Page 211 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Building Your Team: Human Capital Strategies for the GCC 193

position to compete with foreign workers at the time of the oil
booms because the schooling and training systems were simply not
in place. As mentioned previously, the sheer volume of projects and
economic development begun in the 1970s required massive levels
of foreign workers. If these workers were given a path to naturaliza-
tion, the argument runs, the local community would have been
quickly crowded out and would have lost control of their own
country. Certainly in the countries with expatriate majorities,
naturalization would have had a fundamental impact on the polit-
ical landscape and would potentially threaten the local dynasties. A
further problem with naturalization would be its impact on the
states’ ability to provide generous welfare packages to citizens—
something that becomes much harder if the number of citizens is
increased manyfold. Just as relying on foreign workers has been a
“necessary evil” in the GCC countries, insiders argue, alienating
labor practices have been necessary for locals to retain control of
their countries.
Multinational firms doing business in the Gulf cannot, of
course, easily influence the labor practices of the region. They can
recognize, however, the business and human resources implica-
tions of such practices. One such implication is that expatriate com-
munities tend to remain connected to their country of origin and are
therefore more apt to seek goods and services linked to their home
country. For example, expatriates will often bank with financial
institutions linked to their home country such as Citibank or HSBC,
and savvy multinationals can market to the expatriate community
in targeted ways using home-country to reinforce their allegiance to
their homelands.
From the perspective of human capital, there are both tactical
and strategic challenges presented by the engagement norms of the
GCC countries governing expatriates working in the Gulf. The
tactical challenges include such things as knowing how to draft and
manage employment contracts by using defined durations (e.g., of
two or three years), having to secure visas for staff and families
(itself a major competency of any multinational’s GCC human
resources team), and helping to secure admissions for their children
into the relevant schools (e.g., the British or American schools).
Also, benefits packages for professional staff typically include
tickets to the home country each year, generating significant