The managing director of UAE-based business solutions provider Transguard has admitted the greatest challenge his company faces as they continue to rebuild in uncertain Covid-19 times is recruitment.
Transguard boasts a workforce in the region of 60,000, but as well as the expected ‘natural wastage’ of staff deciding to move on from the company (between 3,000 and 5,000), MD Greg Ward told Arabian Business, in total, 15,000 members of staff were let go last year as they battled the economic headwinds caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ward said the strict closures, lockdowns, curfews and restrictions placed on the aviation and hospitality industries, in particular, “really hit us hard” and revealed staffing levels at Dubai International Airport alone went from 7,000 down to 500.
“I think the biggest issue for us is going to be staffing, recruitment,” said Ward, who added that he currently has 1,200 people on holiday who can’t get back to the country.
“I need to bring in about 3,000 staff a month for the next four months. I could probably fill about 12,000 people now, I’ve got demand for all sectors.”
Transguard, which offers solutions in security, facilities management, cash service and white collar staffing, among others, currently employs 98 different nationalities, 56 percent of whom are either Indian or from Pakistan – two countries currently severely impacted by new Covid-19 waves.
India reported more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths for a second day, as the nation battled the world’s worst outbreak of the virus. The country on Sunday recorded 4,092 fatalities and found 403,736 new cases, with the capital New Delhi and other big cities continuing to report surging infections. The UAE halted flights from India on April 24.
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority previously announced that international flights in and out of its airports will be cut by 80 percent from May 5-20 in an effort to curb increasing Covid-19 cases.
“Obviously India and Pakistan hurts us. I’m not going to lie about it, it’s going to hurt everybody in this country, but at the same time they’ve got to do something about it because the Covid-19 will hurt us even worse. We need to fill the roles and the requirements for the customer,” he said.
Greg Ward, managing director, Transguard Group
Last week, Transguard revealed a drop in profits of over 86 percent to AED32.1 million ($8.7m) for the last financial year, while revenues fell by more than 16 percent to AED1.87 billion ($509.2m). It came off the back of a record-breaking year for the company in 2019 where profits of AED234m ($63.7m) were recorded.
However, Ward revealed the situation could have been much worse, had decisive action not been taken at the start of the crisis.
He said they went “from around AED25m profit-a-month to instantly AED30m loss”.
“If we’d carried on without doing anything we probably would’ve come in around AED150m ($40.8m) loss,” he said.
“We broke even on a monthly basis at the beginning of September, which was amazing. We had a four-month dip and that was all because of the things we did. We got people back to their home countries as soon as possible, when people wanted to go and they were worried about their families. I strongly believe that we dealt with everybody in the right way,” he added.
Transguard also announced that AED2.1bn ($571.8m) in new and renewed business had been secured over the previous 12-month period, up 40 percent from AED1.5bn ($408.4m) in 2019, despite continuing uncertainty caused Covid-19.
That and the upcoming Expo 2020 Dubai, where Transguard has secured the contracts for seven pavilions to date, has given Ward plenty of cause for optimism.
He said: “We’ll make triple profit than what we did this year, I’ve no doubt about that. I think we’ll be around AED100m ($27.2m) for this year is what I’m predicting. If we open up faster we will beat that.”
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