UAE. Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting firm, has announced the highly anticipated names of the Best Employers in Middle East at an awards ceremony in Dubai today. The 2009 Best Employers are:

Hewitt Best Employers in Middle East 2009

Alghanim Industries, Kuwait
BankMuscat, Oman
Deloitte & Touche ME, Middle East
Fine Hygenic Paper, UAE
First Gulf Bank, UAE
Jones Lang LaSalle Middle East & North Africa
Marriott International, UAE
Microsoft Gulf and Microsoft Egypt
Procter and Gamble Near East- Beirut office
The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai

Emerging International Best Employer from Middle East

Jumeirah Group, UAE

Emerging SME Best Employer in Middle East

Magrudy Enterprises, UAE

The CEOs and HR heads of the best employers were honoured in person at the event. Some of the key findings of the study are:

• The HR function in organisations that are best employers plays the role of an expert people administrator and strategic business partner
• Best employers are better at career development
• Best employers provide better benefits
• Best employers are better at delivering the employment promise
• Best employers make significantly better investments in employee development
• Best employers are better at work assignment and performance management
• Best employers are better at making employees feel valued.

The research also highlighted the top four drivers of employee engagement in the Middle East as follows:

1 People/HR policies and practices - creating a positive work environment through people/HR policies and practices
2 Career aspirations - fulfilling career aspirations of employees
3 Career opportunities - providing future career opportunities to employees
4 Brand alignment - delivery on the employment brand promise.

Debabrat Mishra, Consulting Business Leader-Middle East, Hewitt Associates said: “We want to congratulate every one of our select best employers, as well as thank the other study participants. It’s our belief that the results of the study will inspire and provide direction to organisations in becoming employers of choice. In the long run, we expect this study to enhance the standards of people practices in Middle East and make the region a better place to work.

The Middle East study builds on the existing research of Hewitt conducted all over the world, with some adaptation for local issues such as progress with nationalisation and the ability to adapt to a multi-cultural workforce.

The findings included interest from 250 Middle East organisations and opinions from more than 150,000 employees in the region, making a landmark study and by far the most amibitious such research project ever undertaken.

In his presentation, Mishra said that 2008 will be marked as a landmark year for the growing maturity of the HR function in the Middle East. Up to 2006 was considered the period of talent acquisition for the region, he said. The period 2006 to 2008 is marked as the period of talent retention and systems development, and now, from 2008 onwards, will be the period of HR metrics.

One of the key findings from the overal data scores, said Mishra, was the fact that average scores for employee engagement in the Middle East were actually higher than the global average.

"Drivers of engagement and HR practices in the region in the Middle East, seem to focus on the demanding nature of the employees," he said. "This shows that employees are more mature than elsewhere, and it could also be due to the mobile and dynamic nature of the workforce. The aspect of recognition is strongly seen here as being of core importance with different nationalities. But we also found some differences with nationalities.

"The research provided a first-time oppportunity to see what drives engagement in the Middle East across all the countries. The top four drivers for engagement overall were HR policies and processes, meeting career aspirations and future career opportunities, and brand alignment, in other words how the company is delivering on its brand with the employees.

"But the Middle East is an amalgam of different mindsets and we found that with Asian and Subcontinent employees the aspect of recognition, not brand alignment, featured in the top drivers. On the other hand, pay and benefits as well as corporate responsibility, scored very highly with GCC and other Arab employees."

The difference between the top employers and other employers in terms of scores for employee engagement, was as much as 20%, said Mishra. And this was shown in some of the sharply different scores companies showed for some aspects such as nationalisation and the development of locals. Whereas some employers were strong in terms of nationalisation, and they made good business sense in having such a sucessful policy, other employers scored much lower scores for this aspect.

"The study gives some guiding light to other companies about how they can do some of the easy things," said Mishra. "For example Microsoft focuses very strongly on nationals. Some hotels actually send their employees to other organisations so that they can study other systems. This is a great exercise. It is not just about being fixed on the quota of nationals. It is good for business."

Hewitt’s study partners include the Dubai Knowledge Village, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, the Tamkeen (Labour Fund) in Bahrain, and the American Chambers of Commerce in Egypt. Dr Ayoub Kazim, Executive Director of the first study partner, agreed. 

“This study is of tremendous value to the region as it raises the standard of people practices across the Middle East," said Dr Kazim.

"This was a need that was not being met in the market, and we were very pleased to be able to support a much-needed initiative."

In order to make the study findings easily accessible to practitioners and to benefit the region’s human capital development, Hewitt will also conduct round-tables to show the findings in Cairo (18 May), Jeddah (19 May), Doha (21 May) and Abu Dhabi (26 May).

“These sessions are non-commercial and support Hewitt’s mission of ‘making the world a better place to work’”, added Mishra.

Details on the round-tables and the study findings are available at www.hewitt.com

The study involves surveying the participating organisations using three instruments developed by Hewitt which are:

• The Employee Opinion Survey (to gauge the level of employee engagement and gather information on employee perceptions of their work environment),
• The People Practices Inventory (to gather information about philosophies, practices, and policies that influence the management of people), and
• The CEO Questionnaire (to explore the alignment between business strategy and people policies).

Hewitt reported that the judging system was strcitly coded so that no company could be identified by name during the assessment process. The winners are chosen from random industry sectors, and no reference was made to choosing winners representative of any particular sector over another.

MIDDLE EAST BUSINESS COMMENT & ANALYSIS

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