Oil and gas companies should create a “Qatar value proposition” to attract more job seekers to the country’s energy sector, an industry expert has said.
KPMG partner, Hilda Mulock Houwer, said that such proposition could bring in more talent if other than high salary incentives are on offer.Â
“The risk for Qatar is that these very talented people with skill sets that the whole world is looking for really have choices. The first thing that they are going to consider is the environment that they are going to expose their families to and that is what needs to be tackled,” Houwer told Gulf Times.
Houwer also warned that engineers and geoscientists are increasingly looking to the US for jobs as the shale boom is predicted to boost employment by nearly 50% to 2.5mn jobs in 2015 and 3mn by 2020.
“You’re going to a developed country that offers fantastic housing facilities, reasonable rent prices, choices around schooling, and just the whole social environment is there to support that family. But those amenities are, perhaps, offered to a comparatively lesser extent in Qatar,” Houwer explained.
“For me, this is not just where the employee should concentrate, but they should work with Qatar on a government level and say: This country is still dependent on the hydrocarbon and chemical industry; what are we going to do as a country is to see what we can facilitate in Qatar to automatically attract talent?,” she added.
Robert Bolton, KPMG global head of talent management, also said, “The Qatar value proposition needs to work just like a company’s employee value proposition.”
KPMG’s 2014 Global Talent Crisis Survey says the gap between a retiring workforce and the shortage of experienced and qualified people to replace them is the primary concern of the energy industry.
According to Houwer, the gap also puts the industry at risk in terms of safety and environment due to staff turnover.
“The most important factor that Qatar would be facing is the risk side around safety and environment. That, to me, is going to increase not because you’re losing skills but also training a new person for the job,” Houwer said.
Aside from safety risks, Houwer also pointed out that current education systems do not match trends in the energy sector, which fails to provide students a grasp of actual experiences in the workplace.
“It’s not only about the lack of talent but there is also scarcity in skills set and technical capability. I don’t think educational institutions are catching up with the trends,” she said.
