HRM in the United Arab Emirates
The role of human resources has grown increasingly more complex and challenging in today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving business world. The truth is, in recent years, there has been a slew of unparalleled transformations in companies in the Emirates that have punctuated the region’s workforce. Tenured staff has to handle technological breakthroughs, fluctuating market environments, and the global crises. The additional challenge, of course, is the Millennial Generation! These fresh-driven, young graduates born between 1982 and 2002 come from shifting demographics and changing organizational structures. They are diversified: the new, powered globalization’s workforce! The youth has changed the very fabric of the Middle East’s ultracompetitive employment landscape, reaffirming the need for world-class human resource practices that place employment engagement at the core of every corporation’s business ethos. The third millennium needs a corporate environment that is conducive to productivity, creativity, and innovation, one which is the key to optimizing peak performance, maintaining low employee turnover, and achieving long-term business goals.
An example of such a company, at present operating in the Arab Gulf, is Proctor & Gamble (P&G). At P&G, the human resource managers, who have generated an approach that has helped guide the company, are its building blocks of success. The business world is riddled with instability, cynicism, and doubt. Fresh graduates are not readily employed nor do they easily build a career within that organization up until retirement. The rules of the game have radically changed. Every industry suffers from increased job mobility, mounting recruitment costs, and low retention rates. P&G understood the importance of cultivating a high-performing, collaborative, and loyal workforce. The company’s vision led to a nomination in Aon Hewitt’s Top 5 Best Employers list for 2013.
Corporations today need to foster a corporate culture where workers identify with and are motivated by their employer. What this means is nurturing a heightened connection between an employee and his/her job, organization, manager, and co-workers. In fact, recent studies show that employees who are committed and dedicated to their work on an emotional level tend to outperform those who are not. This, of course, begs the question: how can organizations effectively deliver human resource services that can meet the needs of today’s layered, multigenerational workforce as it simultaneously guarantees organizational success?
Layer and Divide the Work
Companies need to include everyone in the HRM plan. The ecosystem structures organizational outcomes, and safeguards employee engagement. Leadership skills drive excellence, and create meaningful challenging work that employees “own” and are held accountable for. Pivotal engagement drivers not only motivate employees but also help build strong teams. The new ecosystem shapes a flexible learning and development path: providing employees with deserving rewards, recognition, and enhanced compensation; offering a career trajectory forecast and related guidance; embedding the company’s core values; celebrating the organization’s overall success and individual accomplishments; creating a transparent, direct line of communication with employees; developing a culture of interdependent teamwork; and lastly, involving employees in corporate social responsibilities initiatives. The new ecosystem is a corporate climate that centers on value, accomplishment, and commitment in the UAE, and across the global market.
■ Based on what you read, what are P&G’s concepts on handling its staff?
■ List P&G’s guidelines.
■ Do you believe that P&G’s guidelines are universal, or should they be tailored to fit different cultures?