Employers advised to keep staff keen

Employers advised to keep staff keen
Rania Abouzeid, THE NATIONAL

Last Updated: May 18. 2008

DUBAI // Employers who want to keep talented staff on board should woo them using the same tactics they would adopt to win repeat business from customers, says a human resources expert.

“Let’s stop thinking of employees as people who have to do what we say because we pay them and think of them as customers,” said David Creelman, the chief executive of Creelman Research, a Toronto-based human resources management company, at the seventh annual Middle East Human Resources Conference yesterday.

“How do you sell the job to them and get them to recommit?”

In a keynote address, Mr Creelman said managers should apply marketing principles to human-resource management.

“Think about marketers,” Mr Creelman said. “How would they get a customer to recommit? People in the sales side don’t just sit there and push products out. Go out there and get engaged with your people. Find out what it is they want.”

Recruiting and retaining skilled employees is particularly challenging in the UAE because of the transient nature of the country’s workforce and its multicultural makeup.

A report released last week by Hill & Knowlton Middle East and YouGov Siraj, said that managers in the UAE were acutely aware of the difficulties of finding the right people for the right jobs; more than two thirds of those surveyed said it was not an easy task to accomplish and, said Mr Creelman, “It’s not enough just to pay someone and hope they’ll recommit”. Before offering incentives, human-resources managers should consider where individual employees fell on what he called the four-point “recommitment scale”.

At the top of the scale were employees who were excited and eager to work hard. Next, those willing to do the work but not excited, followed by bored employees and, finally, those who were clearly dissatisfied.

Once an employee’s position on the scale had been identified, suitable incentives, ranging from higher salary, longer holidays or a more challenging position, could be used to retain their services.

“Different people will be looking for different things,” Mr Creelman said. “HR is not like calculus. There’s no one right answer.”

Mr Creelman said that even simple things, such as paying attention to employees, would affect their desire to remain committed to the company.

“Managers should ask themselves: ‘Who are the people you really want to keep? How much attention do you pay to them? When was the last time you had a conversation with them about their goals?’.” Mr Creelman added that managers should also evaluate their own performance and its effect on their staff.

“Did you hire dead wood or did you create it? Did you hire good people and turn them into dead wood?” Noora al Bedur, the manager of the Employment and Skills Development Center of Tanmia, the national human-resource development and employment authority, said that when it came down to it, a wage increase was usually all it took to keep an employee on the staff.

“The more you pay, the more people will stay,” she said.

Ms Bedur, who has been with Tanmia for seven years, said that, in addition to pay rises, financial incentives such as free parking and health insurance helped to keep employees committed to a company, but in her experience salary accounted for 60 per cent of an employee’s motivation.

Ms Bedur oversees about 25 employees and offers vocational training to 1,600 Emiratis a year, finding jobs for another 2,600.

“The most important thing in Dubai now is the salary,” she said, “And it’s the same for everybody, not just the locals.

“You’re talking about Dubai, one of the most expensive cities to live in. Motivation can get you through two years, but employees will then tell you that they can make more money elsewhere.”

Pauli Liimatainen, the vice president of human resources for Ericsson in the Middle East, said that his company carried out regular employee surveys to ascertain staff concerns. He also kept an eye on what his competitors were offering their staff.

Although his company’s staff turnover was less than five per cent per annum, Mr Liimatainen said that it could not afford to rest on its laurels.

“We are a little bit fortunate because our staff turnover is low,” he said after the keynote speech. “But you can’t ever relax because you have competition for labour. You need to be ahead. “

rabouzeid@thenational.ae