Empower Youth For Middle East’s Success

Mena Migally, Regional Vice President – Emerging EMEA at Riverbed

In recent years, governments across the Middle East have begun to clearly lay out their strategies to foster their skills and knowledge-based economies. Enterprises that seek to align with these government visions have an advantage that their peers in other markets can’t help but envy – an especially youthful demographic. People under 30 account for more than half (55%) of the population across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This affords businesses access to a healthy pool of talented young professionals.

But this does not imply that the ability to attract younger job seekers is a given. Riverbed’s recent Global DEX Survey uncovered that Millennial and Gen Z employees have the highest technology and digital experience expectations in the workplace, with 64% of decision-makers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia saying younger generation employees are the most demanding of IT’s time, and nearly all (97%) of respondents believing they will need to provide more advanced digital experiences to meet their needs.

This should be expected. After all, younger and more traditionally tech-savvy team members were born at a time of unprecedented technological advancement – and as such, they’ve been raised and educated to use digital tools to their advantage. Give them the right platform, and they’ll thrive – offering increased productivity, efficiency and satisfaction, and boosted loyalty and retention. Fail to equip them with the solutions they need and prepare to lose them to more innovative competitors.

As IT leaders take a more prominent seat in the C-suite, it falls on them to not just meet the business’s ever-evolving technology needs, but also give their organisation an edge in the quest for top talent. These now seemingly go hand-in-hand. Chief Information Offices are quickly becoming Chief Talent Officers, and for the majority, their number-one challenge lies in delivering coherent, consistent and compelling digital experiences that can provide a return on investment.

The aforementioned Riverbed survey provided insights into worker sentiment around their digital experiences. This included ways in which organisations can keep staff – and keep them working to their full potential. Here are five of the survey’s key findings, and how you can use them to retain your organisation’s top talent.

Exceptional digital experiences are essential

When asked what keeps them most engaged at work, leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia said employees are now downplaying the importance of traditional perks free coffee and snacks, and company merchandise and giveaways. Far more than these, half said employees instead prioritise having a seamless digital experience. Technology that not just works but works in the best possible way for those who need it most, is vital – not simply a nice-to-have, as it once was.

Delivering on employees’ needs is only getting harder

Despite the fact that the digital experience has been deemed the most important area for organisations to focus on for staff, 94% of regional leaders identified at least one major obstacle to delivering an exemplary one. Among the main challenges IT teams faces are budget constraints (36%), IT talent/skills shortages (32%), and too much data (26%). This makes a strong case for the deployment of effective digital experience management (DEM) and unified observability solutions which can enable IT teams can solve issues like staff shortages and tech downfalls and ensure exceptional experiences.

Tech has a measurable impact on turnover

These DEM solutions indeed require a certain level of investment in both cost and time to implement, not to mention the efforts that will be required to ensure enterprise-wide adoption. However, organisations could be losing money by failing to transform digitally – or do so quickly enough. A recent report by McKinsey & Company found that a unified digital market across the Middle East could contribute up to 3.8 percent annually in GDP — amounting to approximately $95 billion.

It makes sense that spending on the right digital tools, like DEM solutions, can actually save businesses money – and empower them to make more. Hiring, training and keeping staff is expensive in itself; not to mention the irreplaceable knowledge and skill that vanishes when a team member leaves.

Plus, without the right digital tools to gain valuable business insight, make data-driven decisions, identify and ease performance bottlenecks, and streamline processes, companies cannot operate and perform as efficiently as possible. This leaves them open to risk.

IT is directly responsible for managing staff shortages

84% of survey respondents in the UAE and Saudi Arabia reported that the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to a hybrid workplace have increased the relevance of IT within the C-suite and wider business. 97% agree IT is more responsible for business innovation now than it was three years ago. So, there’s no doubt that the successes and failings of IT are open to more celebration and scrutiny than ever.

That includes the fact that 27% face a shortage of IT personnel, and 54% say employees lack the key skills they need to do their jobs. To address these concerns, leaders are heavily investing in not just training their employees, but also investigating and implementing unified observability technology like Riverbed’s solutions – allowing them to deliver better digital experiences.

In fact, an overwhelming 94% are accelerating digital experience adoption and deployment, while 96% say there must be greater investment in unified observability solutions for digital experience.

Unified observability provides a clear path forward

Unsurprisingly, 43% of UAE and KSA leaders now view digital experience management solutions to be crucial, a figure that is nearly on par with those who said the same of artificial intelligence (54%) and cloud computing (50%). Ninety-two percent of regional respondents agreed that unified observability with greater automation – achieved using functionality like AI – can help bridge the skills gap. Similarly, DEM tools, with correlation between sentiment and telemetry, can provide an objective pulse on the employees’ digital experience – helping ensure the delivery of a seamless experience that contributes to the retention and acquisition of talent.

As Middle East leaders begin to prioritise the digital experience as much as their employees do, they’ll reap the long-term benefits of remaining competitive in the market, reducing staff turnover while boosting monetary turnover, and reaching better overall business outcomes. In doing so, they will be able to unlock the full potential of one of the region’s most valuable resources, its young and ambitious population.