What color is my parachute is a question many a talented jobseeker in the booming GCC market is asking him/herself as the regional job market continues to boom, employment opportunities abound and key employers continue to vie for top talent across industry and geographic lines. In this era of high opportunity and flux, regional employers are largely aligned on the need to actively and creatively engage their talent to maximize retention and dampen volatility and attrition rates.
To what extent have regional employers been successful in raising engagement levels amongst their employees? A recent poll on Bayt.com, the Middle Easts #1 job site indicated that a surprising 63% of respondents considered them fully engaged in their jobs and another 17% considered they moderately engaged. Only 20% considered they not at all engaged or actually hated their job. Interestingly when we asked employers what percentage of their staff they considered to be fully engaged in their jobs over 27% responded that over 61% were; 24% responded 41-60%; 21% responded 21-40% and 27% responded 1-20%.
Probing deeper, Bayt.com asked jobseekers what factors would cause them to become more engaged at work and learnt that higher salaries (28% of the vote) followed very closely by more training and development opportunities (27% of the vote) and following that by better management (25% of the vote)were the key determining factors. When employers were asked in parallel what factors they think would cause their staff to become more engaged in their jobs, the majority, 37%, interestingly selected better management as being the key factor, followed by better salaries at 30% and more training and development opportunities at 20%. However when we asked jobseekers the question what factor most causes you to be disengaged at work? the answers were somewhat different. The overwhelming majority, 52% indicated poor management followed by 27% indicating low salary and only 4% indicating poor training. Long hours were chosen by over 6% of the jobseekers as the factor that most contributes to their disengagement and the long commute to work by as many as 3% of the 2,900 jobseekers polled.
While the polls evidenced that employers are not too far off the mark in gauging the level of employee engagement in their organization, it appears that they do not fully understand the factors that drive engagement. The remedy employers favored with disengaged staff according to the Bayt.com employer poll is indicative of this disconnect.38% of employers favor giving employees clearer job roles and responsibilities and 17% favor sending them to external coaches while 15% favor mentoring them internally. Only 13% favor giving them added salary albeit with added responsibilities and a minority of 7% favor firing them.
