The retail market in the Middle East is the global center of attraction for local and international consumers and has greatly evolved in the last two decades. With more and more international brands trying to establish a strong foothold in the region and the rising of home-grown brands, the demand for world class talent has ever been growing. The regional market is characterized by an empowered customer base who is conscious about the products and demands for high standards of customer experience and satisfaction. Amongst the most prominent are the countries of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar where the trends and practices evolve and take shape and this is followed by the neighbors Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.
As the veterans of retail industry says, Retail is essentially a “people” business with consumers being one side of the coin and the other side being the employees. The undisputed winning strategy for large, mid and small organizations has been to keep the consumers happy and also keep the employees happy who serve the large pool of consumers. It goes without saying that only satisfied employees can ensure higher satisfaction and great experiences for the consumers. The region has been increasingly witnessing the changes in being very employee centric and the trend is here to stay.
Organizations face the challenge of attracting exceptionally great talent and to an extent the HR and Talent Acquisition practitioners of the region has been successful in redefining strategies to accomplish this. In today’s context, it is no more an HR objective to hire great people but it has rather become a business requisite. The Middle East regional market boasts a young and vibrant talent force that becomes a unique USP for the retail business. It can be said that the job market has evolved to be a competitive one that favors the job seekers and the employers need to position themselves with great value proposition to attract good talent.
The next formidable challenge is empowering employees to deliver their best and the first step in this direction is to train and skill employees. In today’s business landscape, training is not just limited to job skills or brand knowledge but also needs to cover other critical areas such as cultural sensitivity and enhancing customer satisfaction. The prominent players in the region place great emphasis on such trainings and we can see the ambitious players move to this direction as well. The current trend is to have both classroom and online trainings where knowledge thirsty and eager to grow employees get highly engaged with the offerings of the training from such organizations.
The most strenuous challenge faced by all retailers is talent retention. The region has high rates of employee turnover and multiple factors such as lack of engagement, better job openings, and poor workplace culture are few of the reasons for this. To tackle this, organizations need to have highly competitive salaries and rewards along with Recognition, Career Advancement and most importantly Work Life balance. The right mix of all these attributes helps to build and foster a great workplace culture and serves as the winning strategy to retaining employees.
Only a happy workforce can provide amazing customer experiences to the demanding, price sensitive and curious consumers of today. And undoubtedly, the customer is the center of the business.
