Bio:
Manaf Al Muhandis is a Training Consultant at BDO, which is one of the leading consultant companies in Bahrain and the region. BDO Bahrain is a Member Firm of BDO International, one of the world’s largest professional services firms in the world. Manaf holds a BSc. in Human Resource Management from the New York Institute of Technology. He has over 9 years of HR & Training experience and held several previous posts in multi national companies before his move to BDO. Manaf is an active blogger on three different websites and is an Assessor and Mentor for high school students for the Bahraini Court of the Crown Prince scholarship programme.
1. How do you like living and working in Bahrain?
Bahrain is my home country; it's very cosmopolitan and diversified. HR & Training is gaining more attention thanks to government reform activities that aim to reform both labour and education / training sectors.
2. What is your average day at work like?
I am a training consultant working for a BD 22M project initiated by Tamkeen (Tamkeen.bh). We aim to train 10,000 Bahraini citizens from all sectors on the island. I visit different companies to analyse the training needs of organizations, meeting both staff and management. When I am not analysing jobs or doing Training Needs Analysis (TNA), I design training programmes and assess the return on investment of the training conducted.
3. What is your biggest professional challenge?
Many have performed TNAs and training ROI analysis, but nothing would have prepared them to manage 10000+ trainees. Even if one has previous experience with a large company, the numbers in this project are still higher and are not limited to one company or one sector. The amount of variables in this project is immense and the question shifts from "how do we do TNA?" to "how do we TNA this country?".
So far we have been managing to run this project very successfully since 2007, but not until we threw everything we previously knew out of the window and shifted our paradigms to look at things anew.
4. What is the most important thing you look for in new hires?
When I was an HR manager, I used to look for personality and commitment. Hard skills are trainable, but strong work ethics, initiative, tenacity and analytical skills are harder to train.
5. What is the biggest challenge you face in hiring talent?
Companies that aren't in the financial sector in Bahrain face trouble attracting the right talents. Telecoms have been on the rise recently, but other sectors struggle as they are not seen as lucrative career choices. On the other hand, large sections of the Bahraini population have an external locus of control.
Many feel entitled to promotions and salary increases while thinking that being absent from work or arriving late to work, for example, is not only acceptable, but a right they demand. We have begun targeting this with training with significant success. Tamkeen released its own nationwide initiative called Aseel (a9eel.bh) to address the problem.
6. What is your favourite part of your role?
Being in HR or in training, I can feel a direct impact of my work on people's lives. I never get enough of the look on trainees when they realize something new or when someone gets hired.
7. What has been the highlight of your career in HR?
Tamkeen's Career Progression Programme. I never had the opportunity to work on a project this size before. BD 22M and 10000 trainees is a lot of power and responsibility. I had the honour of setting all the tools needed for the training consultants, like writing a competencies dictionary, devising a TNA methodology, rating and approving training institutes, developing a training monitoring strategy and much more. I was also blessed with an intelligent team that made my job easier.
8. What do you read to keep abreast of industry developments?
I like to read the studies conducted by Bayt.com and other regional websites as they give me a unique insight on the trends and direction HR is going in. I also like to use the internet and enjoy watching related TED.com lectures. Obviously reading books is high on my list, I pick books in Arabic and English and enjoy reading them in my local coffee shop.
9. What is your advice to someone looking to enter the field of HR?
HR might not be the right choice for those looking for a "comfy" job or looking to become "millionaires". However, people should go into HR if they want a well-paying job where you can touch people's lives. It's an underestimated position but an indispensible one in any organization.
10. How do you see the Middle East evolve as a place to practice HR?
HR seems to always play second fiddle to Finance departments. It is safe to say that most companies take their decisions based on the impact they will feel in their bottom lines rather in their staff's morale or productivity. More and more CEOs are realizing that staff satisfaction and development isn't so detached from the bottom line they praise so much. In Bahrain, waiving the "Kafeel" sponsorship system means that companies can no longer shackle employees to jobs, and must pay better attention to HR in order function. A trend that will pay off on the long run.
11. If you could wave your magic stick and make a significant development in one specific area of HR practices worldwide, where would that fall?
I would make it so employees in the GCC get paid for the work they do and not for the colour of their passports. Employees from the Indian subcontinent earn significantly less than local employees that earn significantly less than European or American employees. Which is unfair in so many ways.
If one would buy a hamburger, it wouldn't matter if the cook was from India, Bahrain or Finland, so long as the burger is the same. If the output is the same, then the value of the job is the same. Abandoning the "Kafeel" sponsorship system should go a long way in leveling the field, but I would also love to see stricter implementation of government laws.
12. Anything else you'd like to share with the community of Bayt.com Employers?
We are in exciting times, on the verge of HR renaissance. The human capital's importance are being realized more and more every day. Most of the HR managers I meet today report to top management, without real power to change. But soon, they will be part of the top management they now report to and we'll witness a new age of professionalism and productivity.
