The HR challenge facing Dubai firms

This challenge is not like another Dubai event or conference. Unfortunately it's not a fun thing. It is the challenge and nightmare that managements across Dubai, and the GCC for that matter, are facing in attracting and retaining talent.

CEOs/owners of otherwise successful organisations who have been able to build businesses from scratch and create wealth from nothing seem at loss on how to deal with this.

The last conversation I had on this was with a leading business owner on a flight into Dubai. We both agreed that it was an unfortunate situation taking a lot of CEO time. Here are some fixes I suggested to him on the flight.

Firstly look at the organisational structure and identify the five or six absolutely key resources on your team. This is the "hit by the bus list". If something happens to them the next morning, you know you have a serious problem on your hands.

Look at their compensation independent of the general compensation structure and compensate fixed and variable higher than market. Link the compensation to company performance.

If they make you some serious money, they deserve a piece of the action.

Then manage your risk by identifying other people within the organisation who could take the position of the above lot in case the incentive did not work and they walked. Of course you won't find perfect replacements but you can be innovative.
You can split the job into two, making it more manageable for the short term. These back-up resources can be sent on training programmes or provided exposure across the organisation. Let them be recognised as young turks.

Information is power, and very often some of the very senior people are powerful not because of their capability, but because of the information they possess that they hold on to dearly more than their wife's. Institutionalise information. Automate MIS and create Executive Information Dashboards. Circulate widely and let a support unit like finance be the custodian.

Force the "hit by the bus list" guys to take their full annual leave. This will force them to train somebody to operate the role in their absence. It will also allow for you to check for unethical activity that may be going on. When I attended the Harvard AMP programme a few years ago for CEOs, and it ran for two months, some of the CEOs were worried that if the company could operate for two months without them, somebody may figure out that they are not indispensible.

Don't let these guys also bring in their buddies. If they walk you lose the whole team one day or you are always scared of such an event happening. Don't let the head hunters intimidate you into accepting candidates that you know aren't right. Run ads frequently. This will force your HR organisation to learn how to recruit, and it will also give you a real sense of what's going on in the market.

Automate as many processes as possible. Become less and less dependent on people. It may sound like a dichotomy, but think about. And start looking at different parts of the world. Traditional sources like India are drying up. The local opportunity there no longer makes it attractive to work in the Middle East. And lastly, make sure you don't get hit by a bus.

- The writer is the managing director of Cedar Management Consulting International.