Page 223 - 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 205

population is too small to sustain so many institutions, Education
City aims to attract talent from elsewhere in the Gulf and MENA
regions, acting as a regional hub for developing human capital.
The competition between Dubai and Qatar to build educa-
tional facilities has multiple winners. At the top of the list are the
local talent pool and the companies—both local and international—
that seek to hire them.

CHARTING YOUR WAY
Human capital issues in the Gulf, as we have now seen, are by no
means simple and straightforward. They pose a set of interesting
and complex challenges—challenges linked to the market, to the
infrastructure, and to regulations. What, then, is the path ahead?
In thinking through human capital, global firms need to take a
sophisticated view involving short-, medium-, and long-term
strategies. In the short term, expatriate talent remains crucial but
should be attracted based on fit with the GCC market. In the
medium term, attracting high-caliber GCC local executives at the
early stages of their careers is central. And in the longer term, there
is no substitute for investing in human capital development in the
region. This exact path may not suit every global firm, but as a
general approach it fits the needs of a great many multinational
firms intent on conducting long-term operations in the Gulf.
(See Figure 7.6.)

Figure 7.6 Human capital: a path ahead