Serious shortage of skilled trade workers in the UAE

The stipulation as to who can employ a trade worker is unfairly segmenting the labour market between construction companies and specialised trade businesses, leading to losses for the latter, said the survey by the Centre for Labour Market Research and Information of the National Human Resources Development and Employment Authority (Tanmia).

The survey pointed out that Labour Supply Service Firms (LSSF) reported losses in their business due to the labour regulation that kept out some categories of trade workers, who were without high school certificates, unless they were employed by a construction firm.

As a result of this regulation, the LSSF reported a shortage of various categories of skilled trade workers willing to work in the country. This rule, they said, had increased the wage demands of trades workers while reducing the available labour pool to recruit from.

To complicate matters, it was reported that employers in the UAE are not offering higher wages to trades workers, which either means the rule is not being followed strictly or loopholes are being taken advantage of. This, according to the firms, was not in the interest of law-abiding labour supply firms.

The recruitment activities of the employment agencies and LSSF in the UAE are not firmly divided along lines of recruitment between skilled and unskilled, professional, managerial or even executive occupations, according to the study.

Recruitment firms in the UAE serve several different labour markets and client niches and focus primarily on the following occupational categories: executives earning above $65,000 per annum, white collar professionals and managers qualified with university degree and earning $50,000 per annum, pink collar workers identified as clerks, secretaries and administration assistants earning between Dh3,000 per month and Dh8,000 per month, skilled technical workers (blue collar) identified as vocationally certified technicians, trade workers and trade engineers in electrical, mechanical, structural and information technology activities, and low skilled workers including domestic workers, drivers, security and technical/trade/craft support workers and unskilled labourers identified as working in construction and manufacturing.

The Ministry of labour and Social Affairs makes no licensing distinction between LSSF, which target low wage, unskilled workers and categories of skilled technical workers and the employment agencies that recruit for high skilled, professional and managerial occupations.

The survey, which covered a sample of recognisable and highly reputable firms, whose operations across the UAE and internationally, revealed that no segmentation of recruitment activities exists in the higher occupational categories but it does exist in the low wage, lower skilled categories.

It revealed that some organisations listed as LSSF with the words labour supply in their company title, engaged in some forms of professional, managerial and, in one instance, executive recruitment activities.

This indicates that some labour supply companies have expanded their business into new market niches that were initially not targeted.

Conversely, none of the employment agencies targeted categories of unskilled labourers but several did recruit pink collar personnel in both high and low profile brackets.

All recruitment firms identified executive search as a separate and specialised segment of business.

Executive recruitment is considered a critical and sensitive area and recruitment firms place their best resources in this area of the business for professional as well as competitive reasons.

The UAE and Dubai, in particular, supports a competitive labour recruitment market best characterised as being highly sales focused and commission driven for profitability/survival.

It was found that the strategic partnership agreement, where an employer exclusively uses the services on one agency to fill all its vacancies, is rarely applied in the UAE and Dubai where employers are not big enough to require many candidates in executive or managerial categories or take advantage of the high supply of recruitment agencies.

It was found that the employment agencies’ offices were staffed with one dominant culture — either Indian/Asian or British/European and, in one case, UAE nationals. The largest firm was highly multicultural with Arab, Asian, European, British as well as North and South American staff.

Queries on why UAE nationals were not employed in this sector yielded explanations such as open advertising for the job did not yield any national applicant.

In one case, one UAE national was interviewed and selected, who eventually turned the job down because of family pressures. It is generally believed that UAE nationals are not interested in sales oriented jobs and very few registered as job seekers in the firms’ data base.

According to the study, enterprises appeared to be dominated mainly by one nationality, which may make it difficult for UAE nationals to enter those workplaces. The study suggests that policy measures to facilitate the entry of UAE nationals into these organisations relate mostly to introducing a gradual nationalisation plan by imposing significant quotas of Emiratis in recruitment firms.

Some firms interviewed said that the most commonly available jobs are for individuals with experience in technical fields or in industries where UAE nationals do not typically work, such as construction and manufacturing.

The research aimed at exploring the skills, professional experience and educational requirements for recruitment occupations in the UAE labour recruitment sector.

Interviews were conducted with persons from LSSF, organisations that target low skilled workers and employment agencies that recruit managerial and professional workers.

The main finding of the research was that the core recruitment duties are mainly sales oriented activities. Senior recruiters give weightage to sales abilities, attitude and professional experience in the related field.

While recruiters were normally expected to be graduates, hiring managers of recruitment firms favoured individuals coming mainly from engineering, finance and administration, as well as sales and marketing occupations above all. These skills, according to the study, are not difficult to acquire in the UAE.