sector advisory boards comprised of senior professionals to oversee wage subsidies, training requirements and skills. People Management found out more about the organisation’s plans, and why the economic backdrop is focusing minds on how the next generation of Bahrainis will make its living. How would you describe Tamkeen’s overall mission? Tamkeen was born out of labour reforms, the basic premise of which was ‘let’s not force Bahrainis on the private sector by using the quota system. Let’s remove quotas and allow Bahrainis to become competitive enough to thrive in the private sector.’ That entailed a lot of hard work because at that point the INTERVIEW XXXXX PHOTOGRAPHY ISAAC LAWRENCE expatriate workforce was competing with 20
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the local workforce and each had its own distinct features as a labour force. You had an unfair competitive advantage in each case. Wages of expats were determined externally, so Bahrainis were at a disadvantage because they’d never be able to live by expat wages, which were set at a very low level. Tamkeen had to consider the question ‘how do we enthuse the private sector to employ Bahrainis?’ The heart of the matter is HR, naturally, because no matter how many training programmes I fund, or how many apprenticeship or internship schemes I introduce, I will not succeed unless I have employers of choice. You must have a private sector with good HR practices, good working conditions and good corporate cultures, which is able to absorb all those Bahrainis.
How well are the principles of good HR understood within Bahraini businesses? I don’t think we’re anywhere near best practice. A good share of the market does understand HR, but predominantly we see that within larger firms because they are better funded and better structured, so they have the ability, capacity and resources to have systems in place. Only a handful of companies look at staff engagement and corporate culture more closely. We have professional certification schemes for all sectors, including HR, and many people have taken CIPD qualifications. But now we’re looking at what happens beyond qualifications. What do we have to do to get the owners of these firms to believe in people