In spite of the financial crisis dampening job prospects in the GCC, the issues surrounding nationalisation continue on relatively unabated, as does the battle between expats and nationals. We take it as a given that nationals are useless or that expats are arrogant – depending on which side of the fence you sit.

The governments of the GCC initiated the big idea of introducing quotas of up to 40-50% nationals within the private and public sectors about a decade ago. Well, it kind-of worked in Europe in the 1980s-90s in a bid to get more women into senior management positions, so why not try a similar tack here?

What was meant though to support the native population, grant them access to previously unreachable areas in the private and public sector and therefore lead to development and increased productivity of the nationals, has back-fired badly.

The limited number of nationals on the market became a commodity, comparable to rare diamonds or fine art, exhibited and gawked at but of no real purpose than look pretty in the statistics. Rather than being welcomed with open arms, they were welcomed with open wallets.
Instead of honest training and development they got “passport promotions”. It didn’t matter anymore who you were – as long as you had the right papers you got a contract; what you didn’t get is a genuine career.

These policies annoyed the existing staff, which mainly consisted of expat talent, but much more importantly, they disadvantaged, disenfranchised and subsequently disillusioned these nationals so they ended up sliding into exactly the same clichés the government was trying to fight so passionately. The voices calling the locals lazy, unskilled, under-motivated and mostly absent during working hours grew louder.

Luckily these things are changing now. It’s a slow process, as it was with the European women earlier, but things are happening.

A successful nationalisation programme has to start long before offering a contract to an individual. Employers need a clear strategy around what they want to achieve through nationalisation (ideally beyond filling the quota). This involves having in place the infrastructure to conduct personality assessments to make sure they put the right people in the right jobs, and have an internal career coaching and mentoring facility ready for the new joiners.

The biggest obstacle and challenge for the near future is performance management (or the lack thereof) of national employees. Performance management is an integral part of any employee’s development, very often especially the nationals are exempt from performance management though as the consequences of such development policies could be damaging for employers – it could batter the company’s reputation, result in sanctions for the organisation, or simply be too expensive and difficult to find replacements if nationals need to be let go.

This leads to companies, especially those who do not fall under the quota system (which is the majority), avoiding national hires as they tend to be more expensive and near-impossible to fire for whatever reason, be it due to performance or economic reasons.

During the crisis I was hoping for a signal from the government to confirm the paradigm shift away from protectionism towards fair and real opportunities for the national population. It hasn’t materialised in that drastic way, but there are tentative signs that things are really changing for the better. We can only hope.

Nina Hoffmann is an experienced consultant and a nationalisation/emiratisation specialist. She has been in Dubai for more than three years and currently works as team leader at Next Level Management Consultancy, a company owned and run by two UAE Nationals. She also happens to be engaged to an Emirati.