Skills Over Job Titles: UAE Employers Urged To Rethink How They Identify Talent

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For years, a job title has been one of the clearest markers of a person's place in an organisation. However, as artificial intelligence, automation and changing workplace models reshape jobs, UAE employers are being urged to look beyond titles and focus more closely on the skills people can bring to the table.

HR leaders and workforce experts at the Future of the Workforce Summit , during a panel discussion titled“The Blueprint for a Modern Workforce Strategy”, said organisations need to rethink how they identify, develop and deploy talent - with a greater focus on recognising employees' skills beyond their job titles.

Hana Agil, HR Director, Middle East & Africa, International Health and Strategy at Cigna Healthcare said organisations have made progress in developing people, but there is still a long way to go.

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“I think a lot of companies are investing in that new development, but we need the challenge. I think is to start thinking of skills as the currency of the organisation, not the job titles only,” she said.

She gave the example of an employee in customer service who develops skills in data analytics or AI. Rather than viewing that person solely through their existing job title, a progressive organisation could recognise their new capabilities and give them opportunities to take on different responsibilities.

“A progressive organisation would look at that individual as capable of doing more than their current role,” Agil said.“It would give them stretch opportunities, new projects, potentially even move into a whole new career.”

The challenge, however, is not simply about identifying which skills are needed. Dr Kinan Bahnasi, Policy Advisor – Human Development and Future of Work, said organisations often do not have a clear picture of the capabilities already within their workforce.

He said companies remain much better at defining jobs, functions and organisational structures than at understanding the skills needed to deliver their strategy.

“We are very much like good in drafting job descriptions and functions and expanding the organisational hierarchy and all the flow within DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organisation),” Bahnasi said.

“But when it comes to really addressing how the skill system is shaping this organisation, and how it's actually going to meet its strategy... this is where we feel that we are still quite behind.”

That gap can also contribute to the frequently raised concern among employers that graduates are not adequately prepared for the workplace, he said.

Bahnasi stressed that a skills mismatch does not always mean people lack the necessary abilities. In many cases, their capabilities may simply not have been identified or formally recognised.

“For most of it, it's not because people don't have always the skills. Because the skills are not even captured; they're not even recognised,” he said.“We cannot manage something or measure something that we cannot, you know, capture.”

Maymee Kurian, Group Chief Augmented Human Capital and Culture Officer at G42, cautioned against taking the skills-based approach too literally.

She argued that people should not be reduced to a list of competencies, just as jobs should not be treated as collections of tasks that can be matched to individual skills.

“I like to challenge the premise of a skill-based organisation. A person is not a catalog of skills. A job is not a catalog of skills,” she said.

Kurian said organisations should instead consider the combination of skills, knowledge and behaviour, while ensuring that employees have meaningful roles in which they can grow.

The rise of short-term, task-based work has made skills libraries increasingly useful, she said, particularly when organisations are hiring someone for a specific task or limited period.

“But for an organisation, we have to hire a meaningful role,” Kurian said, adding that young people today want to "see a meaningful role that takes (them) somewhere, which is purposeful, which is part of the whole story.”

She added,“The person's story becomes very well coupled with the organisation story.”

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