Commentary

Is our own discrimination responsible for the UAE's lack of talent? (part 4)

June 5, 2017 by Murad Alnasur — Managing Director, FranchiseME / Restonalysis

Editor's note: this is the third part of a series addressing the lack of talent in the F&B industry in the UAE. To see the first three parts, click here, here and here

I started over a month ago writing about the lack of talent in the F&B industry in the GCC and specifically in the UAE. Since then, I wrote three articles, and this will serve as the recap for my thoughts.

Do you think the claim regarding the lack of talent in the F&B industry in the UAE is accurate? Have you had experiences that would support the claim or negate it? I posed my questions in order for you to reflect on your own experience if you happen to be in the F&B industry.

As far as what I wrote, it was all from first-hand experience. What is shocking is, while most of the articles received lots of interest from the readers, the first one regarding the bias in pay and benefits generated the most controversy and garnered the most attention.

I stated in my first article that the leaders serving at the top 3 tiers of leadership in the F&B industry happen to be western expats. I also challenged those making the decisions to apply the same western system of compensation and base it on performance.

The article dealing with the western expat issue scored more readers than all the rest combined. Also, the last one dealing with information-hoarding received the least count of readers.

The correlation

I thought about the two topics and realized that the correlation is very evident. The same western expats, whom disputed my claim that there is no bias in regards to nationality when hiring, are the same people whom are hoarding the information and keeping others from being developed. That, in turn, secures that the bias in hiring continues to take place, and lack of experience would be used to justify hiring the western expats.

It is a viscous circle- western expats are favored when selecting talent, and the same western expats hoard the information and keep others from developing the talent to replace them. This creates a monopoly on talent.

If you are a western expat leading a company in the GCC, I want you to ask yourself a question: “If I leave, whom will I trust to take over for me and continue to grow the company the way I did?”

I am sure that the majority of you will have the same answer, “No one.”

I wish to also ask all those who work under western expats leadership, did your leader develop you, or any of your colleagues to be able to fill his/her spot in case he/she will leave? The majority of you will have the same answer, "No."

When writing the articles, I found myself going around in full circle. The problem started with bias in hiring and continues to be the reason behind the lack of talent.

Now, to be able to either dispute what I claimed or validate it, I would love to hear from the two groups.

The true test

Please bear in mind that I have no hidden agendas and do not wish to alienate any nationality. Rather, if we are to solve the lack of talent problem, we must change the way we do things. My suggestion to all responsible for the hiring of the top three tires of leadership is to apply the below approach:

Make sure that you have someone on the interview panel that can really evaluate the applicant’s credentials regardless of nationality.
When deciding on compensation, set a budget and do not change it because of nationality. Regardless of nationality, do not increase the pay and benefits to attract a certain nationality.
Do not drop the compensation just because the applicant (while qualified) is from a certain nationality and the financial expectation is less.
Make your compensation and benefit a take-it-or-leave-it option. Do not compromise it.
Base your financial compensation on deliverables. Give all the hires for the same position a salary that is equal to 60 percent of the total compensation, and base the other 40 percent on KPIs that are well defined in advance. No compromise when evaluating, and no ambiguity in expectations.
Make succession planning a huge part of the KPIs. Do not take any excuses. I recommend that you base 40 percent of the total KPIs on developing a solid plan for the succession planning for the three highest tiers of leadership.

If you apply the six points above, you will realize that you are either paying the western expats too much or you are paying the non-western expats less than you should.

Back to where we started

Writing about the talent in our industry is a difficult task unless we are to be more transparent and face the reality of what takes place within our industry. When I started writing my articles dealing with the lack of talent, I never imagined that I would be focusing on the subject of bias when hiring. Based on comments and replies, I ended up discovering that the cause of the lack of talent in our industry is our bias and discriminating behavior when hiring.

If we are to search and hire talent regardless of nationality, we will find out that the claim is not valid. We will realize that there is great talent in the market. Yet, we are blinded by our poor judgment because we look for it under the nationality line and not under the qualifications line.

Guilty

I guess I am part of the problem; maybe I should have written my article about the lack of western expat talent and not talent in general. When looking at talent in general with total disregard to nationality, I am sure there is plenty of it, and the western expat talent is part of that pool. The problem is that most of us — including me — look for talent under the nationality line first, under the qualification line.

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