Face to face with hiring challenges

The GCC's unprecedented growth is causing an acute manpower shortage and posing recruiting challenges in the region. Governmental reforms have led to rapid development of the non-oil sectors. Real estate, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, education, hospitality and family-run businesses are facing a talent gap.

The expatriate workforce is extremely high in most GCC countries, and as much as 80 per cent in the UAE and Qatar. The currency peg in most regional countries to the falling US dollar is acting as a disincentive for workers from overseas to relocate to the GCC. Rising inflation contrasted with rapidly growing salary levels in home countries compounds this challenge.

Prior functional, technical or regional experience has traditionally been a pre-requisite for recruitment in GCC. Organisations and recruitment consultants thus just look at matching experience rather than short-listing candidates holistically on soft skills and cultural fit.

This is limiting the pool of available talent. Finally, the HR function in most organisations has made little effort in grooming in-house talent. Hence organisations continue to be outward focused to meet their growing recruitment needs.

To overcome these challenges, GCC organisations can initiate a combination of strategic and tactical initiatives.

They can recruit fresh graduates and put them through structured training programmes. They can also work closely with universities to structure curriculum that meets the region's skill needs.

A clear compensation strategy is required. This should be based on a formal market survey conducted every two years. It needs to address inflation, especially for lower-level employees, and have a retention mechanism such as employee stock options (ESOPs) for senior management.

While the above are long-term, using innovative recruiting channels can deliver on immediate recruiting needs. Industry associations, for example, are a great way to meet ambitious, like-minded potential staff.

Company websites, which few organisations effectively use, can be set up to accept applications on an ongoing basis. Public relations is an effective and not too expensive way of building awareness. CEO interviews, press releases etc. provide an opportunity to talk about the organisation's strengths and growth plans, and generate proactive job applications.

There are also employee referrals where existing staff can refer candidates in their network.

Retention is proving to be an equally critical challenge for GCC organisations. Employees are poached with sometimes as much as a 100 per cent pay increase. As organisations cannot always retain by matching salary increases, they can drive retention through other criteria valued by employees.

This includes having a friendly work culture, an open door HR policy, fair performance appraisal and rewards system and policies like flexible working hours.

Good working conditions, employee get-togethers and job rotation are some other key factors that will not only result in organisations in GCC being perceived as employers of choice but in reality also being great places to work.

Sanjiv Anand is the managing director and Yajat Bindal is a principal consultant at Cedar Management Consulting International.