2009-04-26
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Hewitt Associates Announces Results of its Real Estate and Infrastructure Economic Climate Survey 2009 in the UAE
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Dubai—Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting firm announced the key findings from its Real Estate and Infrastructure Economic Climate Survey 2009. Retaining high-performing employees ranks highest among the Real Estate & Infrastructure sector companies in the UAE region.
The survey highlights that 80% of the organizations plan to retain and reward high performing employees by reserving a portion of salary increase for highest performers.
This report highlighted that most of the organizations (71%) have not increased the overall budget. For majority of the organizations, the reason for this is overall cost reductions. However, in some organizations, concerns about the broader economy and restructuring of business are some of the other reported reasons.
The current economic scenario has impacted variable compensation payouts for majority of the organizations. Most organizations have frozen certain benefits, redesigned their incentive programs, and implemented a voluntary separation scheme to beat the current challenge.
Most organizations also ensured communication of key issues to employees in the current economic scenario. Most frequent issues communicated are the financial health of the organization and the budget allocation for the new fiscal year.
Other key measures being undertaken by real estate & infrastructure companies are - providing additional learning and development opportunities, creating supplemental & discretionary incentive pool and granting discretionary stock options to high-performing employees,.
Speaking about the report Andy Heath, Real Estate & Infrastructure Industry Leader, Hewitt Middle East, commented: "In the current economic scenario, when employees are unsure about their future, organizations are increasingly focusing on retention of key talent to prevent them from moving to competition. Clearly, the retention of key talent will be critical for the organizations in their quest to tide over the current state of downturn."
Interestingly, the trends show that the overall voluntary attrition rates across the organizations were very similar to the involuntary attrition rate. The overall voluntary attrition rates ranged between 11.7% and 13%, while the overall involuntary attrition rate was reported as 10% to 13.2%.
Andy Heath adds, "Organizations are facing immense challenges with respect to their manpower costs. Any actions in dealing with redundant manpower raises concern amongst employees and therefore might lead to voluntary attrition of key talent to competition. The similarity between voluntary and involuntary attrition rates could be due to this reason. Organizations need to be cautious in dealing with redundancies."
Organizations are increasingly undertaking measures to attract and retain key talent. Some such measures were employee involvement through focus groups, long service and other yearly awards, better incentive plans, internal replacement or inter company transfer for redundant positions and implementing capability model to set the behavior criteria for recruitment and promotions.
About Hewitt Associates
With more than 65 years of experience, Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW) is the world's foremost provider of HR outsourcing and consulting services. The firm consults with more than 2,300 companies and administers HR, health care, payroll and retirement programs on behalf of more than 300 companies to millions of employees and retirees worldwide. Located in 33 markets, Hewitt employs approximately 23,000 associates.
Hewitt Associates has been operating in Middle East market since 2002. Hewitt's Middle East operations are headquartered in Dubai, which serves as the regional hub for its business. In the region, Hewitt successfully partners with over 100+ clients across different areas of human resource and business support. Hewitt's current client base in the Middle East is spread across all the GCC countries, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.
Hewitt offers HR solutions that seamlessly blend its global expertise with a strong regional flavor. The focus areas for consulting in the Middle East reflect the current business requirements in the region.
For more information, please visit www.hewitt.com/middleeast.
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