Remember the big scare of the so-called “Y2K bug” ? Back at the end of the Nineties, the world started to realise that a lot of computer programs had been written with dates expressed “55” or “87” instead of “1955” and “1987”. As year 2000 was approaching fast and therefore dates would become “00” ie…
Remuneration, engagement and the GCC employee
January 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Recent reports have drawn attention to the fact that remuneration is not the main motivator for GCC-based employees. The Qudrat TM Research results were recently released by Aon Hewitt and highlight that National Qataris are the most highly engaged local Nationals in the GCC, irrespective of their gender. Regarding issues often mentioned by companies regarding…
Pensions landscape – Europe and GCC part II
November 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment
My latest post was covering the aging population in Europe, and the impact it has on pensions. Today we will go through what is happening in the GCC. Expat pensions In the mean time in the GCC, the situation is pretty different. Here, we have very young countries where only the local citizens are eligible…
Boards and quotas – For or against them ?
September 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment
There was an excellent blog post from Nilofer Merchant at Harvard Business Review recently, entitled Quotas for women on Boards are wrong. In it, she argues against quotas for women to access company Boards. Some of her arguments are very convincing. In particular, I agree that we should focus on bringing more “board readiness” for…
A reaction on raising pension contributions
September 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Today’s post is a reaction to this GlobalPensions.com article commenting on employer contribution rates for retirement in some New York State agencies. My comment is mostly linked to the % of contributions. “The contribution rate for the Employee Retirement System (ERS) will increase from 16.3% of salaries to 18.9% in fiscal year 2012-13, while the…
3 tips to help attract expat candidates
August 29, 2011 by 2 Comments
In my previous two posts, I examined the financial and traditional reasons why it is becoming more difficult in attracting educated expats to the GCC first, as well as some current reasons related to the regional instability and renewed focus on hiring local Nationals. I am still convinced that the region is a great one…
The other reason why expats are less attracted to the GCC
August 29, 2011 by 2 Comments
My previous post covered the traditional reasons why people may be reluctant to relocate to the Gulf, as well as some financial negative impacts that make the local market less attractive than it used to be. On top of that, there are currently a number of other reasons making it more difficult for companies to…
