| Kippreport.com

Keep your star performers

September 20, 2010 2:21 by Samuel Potter

A slump in demand for construction professionals has led to a decline in salaries across the industry of up to 25 percent, reports Emirates 24-7. Engineers, project managers and architects have all taken a hit, according to the website. Mark Baxter, Regional Director (Middle East), FiveTen Group, a global recruitment firm, said: “The salary package offered to [construction professionals] now is considerably low, compared to a couple of years ago. On average these positions have seen a fall of 15 to 25 per cent in salary levels, although it depends on companies and the project they are working on.

“Salary in the construction sector has been sharply hit, simply because the demand for such professionals has decreased. Management level construction jobs such as project managers, quantity surveyors, structural engineers, have seen a drastic fall in salary levels,” he said.

The fall represents a pattern across sectors in the UAE, where new white collar professionals receive a smaller remuneration than in previous years. But this has left many professionals unhappy with their circumstances.

As Kipp reported last week, our poll suggested that a staggering 43 percent of professional in the country may be ready to quit. It followed survey results from Regus, a workspace provider, which asked people why they might quit their jobs. We found that 36 percent of respondents were actively looking for new positions, which led us to the next logical question: How can managers retain their best staff?

According to Hazel Jackson of biz-group, replacing an employee costs a lot more than retaining one. “It is five times more expensive to rehire someone and get them performing than to keep them in the team, if they are performing well,” she told Gulf News. “Retaining top talent is critical and many organisations in the UAE still have employees that are poor performers. A great question employers should ask themselves is ‘who would you enthusiastically rehire?’ Whoever you say yes to, make sure you retain them.”

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