Alex Marr, Managing Director, Xeratek Document Solutions, a finalist in the Gulf Capital SME Awards in 2012, sees recruitment as one of the biggest barriers to business growth saying, “We have seen our business grow in the past two years. Our expanding presence throughout the UAE requires the employment of suitable staff to fill in available positions. This has certainly been a big challenge, but something that we have been able to manage so far. It is not just the availability of qualified staff that is a major concern, but also the ability to attract suitable talent to work for an SME. Business owners need to be creative in incentivising potential recruits as well as existing talent to help support current operations and future growth.”
In last year’s edition of the awards, SMEs who were shortlisted for the DHL People and Culture of the Year category showed how small businesses could successfully recruit and retain talent against bigger companies with much more competitive benefit packages. All finalists have in-house training programmes and professional development plans; others boost staff morale and reward excellent performance with foreign travels, gifts, internal recognition programmes, as well as modest financial bonuses and even profit-sharing.
Whilst recruiting qualified staff has put some pressure on SMEs, the MEED report also highlights an equally important issue that small business owners must address – only about 20% of SMEs interviewed for the report have hired UAE nationals. The rest have either no Emirati employees, or unable to recruit one.
“While we as an organisation are fully supportive of the government’s Emiratisation programme, the reality is that it is very hard for many big companies, let alone SMEs, to attract or recruit Emirati talent owing to so many factors, such as most nationals preferring to work in government offices and the significant disparity in compensation packages between the public and private sectors. A successful nationalisation campaign will depend as much on encouraging the Emirati workforce to become competitive with a work ethic that is comparable to the needs of the private sector, as it will on the government legislating appropriately,” says Mike Hynes, Managing Partner, Kershaw Leonard, a highly respected recruitment firm in Dubai.
The government has tried to solve the issue by setting up a classification of companies and establishment based on the number of UAE nationals employed which offers several incentives for companies that meet Emiratisation targets including lower labour card fees.
