Dubai's workforce has talent, needs skills

There's a pungent little acronym, popular among British bankers, to describe colleagues who work overseas. They're known as Filth, derived from Failed In London, Try Hong Kong – a reference to the legion of financiers who headed for the Asian hub back in the 1970s. Thankfully, the names of Gulf cities don't fit the linguistic mould. But that doesn't stop barbed comments from smug high flyers in the Square Mile, as yet another broker or fund manager buys a one-way Emirates ticket from Heathrow.

And it's not just bankers. There's a similarly sneering disdain for Brits (and others) in a range industries who earn a living in the Gulf.

"She's only got that great job in Abu Dhabi because no-one decent would go…"

"He may be a millionaire in Dubai, but anyone can make it there…"

"It's easy being chief executive in Doha – you just mop up the petrodollars…"

This infuriates me. Partly because it's arrogant. Partly because, in my recent experience, offices in the UK are full of comfort-zone time-servers who wouldn't last five minutes in Dubai. But partly because, if I'm brutally honest, there's a tiny sliver of substance to the claim that workers in "The West" are better than their counterparts in the Gulf.

Here's the paradox: workers in Dubai often have more talent but less skill than counterparts in more developed markets. That's infuriating because it needn't and shouldn't be the case.

Do I have scientific research to back this up? No. But I've worked for some of the world's biggest media companies in both the UAE and London, as well as for small, boutique agencies. I've worked for a FTSE-100 listed company, a major privately-owned US company, and for a number of Dubai-based organisations, so I've seen the differences first hand.

By talent I mean raw ability, drive, personality, intellect, ambition, language skills, work ethic and so on. In my experience, Dubai is a rich source of these qualities and encourages them to thrive. By contrast, colleagues I've worked with in the UK are less dynamic, but more polished.

I've been lucky in my career to benefit from exposure to both. In Dubai I've been thrown in at the deep, made stuff up as I've gone along, and generally done okay. Launching a new product in the morning; fixing the IT at lunchtime; interviewing Richard Branson in the afternoon; then networking in a room of strangers in the evening. I was probably under-prepared for all of the above, but the ability to improvise and get results regardless is a fantastic mindset, and something Dubai instills in you from day one.

In isolation, though, it's not enough. While working in the UK I've been taught how to do my job from first principles. I've been trained in the hard skills of reporting, writing and broadcasting; I've had training in financial and economic analysis; I've been taught effective business processes; I've been enrolled on formal mentoring programmes; I've enjoyed regular training sessions on breaking developments in my industry (most recently, crash courses in complex debt instruments as the subprime crisis unravelled). Perhaps most important, I've benefited from HR departments that really do manage and nurture human resources, rather than simply administer hiring, firing and vacation requests.

Ok, much of this is specific to my own field of financial journalism. But people I speak to in a host of other jobs report broadly similar experiences. There are some notable exceptions, but by and large the private sector in the UAE is reluctant to invest in training and development of its staff.

Of course, I've heard the arguments against investing in staff many times from employers in the UAE.

• The workforce is largely expatriate and therefore transient.

• The expat worker is liable to return home at any minute.

• We can hire expat workers who've gained skills in their home country.

• Why invest in training these disloyal, transient staff who'll take the skills elsewhere?

I'm not lobbying for expensive consultants; I agree that companies should keep a keen lid on such costs. Rather, I'm talking about in-house training, making sure senior staff pass on their skills and experience to junior workers in a structured and efficient way. Of course, there's a small indirect cost to this, in taking time out of day-to-day operations, and preparing training courses.

But the benefits are two-fold. Staff do their job better, which makes more money for shareholders. And effective training programmes are one of the most powerful incentives for hiring and retaining employees. It isn't charity. It's just business common sense. And if it puts an end to the sniping comments of my self-important compatriots (many of whom will be doubtless by Failing In London soon as the credit crunch bites), so much the better. 

-- The writer is a freelance journalist. He has worked as a correspondent for Reuters, the Financial Times and The Economist, and as a presenter of The Business Breakfast on Dubai Eye 103.8.