The surprise is not as ominous is it might sound. It's not anything like that deleted scene from Syriana, for example.

The ministry has deleted the "category of other professional options" from online application forms so as to ensure that no one is able to bypass the system, said typing centre employees."A number of secretaries who want to submit new application forms under 'other professional category' have been approaching us. They are unaware that they no longer can dodge the ministry.

But in true bureaucratic fashion, the senior management has created a problem for which the frontline employees have to pay in both time and aggravation. Why? Because when the companies find out that they can't

"retain their secretaries by submitting a new application in their name under other professional categories...They then get disgruntled and take their anger out on us," said Abu Baker, a typing centre employee in Karama."

To be clear, I have no issue with the UAE Ministry of Labor saying who they do and do not want working what positions in its own country. And I certainly appreciate the principles of economic self-sufficiency and not wanting to be dependent upon foreign expertise. I just wonder about the future and about what signal, if any, is being sent to the expat community here.

Part of what makes Dubai such an exciting and interesting place to live is the large number of people here from all over the world, not all of whom are degreed professionals. While it tempting to think that administrative assistants carry little in the way of valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate skills, I think this assumption is unwarranted. What firms losing these employees are about to find out- if they don't know it already- is that secretaries are tremendous repositories of tacit knowledge about organizational processes and policies. Along with HR they are, I believe, a systematically undervalued organizational asset and substantial, though often intangible contributor to firm productivity.

My prediction is that these employees will be sorely missed and not easily replaced. The simplest way to test that hypothesis is to see whether the secretaries and HR managers can be replaced on a one-for-one basis without any loss of productivity.

File Under: Dubai/UAE | Middle East

Tags: Dubai | UAE | united arab emirates | emiratization | emiratisation

Emiratization links: Emiratisation.org | Higher Colleges of Technology Website on Emiratization | UAE Government Page |