JEDDAH — Ninety percent of employees in the Middle East and North Africa claim to be loyal to their company, a “‘Work Satisfaction in the MENA” poll conducted by Bayt.com, the region's number one job site, said Sunday. However, 61 percent do not feel that they are well compensated in their current job. Overall, the majority (58 percent) of people in the MENA region are satisfied with their current employment, with 27 percent of these being ‘very satisfied'. Seven out of 10 (71 percent) like the company that they work for, while eight out of 10 (80 percent) are proud of their employer's brand and 94 percent say that their job is meaningful to them. When asked if they feel challenged in their current position, 83 percent stated yes, with a further three quarters claiming that their job stresses them either ‘occasionally' (39 percent) or ‘most of the time' (35 percent). Most feel that they are growing and learning in their job (although 35 percent would like to grow more).
In terms of possibilities for promotion, a quarter (23 percent) say that there are ‘plenty' of opportunities in their company, while 38 percent state that there are none. A third (32 percent) of poll respondents claim that the thing they would most like to change about their job is their salary. Other respondents would like to change their role and responsibilities (23 percent), or their training and development path (20 percent). “There is a general level of satisfaction with their employment situation amongst the majority of people across the MENA region, though there are clearly areas in which employees wish their company would improve. These seem to be mostly incentive-based, which suggests companies looking to reduce churn should consider more training and motivation schemes for their staff,” said Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com. “At Bayt.com, which was twice consecutively voted among Top Ten Places To Work in the UAE by GPTW, we gather information from the region's job seekers, employers and employees, to create a comprehensive picture of the MENA workplace environment.” Management style plays a significant role in employee levels of satisfaction, with the majority (45 percent) of poll respondents stating that they are supervised ‘just right'; that their management's expectations of them are mostly realistic (according to 60 percent), and that the communication channels in their company are open (70 percent - though 36 percent of these state that they are not open enough). “Communicating openly, honestly and often is one of our key values at bayt.com and repeated HR surveys we conduct across the region emphasize the importance of maintaining transparent open communication channels to ensure maximum employee engagement and lift employee morale which directly affects output and productivity,” he added. “Our emphasis on communication is manifested both internally via various structured and unstructured mechanisms as well as externally through our bayt.com Blog, Jobseeker Career Digests, Recommended Jobs mailers, Jobs alerts, and various other newsletters and bulletins.” Only 28 percent of polled professionals believe that their management is unprofessional. A further 13 percent claim that their co-workers are unprofessional, though 95 percent state that they do in fact get along with their co-workers. In another report, it was noted that the dominance of foreigners has even been more pronounced in the workforce than in the total population. Non-nationals constituted a majority of the labor force in all the GCC countries, with the average for the year 2004 being close to 70 percent. The lowest rates were recorded in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but even there expatriates constituted above 50 and 65 percent of the workforce, accordingly; in Kuwait 82 percent of the workforce were foreign, in Qatar almost 90 percent, and in the UAE: 90 percent, according to Human Rights Watch report in 2004. However, as the unemployment among nationals began to grow, which was a phenomenon unheard of in the past, the GCC governments decided to embark on the formulation of labor market strategies to improve this situation, to create sufficient employment opportunities for nationals, and to limit the dependence on the expatriate labor (the so-called localization, nationalization or indigenization of labor, depending on the country referred to as: Saudization, Omanization, Emiratization, etc.). A number of measures have been proposed to achieve these objectives: some professions have been reserved as ‘for nationals only', the employment quotas for nationals and expatriates have been introduced in certain professions, wage subsidies and state retirement plans for nationals in the private sector were established parallel to fees and charges on the foreign labor to make it less competitive. Private companies meeting quota requirements have been rewarded in public tenders. — SG
