The events of the Sixth Sharjah Human Resources Conference were concluded on Thursday, February 20, 2020, under the title “Future of Human Resources” in the presence of H.E. Dr. Tariq Sultan Bin Khadim, Member of Sharjah Executive Council, Chairman of Sharjah Directorate of Human Resources, Organised by Sharjah Directorate of Human Resources for two days at Al Razi Hall, College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Sharjah.
A group of experts and specialists in the field of human resources spoke in this Conference, which included representatives from educational institutions and entities, government and private sectors, as well as concerned and interested parties from inside and outside the State. The Conference shed light on the future of human resources, discussed important themes throughout its four sessions, namely the future and sustainability of human resources, impact of globalisation on human resources and social life, human resources in light of digital economic development and innovation, knowledge and foresight into the future of the coming generations.
Third Session: Human Resources in light of Digital Economic Development
The Conference sessions continued yesterday, and the third session was moderated by the journalist Alia Al Shamsi, author and presenter of the programmes of Sharjah Radio and Television Authority, and tackled the topic “Human Resources in light of Digital Economic Development”.
The session discussed the digital economy and its impact on global economy and answered the questions raised on how digital companies are able to control the economies of the world and the impact of digital economy on the traditional global markets. It also reviewed the methods of how to push the countries towards digital economy and proposed government plans to keep pace with the conversion of the private sector towards digital economy. A group of specialists talked at the session, namely Awatif Abdulrahim Al Harmoodi, banking expert and General Manager of Operations and Governance at Emirates Islamic Bank. She explained that digital economy is not a tool in itself but it is based on human resources and youth skills, representing the basis of any digital modernisation or economic transformation from traditional to digital.
She added that the UAE trusts its young cadres and relies on its human resources that are capable of creativity in the development of digital economy. She also confirmed the importance of supporting the entities concerned with human resources in refining and developing the young generation in this aspect.
She agreed with the speakers at the session concerning the importance of speed in driving the digital economy and added that the product and service are as important as speed. She explained that the digital platform is a traditional market but with technological features and it should have the same specifications of the traditional market in terms of quality, in addition to the digital features that would give it better advantage.
She talked about betting on human resources and their qualification, confirming that the wise government of the UAE reached advanced steps in digital economy through many procedures and legislation, which renders the State ready to excel in this field, ensuring the confidence of the people in the digital transactions, products and wide options.
She called on the concerned persons in human resources at the State to seize and attract creative persons from the social media platforms that provide the best leaders in all fields, confirming that digital skills are an important factor to attract the current labour market. She also called on the young generation to be directed towards self-development and personal education.
Waleed AlAmoudi, VP-Head of Digital Banking at Sharjah Islamic Bank, also spoke at the session, where he agreed with those who said that the human element is the basis of digital economy, explaining that the reason behind the spread of digital economy is the technology and Internet.
He stated its success factors, namely data, data analysis then the extraction of results and building studies on the same. This would provide a study on the needs of users, depending on their behaviour and the analysis thereof, which satisfies a large number of customers. He also stated that digital economy is widely spreading as it removed all global geographical and spatial barriers of the traditional economy, pointing out to all studies that confirm the huge acceleration rates in digital economy.
He added that international companies in the digital field were able to impose their own concepts on their customers. He confirmed that the concepts of digitisation around the world are in constant change and are continuously multiplying, and stated that artificial intelligence is increasing, which in turn necessitates the increase of the power of learning. The double data analysis will make an effective contribution to quick decision-making, as the digital economy depends on raising performance efficiency and reducing costs.
He mentioned that the UAE has a huge technological infrastructure for being a pioneer in technological development, praising the legislation taken by the government of the UAE to support digital economy and e-commerce.
Dr. Amr Saleh, Economic Advisor at Sharjah Economic Development Department, spoke during the session defining the digital economy as all the information, data and transactions made for the production of goods or services.  He confirmed that the new generation is the most capable and the most knowledgeable about digital economy, showing the huge and amazing acceleration in this vital sector and stating that the world is based on factors of globalisation, knowledge and speed. He also confirmed that speed is the main determinant of digital economy and the reality proves that the companies driving digital economy are the fastest. The most important is the speed and not the size. He showed successful models in this field, stating that the successful companies based on digital economy achieved income that is equivalent to the local outcome of whole countries.
He also confirmed that digital economy is inevitable and will be a way for work, performance and life in general. He explained that the use of technology will create two categories, the category of knowledgeable persons who are able to use and the opposite category, which requires everyone to develop self-learning and knowledge.
He stated that the companies, with their huge marketing capacity, push the consumers to the digital field, which will force them to keep up with the market in all available means. He confirmed that the younger generations are highly efficient to adopt this dominant global field, insisting on the need to pay attention to the technology industry and production and not only the consumption of the same.
He also praised the efforts of the State of the United Arab Emirates and presented its qualifications that confirm its future success in digital economy as it has the cadres, knowledge and capital.
At the end of the third session, the audience was given the chance to make discussions and interventions based on the financing and support of individual digital projects, support of digital education, individual and government responsibility towards the development of human resources in the technological field.
Fourth Session: “Innovation, Knowledge and Foresight into the Future of the Coming Generations”:
The fourth session discussed the theme of “Innovation, Knowledge and Foresight into the future of the coming generations”, presenting the future of the coming generations in the business sector and the future perspectives on the world of innovation in the Arab region, and how to make innovation a new approach for the work of human resources.
The session was moderated by Brigadier General Dr. Abdullah Abdulrahman Bin Sultan, Director of the Future Foresight and Decision Support Centre at Dubai Police General Command, he said: I am pleased to thank the organisers of this Conference on innovation, knowledge and foresight into the future of the coming generations, which is now the talk of the hour about the jobs available to the coming generations, and as we are in the twentieth year, few steps away from the golden jubilee, we should study this challenge and the position of our country in terms of innovation, compared to other countries. He wondered about the validity of the fact that some of the available jobs are at risk of extinction in the future due to this technological development.
H.E. Dr. Abdullatif Al Shamsi, Director of Higher Colleges of Technology, spoke during the session and confirmed that the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and the development of artificial intelligence, have greatly reflected on the labour market and imposed transformations and developments on the educational institutions to ensure the readiness of their outputs of human resources to deal with the future job variables. The Higher Colleges of Technology was able to develop its educational model that is in line with the national visions and trends, able to face the future challenges, so it developed its educational model Persona 4.0.
Dr. Al Shamsi also presented a working paper entitled “Persona 4.0” during which he gave a clear picture on how to prepare the human resources and competencies of the Higher Colleges of Technology for the future and ensure their readiness for the labour market and a future vision of education in light of technological developments that will render it a “service” that transcends the boundaries of time and place, such as “Uber”.
Dr. Al Shamsi indicated that Persona 4.0 builds the cadres of the future and is presented in an integral manner that combines the digital features, professionalism and entrepreneurship, because the future today depends on skills and talents that are now competing with academic degrees. He pointed out that the digital construction of the fourth generation of students relies on the “digital campus” due to its technological learning environment that invests in artificial intelligence and big data, and enables the student to learn and apply based on technological skills. Such professional construction enables the students to obtain world-class professional certificates in addition to academic degrees. Professional certificates have become part of the curricula of technical colleges, which makes the students abreast of developments in skills and able to handle their job positions with competence and productivity.
He added that with this ditigal and professional empowerment, we enhance the capacities of the students towards another level in the “4th generation”, which is preparing them as entrepreneurs, having the knowledge, professional and digital capacities that lead them to invent ideas and solutions meeting the needs of society of various segments and grants these ideas the opportunity to be launched as real projects, through the creative free economic zones that constitute today an essential part of the colleges system after their accreditation as the first higher education institution that converts to free economic zones, allowing the students to exercise their economic activities, embrace and develop their innovative ideas, in order to create companies and entrepreneurs. The integration of the colleges environment reflects on the integration of the outputs and their empowerment for the future, noting that the colleges have recently celebrated the launch or results of economic zones, represented by 15 projects for the students and graduates, which entered the preparation stages as companies with economic feasibility.
Dr. Al Shamsi stated that the development of education is a continuous dynamic process linked to technological developments, and he talked about a future vision for education that adopts the analysis of “big data” for each student and investment of artificial intelligence technologies, which enables us to prepare an appropriate curriculum for each student according to his digital data that reveal his interests, capacities and hobbies, and thus enable him to obtain an educational certificate that corresponds to his capacities and meets the needs of the labour market.
He then drew the features of education in the future and visualised an educational model that exceeds the limits of time and place, in what he called “Education like Uber”, which will enable to provide education “as a service” for all who wish to obtain it without being associated to a place or time. This type of education will attract the best students and the best teachers and will provide learning sources to everyone with the possibility to study at any place in the world and make an accomplishment in record time, in addition to expecting the disappearance of the concept of “university campus” and the conversion of universities towards technology and application spaces that support the learners.
Dr. Hanadi Nassir Al Suwaidi, Talent and Innvation Consultant at the Ministry of Education, said: The UAE enters the future through the innovation gate. First, I would like to start my discussion with the first innovator in the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, he is the first innovator and the first person to build this country, since the foundation of the Federation to the creation of an insightful future vision, interest in the State from desert to space and the extraordinary capacity of the leader in anticipating the future.
Hence, we note the readiness of the world to build a better future by innovating ideas that transfer the generations to a a future based on knowledge economy. We are well aware of the important role played by Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qassimi, Member of Supreme Council, Ruler of Sharjah, by himself, and his vision that the “children are the future and building the capital starts with them”. Furthermore, the significant efforts of the Emirate of Sharjah have not seized, since the establishment of the State, to update the institutions, initiatives and programmes that aim at integrating children in the development process and activating their participation in all the cases related to them, whether at the educational, health or creativity levels.
The spokeswoman presented a film on the great interest that H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan attaches to caring for children and the great care given by the UAE for the development of the child and caring for him since childhood until reaching adolescence, then the stage of graduate studies and university, institute or college studies.
She added: We are well aware of the role of the federal government in supporting innovation and that it is our only way to build a glorious history for the UAE and the future will be that of the owners of ideas and innovators. She then talked about the Global Innovation Index issued by INSEAD College, stating that innovation is one of the main pillars on which the highly competitive countries rely.
She stated that the Global Innovation Index is one of the indicators of the national agenda of UAE Vision 2021 within a competitive knowledge economy. This indicator seeks significant high performance in several topics included within the structure of the Global Innovation Index, namely the human capital, research, infrastructure, creative outputs and institutions. As for the innovation inputs, the UAE ranked 24th globally, outperforming several prominent countries in the field of development and innovation, such as Italy, Spain and China, and ranked 58th globally in the innovation outputs.
She continued: We review together the strategic plan of the State of the UAE to improve its results in the Global Innovation Index, consolidating the position of the State as a centre for intellectual property applications, particularly patents, promoting a unified network that aims to encourage cooperation in basic research between the government, universities and the private sector, identifying and tracking the impact of initiatives and linking them to results, supporting the financing of innovation by updating the venture capital system in the State and improving its efficiency.
She added: Here we focus on four parallel tracks of national innovation strategy in order to make the UAE one of the most innovative countries around the world during the remaining seven years, which is first, a stimulating environment, second, innovation in government work, third, innovation in private business and fourth, innovative individuals.
In response to a question asked by the moderator of the session about the role of the private sector in supporting education and innovation and supporting our children to work in this sector that represents a high economic growth at the State level: Saif Ali Al Shehhi, Executive Director, Happiness, Positivity and Supply Management at National Bonds Corporation, said: The missing link between the labour market and education is the role of educational institutions in the education outputs and the usefulness of such outputs in the labour market and if these outputs really serve the labour market, as innovation is an idea and method of work.
He added: When a student graduates from university, we, in the private sector, spend a lot of time and effort to rehabilitate such graduate to suit the work requirements in the private sector and through this major role that we should play in this regard, we signed several agreements with many universities and institutes and focused on the skills of the student along with the educational academic support, in an excellent step the save the time spent by this student in training before working in the private sector.
He stated that through extensive experience in this field, we say that the labour market needs innovation and high skills and change of the monotonous image of education, which states that education is only to obtain an academic certificate while the purpose of education is strategic thinking, innovation and creativity as these are the most important pillars of leadership in the future. The innovative aspect has become important and one of the necessities of practical life in the future. There are government accelerators in the State to drive innovation and there are several partnerships among Ministries, institutes and universities to encourage and support innovation.
He continued: The State pays great attention to human resources and there is no doubt that the link of technology to human resources is vital, and we should keep pace with such development in order to preserve the country’s gains and serve the Emirates in all sectors. We, in the UAE, pave the way to everyone to innovate as innovation is not limited to a specific category or specific individuals. It is an open field for everyone and to invest in the Emirati human mind.
Second Training Workshop at the Conference:
The second training session accompanying the Conference was held, and included two sessions, the first entitled “Saving is my Way to get Rich” presented by Financial Advisor Salah Salem Al Halyan, and the second session entitled “SMEs” presented by Dr. Sarah Abdul Wahab Al Madani, entrepreneur and member of Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Important subjects were raised during the workshop concerning the importance of investment and its best methods that contribute to entering the world of finance and business and its impact on economic development. There was also a discussion on how to change the youth perception from looking for a job to investing in their own projects. H.E. Dr. Sarah Al Madani confirmed that the reluctance of the youth in creating their own projects is due to their fear of failure, unlike the advanced countries whose privates depend wholly on private business instead of looking for jobs. She showed some examples of major entrepreneurs around the world, such as the owner of Apple, Microsoft and Cartier Jewelry. The reasons behind the failure of local trade to reach the global market were also discussed, as she clarified the role of local education in focusing on the academic aspect and not the applied professional aspect and the fear of thinking outside the box.
Salah Al Halyan added that employment outputs look at the academic aspect as it is the basis at the recruitment stage, while neglecting the professional aspect considered a priority in the advanced countries. He called on families to adopt a new approach in raising their children to be interested in practice, application and acquisition of experiences.
It is worth noting that these workshops that accompany the Conference fall within the interest of Sharjah Directorate of Human Resources in providing investment channels and saving methods to the employees of the Government of Sharjah that would guarantee a safe future for them and their families.
Within the events of the Conference, there were draws from among the participants in the training workshops, where the following companies offered gifts to the winners: Paramount Hotel, Royal M Hotel, Al Arabia Auto Maintenance Workshop, Al Mesaad Fitness, Pullman Hotel and Arabian Gulf Mechanical Centre.