Page 203 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

CHAPTER 7

Building Your Team: Human

Capital Strategies for the GCC

INTRODUCTION
Not long ago, a leading global professional services firm was faced
with a peculiar challenge. Companies from the Gulf were actively
seeking the firm’s services, sending requests for proposals and con-
tacting offices directly. The work being requested was exciting and
well within the firm’s areas of expertise. The prospective clients
were fast-growing institutions more than able to pay the firm’s
hefty fees: exactly the type of client professional services firms love
to serve. All signs pointed to an opportunity to grow a practice in
the Gulf region in short order.
What, then, was the problem? As the firm scanned its
database of staff worldwide—a staff that numbered in the
thousands—they realized that hardly more than a dozen
professionals could speak Arabic. Thankfully, most clients in GCC
countries did not require Arabic-speaking employees. To build a
long-term franchise there, however, the firm needed to identify and
recruit staff with an affinity for the region. Within a year of
realizing this, the firm had opened offices there, and the new offices
were booking more clients at a remarkable rate.

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