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The UAE is one of the most developed economies in the Middle East. UAE came into the limelight when it became the first and only country to have a ministry of Artificial Intelligence. With the growing economy, there is a need of better HR practices in the UAE.

The country is trying its best to promote itself as a new silicon valley. And not to miss out, it is focusing more on Human Resources or HR. UAE Vision 2021 lists building strategic capabilities for skilled human capital as the first of seven strategic enablers. To achieve these targets good HR policies and procedures clearly play a significant role. You can’t overlook the importance of HR practices to achieve the socio-economic goals of the country.

Improving HR Practices in UAE

The UAE has a lot to offer. Tourists land here with high expectations of entertainment and fulfillment, professionals arrive with expectations of growth in their career, businesses arrive with a goal of establishing their footprint and diversifying themselves. All of this has resulted in expatriates and immigrants accounting for 89% of the total population and only 11% of the population is native to the UAE. This much diversity demands much elegant HR practices to hold the workforce aligned towards the socio-economic goals of the country.

Human resources are the “organizationally relevant capabilities of groups and individuals” (Scott-Jackson et al., 2014a), and strategic HR practices are “a pattern of planned deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals” (Wright and McMahan, 1992). 

This blog will take the readers through the challenges faced in the HR practices of the UAE. And also on how the country is taking the right steps to change and outshine with its HR practices.

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HR Challenges in UAE

 There are 10 major challenges of HR practices in UAE:

HR and Compliance

Compliances play a significant role in HR management. Not adhering to the statutory or regulatory compliances can get organizations in trouble. As HR professionals have a lot on their plate, it becomes difficult to keep a check on these regulatory changes.

Failure to comply with these regulatory changes can damage the brand’s reputation and can be a costly mistake. HR practices should identify these lapses to minimize such enterprise-wide risks.

Recruitment

Recruitment for any job role is a very time and resource-exhausting process. To fill managerial positions, MNCs in the UAE generally prefer people from their source country.

Such actions promote a sense of discrimination within the organization. This promotes low enthusiasm and less motivation among the employees. Companies should promote racial decisions and should hire more from the local talent pool of UAE.

Employee Retention

A country with 89% of the population being expats faces a problem of employee retention. Whenever an expat lands in the UAE, the priority is to look for a temporary job to adjust to the country, so s/he is ready to adjust for any job. Thereafter if the job doesn’t intrigue them enough, employees start their hunt for new jobs. This increases the rate of employee retention in almost every organization that fails to address this issue.  

Seasonal Demand

UAE is a tourist destination and tourism contributes 12.1 percent of the GDP. The hospitality industry in the UAE witnessed a sudden surge of demand for their services in the months of March to November. This surge pushes organizations to hire more workforce to stay operative. HR departments eventually are on the verge of crashing during such seasonal hirings. 

Employee Theft

The major challenge in retail is employee theft. In the UAE cases of the employee, theft is almost 4x from anywhere in the world. Employee theft remains top on the list of challenges faced by HR. It can only be eliminated by an improved onboarding process, proper mental scanning of the candidate while hiring, and improved workplace conditions.

Employee Productivity

HR practices usually measure employee productivity with the overall contribution to the growth of the company. Missing out on the small contribution of the employees may result in employee dissatisfaction with the job. Performance evaluation both on large and small levels should be promoted for job satisfaction and to increase employee efficiency. Measuring employee productivity should be a significant aspect of HR practices in UAE. 

Payroll Errors

Payroll serves as a nervous system in an organization. Everything an employee needs – be it advance salary or any other employee-centric benefit, all of this is controlled by payroll only. If the Payroll process of the organization is handled manually then there is always a chance of human error, resulting in pay loss or other big blunders. HR practices need to be automated for payroll operations to minimize errors and losses. 

Employee requests and complaints

Automation is the response to all human worries. In an organization, there are a lot of issues faced by the employees for which a lot of queries and complaints are raised. If not handled timely it can hurt the employee morale and performance. HR department receives requests and complaints all the time, a complete workforce management system with employee self-service module can reduce a lot of HR work.

Culture and Communication

The diverse background of the workforce in the UAE creates a barrier in communication. Employees from different backgrounds and cultures will always find their own way of doing things unless told to do it in a certain way. The culture and communication gap is the challenge that directly hinders the performance of the company. If a team working on a project is not weaved together through the thread of communication, it will not be able to get the contribution of everyone. Diversity in the workforce can be a big boon for an organization if more communication is promoted.

Minimal Transparency

Human nature has always been of some prejudices and skepticism. Growth and work quality are directly proportional to transparency. More transparency in the growth process makes employees feel valued and promotes healthy competition to push the organization and the employees out of their comfort zone. Therefore, one must focus on enhancing transparency in the organization.