Top 5 Challenges Companies Face When Hiring Manpower in the Middle East
Recruitment in the Middle East is a very interesting and complex activity which provides its own opportunities and difficulties. When a firm seeks to grow or penetrate into this dynamic territory, knowing its manpower geography becomes paramount. The Middle East region is known for its ethnic diversity and economic prospects as well as for a highly competitive job market, yet there are also different factors that can make the recruitment process challenging. This time let us take a look at the top five challenges hiring organizations encounter in the Middle East.
1. Diverse Cultural Backgrounds
One has to appreciate the fact that the Middle East is a region with a variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Since in many countries expatriates form a large proportion of the workforce, many companies face different cultural attitudes and practices. This change is both positive and negative.
Thus, knowing how to manage relationships, communication styles, work ethics, and other values is power. For example, a question that seems innocuous in Western parlance may be considered quite rude in the Arab world when one asks, “how old are you?” This leads to great risk, causing interviews to proceed poorly and consequently the loss of talent, which may be detrimental to the company. To avoid these problems, it becomes a necessity for organizations, especially those involved in manpower in the Middle East, to train their HR personnel on cultural diversity.
Furthermore, organizations need to appreciate the significance of connections, as there are often more personal relationships formed before business emerges in many cultures from the Middle East. Respecting certain social practices in the market and ethnically based initiatives for creating and maintaining interpersonal relationships can significantly contribute to a company’s efforts to attract and retain skilled people in the manpower Middle East landscape.
2. Regulatory Challenges
Another challenge which organizations are likely to face in the Middle East is presence of rules and regulations. Each country has its own rules and deals with manpower relations, immigration policies, and employment, which serves as a barrier for businesses that intend to recruit. For example, seeking work authorization for foreign professionals is an arduous task.
In the UAE and similar nations, overzealous enforcement of work pass policies and employment agreements may lead to loss of business opportunities and incurrence of unnecessary expenses. These are costs that may be unavoidable as the firm spends time in coping with excessive laws and policies.
In addition, there are likely to be different laws in different countries, with each country having a different perspective on manpower, for example, working hours.
3. Struggle for Talent Acquisition
The Middle East has been witnessing great economic advancement, including the technology, finance, and tourism industries, among others. The same growth however has led to an increase in the demand for skilled manpower, making it hard for companies to lure and even keep talented individuals.
As more skilled people are identified and put into consideration by organizations, employee pays will have to be enhanced to incorporate the presence of benefits, among others. In addition to salary, people seek for jobs nowadays with respect to work-family balance, scope for growth, and the environment provided by the organization rather than just the nomenclature of the job offered.
Considering the fact that this is a very competitive landscape, there is need for the organizations to ensure that they have a good employer brand and make sure that the brand values, culture and ethos of the organization are communicated. Creative and active approaches to recruitment like social sites, holding job fairs or recruitment expositions, and an employee referral scheme will help the company attract prospective candidates. Further, providing equal opportunity employment or diversity at the workplace may help widen the candidate scope for such companies.
4. Skills Gap and Education Mismatch
There is a factual enlargement of the talent pool that is evident in the middle East. However, the gap between what is required by employers and that provided by the employees is still conspicuous. Most of the educational systems within the region are still on the process of adapting the industrial changes causing a discrepancy in the skills of the graduates and the industries requiring them.
This skills gap can also translate to prolonged hiring timelines since the relevant skills for some positions may not be readily available within the job market and the organizations have to concentrate on training hopefuls for internal filling. This scenario can also happen whereby the organization has to inject a huge amount of money and time to train employees in order to eliminate such a phenomenon.
5. Political and Economic Instability
In the Middle East, various political and economic dynamics can strongly influence recruitment strategies. The presence of wars and tensions between nations, coupled with the vast uncertainties of oil markets, makes it hard to manage the human resources expected in an organization.
For example, when there are recessions, businesses are likely to implement redundancies and hiring stops, which would be the case in places where there is open conflict with no peace. Consequently, such a situation also brings about an instability in the attitudes of the job seekers, which makes it difficult for the organizations to recruit the most desirable people for the jobs.
To mitigate these effects, however, it is crucial for companies to build a strong employer brand and focus on the stability and opportunities they present. It may also alleviate panic to the possible candidates if the company’s strategy in the long run is well understood and that the employee’s welfare is guaranteed. Also, companies ought to create strategies for the workforce that are fluid in nature and that allow quick changes in the market so as to continue searching for talented individuals even when the market is volatile.
Conclusion
The hiring process typical to the region of the Middle East is intricate and fluid and hence poses numerous propulsion of firms in any attempt to hire. On the one hand, inclusion such as cultural heterogeneity, regulatory challenges, the job market, skills availability, and economic and political environment stabilization are some of the factors that organizations should be ready to deal with.
So as to be able to do that, companies have to take a broad view when it comes to personnel recruitment. This involves their generation of costs associated with the training of cross-cultural skills, making sure winning regulatory mechanisms, enhancing the image of the employer, hospitality education strategy development, and flexible workforce relations. In this way, organizations will be able to effectively tap the qualified and varied manpower resources in the Middle East, paving the way for long-term growth and success in this vibrant region. For recruitment in the Middle East, contact the Alliance Recruitment Agency. They offer both on-board and remote staffing solutions tailored to various industries globally, ensuring you find the right talent to meet your needs efficiently and effectively. Contact us now.