Shadi misses the point
Posted by Peter Peter, dubai, UAE on Friday 8 May 2009 at 13:28 UAE time
I am sorry to say Shadi misses the point completely and so do many others.
As employers we are ready to compete in the open market for talent but unlike other European or Asian countries I am also a slave of this system.
Each visa costs me roughly Dhs. 8,000/- and an additional 3 - 4,000/- for the new recruits' air ticket. It also costs me an average of Dhs. 5,000/- in ads and agent's fees to find someone.
More often than not the recruit is not ideal as the local laws do not allow me to try out a person for a couple of weeks to see if he is good enough and is actually capable of doing everything he/she claims in the CV. I have to spend 15 - 17,000/- dirhams per recruit and have only his CV and one or two interviews to make my decision.
If after all this I have to bring in staff, train them and then loose them to someone who pays a few hundred more then it is totally unfair.
In 2005 we lost Dhs. 1,00,000/- on seven visas of staff that jumped jobs or were fired within a few months. Some were incompetent others had accepted our job when their third visit visa was about to expire - with the full intention of jumping the job once they had time to look around. One was found stealing from the company. How many small businesses can survive such losses and disruption ?
Please also add to this fact that over the last few years rents have gone through the roof , business levels have fallen and there is unfair competition from those expats who do not take a residence visa but keep living and working off visit visas that they can stamp at the airport or the Hatta border for no cost at all .
Every week I get CVs from staff who had fancy salaries but were either not paid on time or lost their jobs because the company could not afford to keep them.
Only when you take all this into account you will understand the real heroics of the small and medium employers who have doggedly kept their businesses running and paid salaries on time !
Yes it is true that many businesses will fold if employers have to compete for talent in an open market. But think of this :
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if the rents jump by more than 100% in one year. That happened in Dubai.
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if the CEO has to spend weeks and months , year after year , fighting his landlord from evicting him on some silly excuse , simply because he has another tenant willing to pay double. This happens in Dubai.
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if they can not hire AND fire at will ! As an employer there are umpteen rules which make things difficult if not impossible at times.
Nowhere in the world has there been such a sudden influx of population where infrastructure , local transportation , accommodation , office space , warehousing facilities etc. just could not keep up with demand. All this happened in Dubai.
So let us accept that Dubai is a phenomenon unlike anything else in history. It is a amazingly bold experiment. It is a dream we all want to share in . We all came here for our own reasons and accepted what we got. Some had it better than others.
To the lesser or greater degree this is true of the other GCC countries also.
Yes if the workers want their freedom , so do we the employers.
I think this liberalization is an excellent step in the right direction and we support it. All we want is that the employers also get a fair deal.
Let us ALL have a level playing field then we can all enjoy the game - together.
Somehow it now also reflects to the current situation in some of Qatar's companies: the mutual problem with the proper hiring of an employee by way of sponsor's right and his own HR. One of the international companies I know had the difficulty to make it a point to suffice the proper professional workforce and their proper salary adjustments and requirements because the 'sponsor' has more power to 'choose' its own manpower (without even looking for evident proof that their recently hired employees are up and tested for professional standards) and thus has more entry of non-pro workers, leaving the chief or a higher representative of the international company a little bit of difficult to compromise for the 'misconducts' severely made by many of its previous or present employees as they were 'conceptually' hired for 'cheap labour' reasons...without even an interview from the proper representative of the said int'l company.
"Everything in this book may be wrong." Illusions: The Adventures of The Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
Shadi misses the point
Posted by Peter Peter, dubai, UAE on Friday 8 May 2009 at 13:28 UAE time
I am sorry to say Shadi misses the point completely and so do many others.
As employers we are ready to compete in the open market for talent but unlike other European or Asian countries I am also a slave of this system.
Each visa costs me roughly Dhs. 8,000/- and an additional 3 - 4,000/- for the new recruits' air ticket. It also costs me an average of Dhs. 5,000/- in ads and agent's fees to find someone.
More often than not the recruit is not ideal as the local laws do not allow me to try out a person for a couple of weeks to see if he is good enough and is actually capable of doing everything he/she claims in the CV. I have to spend 15 - 17,000/- dirhams per recruit and have only his CV and one or two interviews to make my decision.
If after all this I have to bring in staff, train them and then loose them to someone who pays a few hundred more then it is totally unfair.
In 2005 we lost Dhs. 1,00,000/- on seven visas of staff that jumped jobs or were fired within a few months. Some were incompetent others had accepted our job when their third visit visa was about to expire - with the full intention of jumping the job once they had time to look around. One was found stealing from the company. How many small businesses can survive such losses and disruption ?
Please also add to this fact that over the last few years rents have gone through the roof , business levels have fallen and there is unfair competition from those expats who do not take a residence visa but keep living and working off visit visas that they can stamp at the airport or the Hatta border for no cost at all .
Every week I get CVs from staff who had fancy salaries but were either not paid on time or lost their jobs because the company could not afford to keep them.
Only when you take all this into account you will understand the real heroics of the small and medium employers who have doggedly kept their businesses running and paid salaries on time !
Yes it is true that many businesses will fold if employers have to compete for talent in an open market. But think of this :
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if the rents jump by more than 100% in one year. That happened in Dubai.
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if the CEO has to spend weeks and months , year after year , fighting his landlord from evicting him on some silly excuse , simply because he has another tenant willing to pay double. This happens in Dubai.
Nowhere in the world can a business survive if they can not hire AND fire at will ! As an employer there are umpteen rules which make things difficult if not impossible at times.
Nowhere in the world has there been such a sudden influx of population where infrastructure , local transportation , accommodation , office space , warehousing facilities etc. just could not keep up with demand. All this happened in Dubai.
So let us accept that Dubai is a phenomenon unlike anything else in history. It is a amazingly bold experiment. It is a dream we all want to share in . We all came here for our own reasons and accepted what we got. Some had it better than others.
To the lesser or greater degree this is true of the other GCC countries also.
Yes if the workers want their freedom , so do we the employers.
I think this liberalization is an excellent step in the right direction and we support it. All we want is that the employers also get a fair deal.
Let us ALL have a level playing field then we can all enjoy the game - together.
Somehow it now also reflects to the current situation in some of Qatar's companies: the mutual problem with the proper hiring of an employee by way of sponsor's right and his own HR. One of the international companies I know had the difficulty to make it a point to suffice the proper professional workforce and their proper salary adjustments and requirements because the 'sponsor' has more power to 'choose' its own manpower (without even looking for evident proof that their recently hired employees are up and tested for professional standards) and thus has more entry of non-pro workers, leaving the chief or a higher representative of the international company a little bit of difficult to compromise for the 'misconducts' severely made by many of its previous or present employees as they were 'conceptually' hired for 'cheap labour' reasons...without even an interview from the proper representative of the said int'l company.
"Everything in this book may be wrong." Illusions: The Adventures of The Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach