UAE companies are going above and beyond their normal onboarding processes for new hires in India as the country grapples with a severe surge in coronavirus cases and border closures preventing Indians to move to the Gulf to start jobs.
Companies are organising yoga classes and meditation lessons in collaboration with well-being firms and hiring agencies are helping their clients in the UAE to work out separate compensation packages comprising tax evaluation and benefits to their new recruits from the South Asian country as an alternative option in case the current travel ban continues for a longer period.
“Our teams are globally dispersed usually and we have learnt our lessons from last year’s lockdowns in many parts of the world. Our tech infrastructure is very solid to hire, onboard, and start new hires remotely. In India, however, the issue is not just starting someone remotely – it’s a bigger issue,” a Dubai-based senior human resource (HR) executive with a global technology firm told Arabian Business.
“People who are starting [in India presently] have someone in their home, family or neighbourhood impacted by Covid drastically, which is leading to low attention spans at work and a lot of stress,” explained the senior HR executive who wished not to be identified.
“We are working with a few well-being firms [in India] which run yoga and meditation classes for our employees including new hires to blend them in and de-stress them,” said the HR executive of the tech firm which has most of its tech hubs based in South India.
Senior HR executives at companies and hiring consultancy firms said companies are formulating various measures to extend a helping hand to their Indian hires, because despite the current pandemic-induced travel disruptions, companies in many sectors, especially most of the consulting and tech clients, are still hiring talent in India, starting them remotely.
As for UAE-based companies – both multinationals and home-grown ones – they are still heavily dependent on countries like India to hire skills that are not locally available. Meanwhile, Dubai remains an attractive option for Indians job seekers given the Gulf city’s governance and its handling of the pandemic.
Some of the senior human resource executives, however, said the current travel ban from India has impacted their plans to hire from India for some critical and senior roles.
“Our biggest strength has been the ability to ramp up new hires quickly [from India] in the past and induct them in our workforce. Today that’s our biggest area of exposure,” the human resource head of a UAE-based retail company said.
“While our recruiting teams are working hard to get many interviews done and arrive at final candidates, the business hiring managers, for obvious reasons, are going slow on the last mile when the offer is about to be made [due to the travel ban],” the executive said.
Hiring consultants, however, said virtual on-boarding and remote working is no more a big challenge.
“Considering we are living in a tech savvy era with robust infrastructure and support around, working remotely is no longer a challenge and we see more and more organisations resorting to virtual on-boarding and remote working,” Prerna Seth Garg, vice president of the Dubai-headquartered global hiring consultancy Seintive Talent Acquisitions, told Arabian Business.
“We all witnessed how this pandemic has made ‘remote working’ the new normal,” Garg added.
Garg also said Seintiv has supported its clients by revamping their induction programs by making it remote friendly.
“We have helped clients to create a regular touch point with remote hires by using neuro-intelligent bots which were created for them by utilising our strong HR tech capabilities with one of our global partners based out of Sydney.
Garg said their firm also helped clients to carve out plans to compensate talent in India, taking into account the tax evaluation and benefits available in India.
“This is being done as an alternative, if the situation [travel ban] continues,” Garg said.
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