EP66: Increasing importance of HR for Middle East businesses

Human capital is critical to business success, yet many Middle East organizations historically underinvested in HR due to reliance on transient expatriate labor and a focus on basic personnel administration. This has led to weak people development, low motivation and high attrition. As governments push nationalization and businesses recognize HR’s impact on performance, attention to structured HR practices is increasing. Key regional challenges include unclear organisation and grading structures, poorly defined job roles and performance measures, absence of HR policies, inequitable compensation systems and weak HR processes. Addressing these requires clear organization design, transparent job descriptions with performance-linked rewards, simple and well-communicated HR policies, and systematic HR processes covering manpower planning, recruitment, induction, performance management, training, succession planning, employee engagement and exit management. Shifting the mindset from viewing HR as a cost to seeing it as a strategic investment can improve productivity, retention and long-term business results.