The Bayt.com ‘Nationalization in the GCC’ poll, recently conducted by Bayt.com – the Middle East’s leading career site – has revealed that60% of respondents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) believe that their current workplace has effective localization policies.
KSA national employability
A majority of KSA respondents (60%) believe that their current workplace has effective localization policies, with37.04% believing that the policies are very effective. Less than one out of10 respondents believe that localization policies at their place of work are not effective at all.36.82% of respondents said that leading job sites, followed by newspaper listings (18.41%) are the main avenues for companies to recruit local talent.
However, an overwhelming majority (86.86%) still believe that KSA relies more on expatriates to take on specialized knowledge-based jobs (in fields such as information technology, health services and engineering to name a few).
A majority of the respondents (52%) believe that the unemployment rate among local talent in KSA is low, while48% conversely believe that unemployment rates are high. However,40.86% of respondents believe that finding and hiring local talent is extremely easy, while three out of10 believe the opposite is true.
The majority of those polled (57.43%) believe that local talent enjoys better pay and benefits than expatriates. Just over one out of10 respondents believe that local talent gets paid less. Only29.71% believe that pay is based entirely on merit. Overall,53.14% think that local talent gets promoted faster than international talent, while30.57% believe that promotions are based entirely on merit. Almost two out of10 (16.29%) believe that the career trajectory of expatriate talent gets promoted faster than national employees.
KSA nationals in the workplace
The percentage of local talent working in KSA companies is varied according to respondents.10.57% think that less than5% of the employees in their organization comprise of KSA nationals;24.86% believe that the number is somewhere between6-20% of the employees; and29.71% of respondents believe that21-50% of their company is comprised of local talent. Those who believe that between51-75% and over75% of employees are comprised of KSA nationals is18% and16.86% respectively.
Almost a third of those polled say that the average seniority of national talent working at their company is equally comprised of mid-career (31.77%) and senior management(32.85%).15.52% think that local talent comprises junior staff. Interestingly,37.18% of respondents didn’t know, or couldn’t say whether their company plans to hire more local talent next year; however, over half (52.71%) said yes, while10.11% said that there were no plans to hire local talent in the next year. More than half of the respondents believe that better educational and vocational training facilities for nationals will help improve the hiring of national talent in KSA the most. Contributing factors also include better incentives for private sector nationals hiring from government (18.77%), better coordination between educational institutes and companies (15.16%) and encouraging entrepreneurship (5.05%).
Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com said: “Nationalization is at the forefront of KSA’s employment initiatives, with nationalization quotas implemented throughout the Kingdom, especially in the private sector. At Bayt.com, we have been working with organizations large and small to assist them in hiring top National talent since we started in the year2000. Obviously, our hard work has paid off, with36.82% of respondents saying that the most effective way to recruit national talent is through leading job sites like Bayt.com. It is also interesting to see that career fairs are gaining popularity in the recruitment process. These fairs offer both the employer and potential employee the chance to meet face-to-face and exchange information. Private sector employers need to attend more career fairs in order to saturate their employee pool with a KSA national employee quota."
He continued: “At Bayt.com, our aim is empower employers through the insights that we accumulate in order to show them what the population is thinking when it comes to hiring national talent, and retaining their talent pool. We encourage nationals to engage with employers on Bayt.com through platforms such as Bayt.com Specialties where they can take part in industry related discussions. Private sector employers are also advised to attend more career fairs in order to augment their KSA employee talent pool as a complement to their holistic online recruitment activities. Bayt.com has a proprietary virtual job fair platform which is ideal for this purpose and offers a custom outreach for clients interested in creating their own job fair environment easily online. In addition, our teams are also engaged in key physical career events locally around the year.”
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has implemented Nitaqat, a quota-based national Saudization programme, designed to boost the Saudis’ share of private sector employment opportunities. KSA is not alone it its efforts, GCC countries have all implemented similar programs to fill nationalization quotas in an effort to shift to more knowledge based economies driven by the skilled nationals of their respective countries. Although the majority of respondents in the GCC believe that unemployment of nationals in their country of residence is low, considerable percentages do believes that unemployment is high. KSA respondents in particular believe so, with48% of them claiming that unemployment of Saudi nationals is high. The majority of respondents in the GCC believe that local talent get better pay and benefits when compared to expatriates, with a further quarter believing that pay depends entirely on merit. Only1 in10 believe that local talent gets paid less.
Localization policies in the GCC appear to be effective, with58% of respondents saying so, and with only13.3% of respondents saying that their companies do not plan on hiring more local talent in the next calendar year.