Sixty-nine percent of adults in the UAE work full-time for an employer – the highest rate in the world. However, a much lower percentage, 12 per cent, have full-time jobs that engage them.
What are good and great jobs?
According to the report, good jobs are full-time work for an employer, while great jobs are full-time work for an employer that engages the employee. The new report examines the distribution of quality jobs across the world. While the percentage of adults with good jobs averages 28 per cent, no country has more than 13 per cent of its adult population in great jobs. Great jobs are especially valuable to employees and employers alike because they boost workplace productivity, safety, retention and well-being.
Good jobs are an essential building block of a thriving economy, a growing middle class, a booming entrepreneurial sector and, most importantly, human development. Creating as many good jobs as possible should certainly be a priority for UAE business and government leaders. However, to really unlock the potential of their human capital they should invest as much as they can in creating more great jobs, which would further enhance business and life outcomes and would help shrink the engagement deficit experienced in the UAE.
How the UAE can stay ahead
“The workplace, globally, is going through extreme change – with the rise of AI, millennials and employees wanting a manager who is a coach more than a boss, who bases their employee experience on their strengths not their weaknesses,” said Jon Clifton, Gallup’s global managing partner. “The UAE has an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve by further investing in workplace initiatives that put the latest developments in the world of work at the core of their strategy.”