Manama: Three quarters of GCC employers feel the education system doesn’t know what skills employers need, reveals an EY study.
According to EY’s report “How will the GCC close the skills gap?”, employers struggle to retain nationals due to high salary expectations. However, these employers rank young people’s lack of work experience (53 per cent), communications skills (36pc), and required skills and qualifications (22pc) as further challenges to retention in the private sector.
The report indicated that the top three priorities for GCC students when taking a job are money, job security and work-life balance.
Almost three-quarters of GCC students put salary packages at the top of the list of what they consider very important in a job, followed by 59pc citing job security as very important.
The survey of students and employers across the GCC was designed to identify the major challenges that employers face in hiring and retaining nationals, as well as the attitudes of young people towards employment.
The results showed that there is a fundamental misalignment between the expectations of both sides.
“Despite the efforts in the Gulf region to improve the education systems, there remains a misalignment of the needs of employers and the expectations of young people, that makes it hard to improve outcomes,” says EY Mena managing partner for advisory services Gerard Gallagher.
“Employers struggle to find the skills they need, especially at entry level, and young people in schools, colleges and universities are unclear about how they should enter the job market and build a long-term career, and teachers are unsure about labour market demands and why they are important to incorporate into the curricula they teach,” he added.
EY’s survey of students and employers across the GCC shows that, outside of Bahrain, GCC students show an overwhelming preference for public sector jobs.
In the UAE and Qatar, only 1pc of the private sector workforce is made up of nationals.
“There is an urgent need to get more GCC nationals working in the private sector,” EY partner and Mena government social infrastructure leader Will Cooper says.
“The old model of employing nationals in high-paying government jobs is no longer sustainable; budgets are strained and government businesses struggle to become more efficient.
“It has an impact on the private sector too, which relies heavily on expatriates for its workforce.”
If the GCC is to employ the fast-growing number of young nationals entering the labour market and remain competitive, it needs to create more jobs in the private sector – but just as importantly, it must ensure that nationals have both the motivation and the skills to fill them, the report says.
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