Working for the ‘right’ boss, being treated fairly and work that enables personal growth are the main concerns of employees in the ME, new research has claimed.
Speaking at the inaugural Dubiotech Leadership Forum 2010, held this week as part of the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Middle East (PABME) conference in Dubai, Dr. Tamer Elewa, Director of HR, Merck Serono and a research member of Aberdeen Business school, The Robert Gordon University in Scotland, UK, revealed his brand new doctorate research with regard to ‘ Middle East Employee Engagement’. The research focuses on the cross cultural barriers against staff engagement and has studied the difference in perception of staff engagement and analyzed data obtained from around 30,000 employees across the globe for Merck Serono, a division of Merck Darmstadt, one of the global leaders in pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing and the oldest. The research focused on comparing the global results versus the regional perception in the GCC and Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen. The research revealed that the top drivers of employee engagement in the region were (in order) Work that enables personal growth, working for the “right bossâ€, and being fairly treated (salary / benefits and equal rights).
The forum debated the idea of “Cross Cultural Leadership – From A Middle East Perspective†and engaged an audience of CEO’s, senior managers and HR heads from relevant industries including bioscience, pharmaceuticals, and all life science related concerns. Organised by Vision Executive Search, in conjunction with Dubiotech, the forum was initiated in order to give insights into the local life science industry and it’s senior managers into how best to operate successfully in this region. Dr Marco Baccanti, CEO of Dubiotech opened the forum and other regional heads of business gave their own perspective on cross cultural leadership. Jan Felton, CEO Modern Pharmaceutical Company shared his own cultural history and working profile whilst dissecting the ‘rules and tools’ of relationship building and business nurturing within the workplace, and concluded with the need for employees to be wary of balancing cultural sensitivity and consistency.
Craig McLaren, MD&D Middle East at Johnson & Johnson presented on the topic of ‘Cultural Intelligence in terms of Leadership Success’ Craig defined business challenges in the MENA region as Diversity: No one size fits all, Talent pool: Shallow in some critical functions, HR: Availability, skills, work ethic, cost, quotas Supply chain efficiency: where to source? Infrastructure gaps; Competition from Asia and diversion from Germany with strong pressure on prices and expectations on MEA being the corporate growth stars . Mr. McLaren then shared his theories on ‘How to Lead for Success in a Multicultural Multinational’ in this region.
Summing up the forum, Dr Nairouz bader, CEO of Vision Executive Search said “ As well as having so many influential and successful business heads in the same room, the ideas on cross cultural leadership in this region that have been shared are a phenomenal resource to all who attended, from the exclusive research stats revealed by Dr. Tamer Elewa to the insights given by Craig McLaren and Jan Felton – this forum is now a yearly ‘must’ for anyone in the life sciences industryâ€
