This week I was part of a design thinking workshop which was organized by IBM In their Client Center in Dubai Design District. The workshop was designed to identify the various challenges IBM faces with its Emiratisation process and brainstorm ideas that will address its ability to attract, engage, retain and develop local talent. This would be done through a creative process.
I was quite excited to be part of this workshop, mainly because IBM’s approach to develop its Emiratisation strategy is in its core aligned to the philosophy my team and I have been advocating to employers we speak to, although how we implement the process is somewhat different . During the process, we encourage companies to allow the strategy to grow from within the organisation organically by initiating an internal conversation facilitated by a neutral and unbiased party. This is done by allowing participants (your team) to do the talking, address the challenges, point out opportunities and get them on board the whole Emiratisation journey you are embarking on. As a bonus you empower them by allowing them to suggest ideas.
As facilitators, our role is to direct all these conversations and ideas through our own framework. Once we have collected and put all the pieces together, we finally share with the employer what was discussed and eventually propose the most suitable solutions which can address the gaps we have identified during the process. (It’s a little bit like playing the role of a Maestro to a symphony).
So why should you consider this approach rather than leaving the headache of Emiratisation with the HR department to solve?
I can do a whole presentation explaining why; but here are my top 4 reasons why you should consider adopting a similar exercise the next time you are looking to develop or revise your Emiratisation strategy:
- It’s Inclusive: From experience we know that the issues confronting your Emiratisation process do not lie with HR alone. This way you get to hear from the people really feeling the pain, and empower them to suggest ideas
- It fosters Creativity: We encourage participants to use their imagination and creativity to build scenarios and think of possible ideas
- Managing Change: Applying Emiratisation as a process or looking to grow its culture in your organisation can be confronted with resistance internally. The Creativity Lab can be used as one of the strategies to manage change and get buy-in.
- Communication: We always encourage clients to use the Creativity Lab proceedings and its outcomes to communicate to internal and external stakeholders the company’s commitment to Emiratisation. This can potentially feed into the company’s reputation as an ’employer of choice’.
If your organisation is keen to understand some of the opportunities it can tap in to to address the challenges its emiratisation process faces, drop me a line and lets grab a cup of coffee.
across the different stations, young Emirati employees could be seen as Station Agents, Station Masters and Ticket Inspectors among others.
assume that their existing brand is sufficient to woo local job-seekers and as a result put little or negligible effort in communicating what is the distinctive ‘employee experience’ their organisation has to offer and what does their employer brand stand for in the bigger context. For local talent, understanding the company’s ‘employer brand’ and ‘employee experience’ helps them buy into the idea of committing to a career in the organisation. It also provides them with a powerful narrative they can use to deflect family and society pressure to look at a job in the public sector as an alternative. Contrary to common belief local job-seekers can be very pragmatic, outcome-oriented and selective about the career choices they make. In my workshops I teach employers that there are a number of things local talent look for in an employer’s brand. In the case of Dubai Metro, since the employer was in fact a multinational company; we worked on building an emotional link between their careers with the employer and their potential role in being part of building a progressive economy and society.
surprised to find local job-seekers who were earning salaries of 6,000 to 10,000 dirhams in their existing jobs (a far cry from the $7,300 the media had claimed to be the expectation of a university graduate). I often help employers understand that the salary expectations of local talent are really influenced by the law of ‘supply and demand’ of talent in a specific region or industry, the region they are recruiting from them as well as the exact economic scenario at play when an employer is hiring. This is another interesting topic I’ll address in future articles.
reads “Not interested in hard work, will definitely ask too much for a salary”. However, what employers must do is scratch the surface and try to understand that these are ‘real’ people with their own unique stories, motivations and aspirations which they bring to the table. During one of the Open Days recruiting for the Metro I remember the divorced single mother of five kids, who attended the interview and was honest with us about the reason she had applied for the role, she needed the job to support her children rather than rely on hand-outs. In fact, more than half of those who attended the interviews were Emirati women. There was also the degree holder who had been out of work for two years at least, and shared with me the emotional toll of being unemployed in a society with a lot of expectations. I met a number of job-seekers who drove all the way from places such as Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah to apply for the jobs, but had no idea how would they work out the shifts. All they wanted was a job that would provide them a decent living and give them the chance to be part of something meaningful.
Talib Bin Hashim 