies or the business environment, and local barriers including hiring legislation.

Regional hype and the desire to attract talent, a commodity-hiring mentality, intra-regional rivalry, and other areas that are subject to change and influence provide many barriers to advancement.

The Middle East has its own operating dynamics, with no common platform for intra-country transfer, as each country still applies its own restrictions on freedom of movement.

Furthermore, if we add to this the rapid change in market conditions, it becomes a lot clearer that career-transitioning can be difficult.

There is another behaviour that often lies dormant, deep within the spirit of many companies scattered across the region. When it is aroused, it can prove distressing to the individual and harmful to career advancement.

Excellence

This untoward practice forms a stark contrast to the excellent HR professionalism displayed by many companies in Dubai, whose reputations for treating staff with care and decency is beyond reproach.

The expatriate rumour-mill is an often-used and trusted information highway, for who do you listen to when enquiring about the pros and cons of employment within one country or another? Well, for starters, we tend to listen to our own kind especially to those expats who have had a rough ride.

Quite often we hear of individuals who face undue hardship as a result of their employers' dishonouring employment contracts, and flagrantly breaching terms of employment without any recourse for the employee.

We have often heard stories of those who have been denied end-of-service benefits to which they are contractually and morally entitled. Some companies quite simply feel that it is their right to create as much discomfort as they can get away with, refusing to settle, safe in the knowledge that it will take years to resolve in court. This often means forcing the expat into a state of overseas litigation with little or no chance of a successful settlement.

How much of an incentive do such companies think this behaviour amounts to and, importantly, do they really believe that this will not have a negative impact on their reputation?

It is important that countries review their legislation in the same way that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have addressed theirs, helping create a sustainable domestic advantage.

Fortunately, we see continued moves within more domestic markets to implement and apply legislative change, balancing fairness for the company and the individual alike.

Quite often companies have already been exposed, and are reacting, to the somewhat itinerant and fickle nature of staff who would use them "to enter the domestic market" and then leave them exposed.

Yet, companies are beginning to recognise that you get what you pay for. As noted in the past, the long-term success of the region is dependent upon securing the right people for the job and, once on board, retaining them, as an integral part of its business development strategy.

The Middle East must be seen as a natural path through which one would traverse. Therefore, it is of major importance that domestic legislation should protect the interests of expatriates, one that will encourage talent to want to come here to work, and to remain within the region.

- Based in Dubai, the writer is the principal of career management and mentoring specialists Career Partners in the Middle East.