Company success and career satisfaction are indivisible

For the career-minded individual, there are an increasing number of 'pressure points' that have short and longer-term implications.

The long-term success of this region is contingent upon getting the right people in place, for company performance is about people and, herein lies the problem. Many individuals do not understand the difference between a career position and job and this error often underscores years of ill-selected roles and dissatisfaction. For the employer, this translates to business under-performance.

If you are serious about your career, long-term growth and satisfaction, then navigating your way through the hiring arena requires planning and an understanding of the manifold combinations of difficulties that you will face. Companies must understand that their success is dependent upon getting the best return on their assets, especially their people assets. Careers and business success are intrinsically bound through a common cause; growth and success.

Both the individual and the company are susceptible to the same external influences and the paradox is that when the company gets it wrong, everyone suffers. If this commonality exists then what can they be? Here are some of the issues:

As the region continues to evolve, it influences demands placed on today's managers often requiring greater resourcefulness and innovation. In the private sector, growth across the region is accelerating at a faster pace than the availability of suitably experienced and professionally competent 'home grown talent' that is capable of supporting this expansion. This places the hiring company under pressure to remain competitive and at the same time, to achieve domestic succession policy.

Hiring expatriates as interims who will then be expected to establish operating systems and position the company for growth and expansion may not be good for the company, and it hardly supports personal career aspirations. Regional growth is paradoxical, because the very need to deliver against increasingly controlled conditions and to higher levels of compliance such as WTO and Sarbanes-Oxley, define minimum levels of professionalism. Hiring criteria however, often fails to support this need.

Company performance levels necessary to compete within competitive regional and domestic markets demands that they attract the right calibre staff, especially as leaders and functional heads. If this is so, then why are they getting this wrong?

Change is needed across the whole of the business process, from company form to recruitment and staff retention. One of the major causes of discontent has been a systematic erosion of packages being offered, most recently due to the policy of switching to lower cost base nationalities as the primary factor in selection.

Sometimes, the business environment does not support growth and this can have a direct impact on job satisfaction. In some sectors such as construction, although a burgeoning industry, contractor margins are as low as 3%. This is wafer thin, especially when you consider the exposure this represents to the company. It is quite clear that for an expatriate manager to lead a company within an aggressive arena it will be deemed high risk and therefore a package-premium would be expected.

This sector is at the mercy of spiraling raw material costs, machinery shortages and FOREX exposure. But so too is the new incumbent susceptible to external factors and, these will influence overall satisfaction.

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) reports that Asian offshore reserves are moving away from US$ as the dominant reserve currency and moving towards a currency spread such as the Euro and Swiss Dollar. As currency de-coupling increases, this may very well have an effect on the value of the greenback. Should it de-value then the pegging of Middle East currencies to the dollar will likely be affected, and this may very well prove less attractive to people considering settling in the Middle East in the short-term. If investment values decline then so too would the temptation to move here.

So it's not only the business that faces exposure, incentives need to be realistic.

Often, company form and the function of internal departments are incorrect and this not only puts the business at risk, but it can seriously affect someone's career path and future. Many companies appear to have ineffective operating platforms that create reaction-time inertia. Often, being privately owned, there is far too much micro-management and commercial decision-making tends to be delegated to the accounting function.

This attracts the wrong type of manager or, it may create an unfulfilling working environment for the right person, who just happens to be in the wrong company. Being second-guessed and having insufficient freedom-to-act is a tremendous de-motivator and has often been the fillip to quit. Getting this wrong affects the individual and the company.

The hiring process has often proved to be totally inadequate and quite often downright unprofessional. If companies have the wrong operating structure then they will recruit the wrong people for the job. Add to this, a horse-trading approach to hiring staff and we can see that companies have not only attracted the wrong people to drive business forward, but they have created a regional talent deficit. If you attract the wrong people where do the good guys go?

The last thing this region needs is to be branded a career backwater, for once people leave it is incredibly difficult to tempt them to return. Spiraling property rents on commercial and domestic premises, inflation and infrastructure problems creating a far more stressful environment, does little to help matters. If the region relies on non-domestic talent to spearhead progress, then it needs to create a nurturing environment to encourage the right people to come here. They must also realise that there is increasingly less incentive to give up improved career prospects in the home market, to move to a region of career uncertainty.

Intra-country alliances seem to be a part of many major infrastructure initiatives especially within the leisure, tourism and telecommunications sectors. Market de-regulation within key sectors such as telecommunications, banking and the move towards a common currency is driving investor protection through legislative change. There are some 100 IPOs scheduled across the region for 2006. The portents look good.

The regions success is contingent upon having an installed workforce that is capable of driving change, a workforce who are well motivated and able to attain personal and career satisfaction. Company success and career satisfaction are indivisible.