Kenexa Research Institute clears prejudices in career outlook of Gulf expatriates and nationals
-Kenexa opens office in Dubai International Financial Centre-
Kenexa, a global leader in building the world’s greatest workforces, revealed results of the Kenexa Research Institute’s (KRI) recent employee opinion study for the GCC. Highlighting their confidence in career growth potential and their organisations’ performance, employees in the GCC recorded having strong employee engagement. The data come from an analysis of the WorkTrends™ database, an annual survey of worker opinions conducted by KRI.
The survey results were presented during the Annual Kenexa Research Institute Senior Leaders Seminar on April 16 at the Dubai International Financial Centre. A special focus was placed on employee engagement within the GCC countries, exploring how those results compare to other regions around the world, as well as summarizing differences between engagement drivers for expatriate and national workers.
The average employee engagement index score for employees in the GCC was 56 per cent, higher than their counterparts in Germany, Spain, China, the UK, France, Italy and Japan, but lower than employees in India, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S.
Oman ranked third globally at 63 per cent, only behind India (73 per cent) and Brazil (65 per cent), while Saudi Arabia (61 per cent), the United Arab Emirates (59 percent) and Kuwait (59 per cent) were higher than the GCC national average.
“The human resource challenges in the GCC countries pose unique issues mainly compounded by the presence of two workforces: national and expatriate. While the local governments are taking measures to engage more nationals in the workforce, most companies are dependent on a largely expatriate labourforce which exceeds 14 million,” said Jack Wiley, executive director, Kenexa Research Institute. “These survey results mitigate several prejudices regarding the outlook of expatriates and nationals to their careers,” said Wiley. “At 58 and 54 per cent respectively, the difference in employee engagement index scores of expatriates and nationals in the GCC region, are not of practical significance. The drivers for engagement also do not vary significantly. Confidence in the organisation’s future and job safety as a priority are top ranked drivers for both groups.”
Of the GCC workforce, senior mangers ranked highest in employee engagement at 67 per cent with workers at 48 per cent, while managers, supervisors and professionals ranked above the GCC average in employee motivation to the workplace.
Given the current economic environment, Dr. Wiley also highlighted what workers most value from their organization’s leadership.
“To improve both expatriate and national engagement, the data identifies two main pillars of engagement that need strengthening-leadership and management. Strengthening leadership with messages of inspiring and promising futures is a priority in engaging nationals. Developing the management will improve expatriate engagement as they are driven by a desire to excel in their workplace,” added Dr. Wiley.
Kenexa Expands Global Footprint
Kenexa has opened an office in Dubai at the Dubai International Financial Centre. Organizations in the GCC will benefit from Kenexa’s significant investment in research and development as well as Kenexa’s award-winning technology offerings and comprehensive solutions for employee assessment, talent management, employment branding, recruitment process outsourcing, employee engagement surveys, performance management and HR analytics.
“This latest addition to Kenexa’s operations expands our global position and allows us to continue to help multi-national organizations solutions attract qualified talent and maximize their performance,” said Rudy Karsan, chief executive officer, Kenexa.
