The Forum hosted Harish Bhatia, Regional Director, Korn Ferry Hay Group Middle East, and Ammar Shehadeh adviser, Korn Ferry Hay Group Middle East and North Africa, who shed light on the latest studies conducted by Korn Ferry Hay Group on issues related to millennials at work and their growing impact on the global work environment today and how to attract and maintain talent to organizations.

Harish Bahettia reviewed a number of major trends that influence organizations world-wide, namely globalization, demographic changes, individualism, digital lifestyles, and technology integration and the big boom around the world in this area. He pointed out that organizations have seriously consider and contribute to the difficult task of shaping the future,  by predicting future challenges, meeting employees' needs and aspirations, and taking into account individual differences among the different generations of workforce.

He stressed that leaders of organizations should be flexible with subordinates and understand the nature and needs of different generations of their employees noting that the success of organizations is measured by the ability to build a strong relationship between the leadership and staff, based on trust, cooperation, transparency and credibility.

Bahettia said that all employees consider job security as top priority and when searching for a new job. In this area, Bahettia asses, organizations face a number of challenges, notably, how to establish flexibility across the organization, ability to handle workplace diversity and complexity, the level of cooperation between management and staff, ability to enhance employee loyalty and workplace harmony among the staff.

“Organizations spend a lot of money on training and development of their employees, in order to build s creative workforce. Similarly, younger employees are doing their best to develop their abilities and learn a lot of things in the organization. They demonstrate interest in areas within the organization, no matter how relevant to their original duties sometimes. This trend among young generation must be given utmost care by organizations”, he said.

69% of graduates are confident of capably filling their future jobs  

For his part, Ammar Shehadeh, advisor at Korn Ferry Hay Group, Middle East and North Africa, gave a presentation on a number of global studies and specialized research in the field of human resources. He explained that according to a study 88% of managers believe that employees skilled constitute the most valuable asset for any organization, and 83% of them believe that the competition has become fierce among international companies in attracting retaining talent.

Shehadeh said: "73% of leaders believe that only 25% of graduates have the skills required to fill vacant posts in the future, while 69% of graduates are confident of their ability to meet the needs and requirements of future jobs, regardless of skills required.

“Induction programs for this category of new employees in most organizations, do not often achieve the desired objective, as they focus on functional and professional skills, overlooking behavioral skills. Such programs may be more useful by helping the employees to understand themselves and their personal traits and not only to understand the organization and the work environment around them, and also by involving the supervisors in this type of programs to provide moral support”.

HR Club

The Human Resources Club, is one of these major initiatives, launched in 2010, with the objective of developing and empowering human capital, and to provide a platform that brings together human resource professionals and practitioners in the public and private sectors under one umbrella, to exchange knowledge, ideas, experiences and solutions that would enhance the employee competencies and promote the role of human resource departments in order to bring about the desired change.

The Club aims to create an intellectual and cognitive communication between human resources professionals and public administration officials in the UAE, and to exchange views and discuss the challenges and solutions relating to issues of public administration and institutional services at various work sites.  In addition, it seeks to transfer experiences and best practices among managers, specialists, experts, researchers and those interested in the development of human capital, locally, regionally and internationally.

The HR Club offers its membership, which has grown to over 10 thousand, an ideal opportunity to learn about the best practices, experiences and success stories of many individuals and institutions, as well as meeting with specialists and practitioners in the field of institutional work.