by Robin Amlôt
It has been a hectic few weeks in Islamic finance for conferences and reports. It seems you can’t move without somebody offering you opinion and analysis about the Islamic economy, opportunities in Africa, why Bahrain is still the GCC hub, how Dubai plans to take a global role in the future, etc., etc.,
But
the story that has caught my eye in particular was the news that Dubai
Islamic Bank is partnering with global human resource consultancy Aon
Hewitt to develop a talent management platform for the bank and revamp
its employee competency framework ‘in line with its vision and mission’
(whatever the latter part of that sentence may mean).
Talent is important, talent is expensive. Indeed, the word talent comes to us from the Ancient Greek as a measure of worth and quite a substantial amount of worth at that. A talent, according to Homer, was roughly the mass of water required to fill an amphora (Greek urn) and thus equivalent to around 26 kilogrammes. Count your gold in talents and you are talking serious money. Which probably means that the old music hall joke which begins, “What’s a Greek urn [earn]?” is probably even older and more whiskery than originally thought and may well have had them groaning in the aisles in Ancient Greece itself!
But I digress. The point of the excursion into the etymology of ‘talent’ is a roundabout way of saying that properly nurtured and managed talent is indeed worth its weight in gold. Aon Hewitt’s role with Dubai Islamic Bank is to develop a programme to improve the bank’s assessment of its employees’ performance and ensure they possess the required knowledge, skills and abilities to excel at their jobs.
The bank aims to ‘build the career path of our employees and focus on the development of high potential employees’, according to Obaid Al Shamsi, Chief of Human Resources and Administration. The bank will, he said be ‘able to institute practices to train and motivate our employees, retain the best amongst them and build a succession plan for leading the bank in the future’.
No matter how exciting the prospects for the global Islamic economy, and the potential certainly is exciting; it will not be realised without the help of a dynamic financial sector. That necessary dynamism is, let us be honest, sometimes a little difficult to spot. It is a given that there appears to be talent shortage in Islamic finance. Yet this should not be the case. Institutions of higher learning in several continents are churning out graduates with Islamic finance qualifications.
However, too many of them appear, still, to be unable to find employment in their chosen field of endeavour. Others find jobs but find themselves stifled. The resource, it would seem to me, is being squandered. Against that backdrop, I find myself cheered by the commitment by Dubai Islamic Bank to its programme of ‘Employee Engagement’. Talent is precious. Talent should be nurtured. The junior employees management engages with today are the management of tomorrow who will face the greater challenges, and one hopes, realise the yet greater opportunities of the global Islamic economy.
Talent is important, talent is expensive. Indeed, the word talent comes to us from the Ancient Greek as a measure of worth and quite a substantial amount of worth at that. A talent, according to Homer, was roughly the mass of water required to fill an amphora (Greek urn) and thus equivalent to around 26 kilogrammes. Count your gold in talents and you are talking serious money. Which probably means that the old music hall joke which begins, “What’s a Greek urn [earn]?” is probably even older and more whiskery than originally thought and may well have had them groaning in the aisles in Ancient Greece itself!
But I digress. The point of the excursion into the etymology of ‘talent’ is a roundabout way of saying that properly nurtured and managed talent is indeed worth its weight in gold. Aon Hewitt’s role with Dubai Islamic Bank is to develop a programme to improve the bank’s assessment of its employees’ performance and ensure they possess the required knowledge, skills and abilities to excel at their jobs.
The bank aims to ‘build the career path of our employees and focus on the development of high potential employees’, according to Obaid Al Shamsi, Chief of Human Resources and Administration. The bank will, he said be ‘able to institute practices to train and motivate our employees, retain the best amongst them and build a succession plan for leading the bank in the future’.
No matter how exciting the prospects for the global Islamic economy, and the potential certainly is exciting; it will not be realised without the help of a dynamic financial sector. That necessary dynamism is, let us be honest, sometimes a little difficult to spot. It is a given that there appears to be talent shortage in Islamic finance. Yet this should not be the case. Institutions of higher learning in several continents are churning out graduates with Islamic finance qualifications.
However, too many of them appear, still, to be unable to find employment in their chosen field of endeavour. Others find jobs but find themselves stifled. The resource, it would seem to me, is being squandered. Against that backdrop, I find myself cheered by the commitment by Dubai Islamic Bank to its programme of ‘Employee Engagement’. Talent is precious. Talent should be nurtured. The junior employees management engages with today are the management of tomorrow who will face the greater challenges, and one hopes, realise the yet greater opportunities of the global Islamic economy.
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