Companies all over the world are looking for a few good
project managers, but the battle for top talent is especially
fierce in the Middle East, where demand far exceeds the
relatively limited local supply.
“The Middle East is a real hotspot for projects and
megaprojects,” says Craig Jordan, a Dubai, United Arab
Emirates-based business development
manager for ESI International, a project
management training and consulting
firm. “Recruiters have been busy scouring
the world to find suitably skilled engineers and project managers to run
these projects.”
Relying on talent from outside the
region has resulted in a “largely expatriate and transient
workforce often with very little sense of loyalty to the
company,” he says. “Too many organizations don’t offer real
career tracks internally—especially for expatriates—so the
tendency is for them to hop from job to job to move up the
ladder rather than wait for internal promotion.”
That’s translating to a retention crisis.
“Companies know that they need to train their staff to
the highest standards if they want to be genuinely world-class market players, but they also expect that many of the
project managers, once trained and certified, will then move
on,” says Mr. Jordan.
Efforts to maintain top talent have also been compromised
by recent government policies in Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates that place a priority on protecting local
employees.
“Many expatriates are leaving the Middle East due to
the government’s perceived or actual enforcement of protectionist policies,” says Mr. Jordan. “The people choosing to
leave are often the best-qualified, as they can find work more
easily in home countries or other ports of call, which has the
obvious impact of diluting project manager capability even
further in the region.”
can raise their hand and take on challenges
that are extraordinary.”
And those companies that simply rely on
the same old methods will be hard-pressed
to either attract or retain the top talent.
“Project managers love new challenges,
and they will go if they are not successful,
and they will go if they feel that they are
not growing,” says Sue Freedman, Ph.D.,
PMP, former manager of organizational
effectiveness at Texas Instruments and currently president of Knowledge Work Global,
a Dallas, Texas, USA-based consultancy.
2. Provide a Clear Path
Upward and Onward
Top project managers are increasingly looking
for clear signs that an organization can provide
avenues for advancement.
One way to demonstrate a commitment
to developing talent is by offering the kind
of training that can help project managers
build the expanding skill set required
to address new challenges and opportunities.
In 2008, for example, CH2M Hill refined
and refocused its efforts to launch its Center
for Project Excellence “in part to build a
strong knowledge management and learning
and development capability in the company,”
says Ms. Walstrom.
The mission is to “develop, maintain
and evolve the platform of policies,
systems, processes and tools upon which
CH2M Hill bases its efforts to win and
safely deliver programs and projects that
exceed our clients’ expectations,” she says.
“A critical part of that platform is the
commitment to a robust knowledge
management philosophy and to the
development of our program and project
managers, who are the leaders on the front
lines making all of this possible.”
