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While writing this article local newspapers across the country have been reporting that the UAE has been rated number one globally in 50 indices covering vital community and service sectors, this is according to the Global Competitiveness Index for the year 2017 – 2018. The country has recently been achieving top rankings in the Arab World in areas such as Ease of Doing Business, Competitiveness, Human Development and Innovation. However, the UAE has made it clear that it has its sights at not only competing regionally but globally across various areas, and especially in the space of Innovation. But let’s pause and think about this for a minute: “How can we expect to embrace Innovation and aim to compete globally in this space if we are too afraid to step out of our comfort zones, and we fear the unfamiliar. Innovation requires us to enable Creative, Courageous Character of Leadership.”. These were part of my views during a panel discussion in front of a group of local university students and graduates on the topic of predicting how the future would look like in the next 50-100 yrs during the National Science & Innovation Festival in Dubai. I explained to the audience what I believed is the caliber of talent and business leaders let alone our country, but the world needs today. I had written about this back in 2011 in an article titled ‘Vitamin C for Today’s Leaders’ where I reflected on the lessons of the 2009 global downturn and the failings of some of corporate leaders who were at the helm of their organisations. In the article I prescribed that what desperately need talent that has or can deal with the 5 Cs (Hence the title Vitamin C, cheeky right?). These are: I found that these are the skills we need to nurture in our talent so that we enable them to be able to deal with the complex challenges the world is confronted with today, and lead the economy to become more sustainable, competitive and innovative. |
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.
an early age and being thrown in the deep is why me and my partners recently launched the ‘UAEtopia Talent Mine Initiative’ and have been having numerous conversations with schools, employers and other public institutions to encourage them to offer youth opportunities to rub shoulders with the real world.
Talib Bin Hashim 