More than Three-Quarters of Middle East Respondents Feel Passionate About Their Work

The Bayt.com ‘Passion for Work in the Middle East’ survey, recently conducted by Bayt.com –  the Middle East’s leading career site –  has revealed that the overwhelming majority of respondents from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) feel that the work they do adds purpose to their life (91.5%). Another 75% of MENA respondents are ‘extremely passionate’ about their work and for 86.5% of MENA respondents, their work has helped them discover who they really are. 

Over half of those polled (57.9%) were generally happy with the work culture and environment at their organization, 64% of which are ‘extremely happy’ and 36% of which are ‘moderately happy’. Conversely, one in ten poll respondents in the MENA admitted that they were ‘not happy at all’ with their current work environment.  

An impressive 87.1% of MENA professionals feel a sense of connection with their co-workers , and approximately half ‘agree’ with this sentiment (50.2%), while 36.9% ‘strongly agree’. In fact, very few respondents ‘disagree’ (3.5%) or ‘strongly disagree’ (1.2%). 

More than half of the MENA respondents felt that their workplaces recognized or celebrated special personal occasions such as birthdays and marriages (51.3%). According to 36.1% of respondents, their companies ‘always’ recognised such occasions. However, 33.4% of MENA companies ‘almost never’ recognize special occasions.   

“As a business that has been successfully connecting professionals and companies together for the past 16 years, the results of this poll are indeed very inspiring to us.  At Bayt.com, we work very hard to ensure that there is a vast number of jobs on Bayt.com that professionals find immediately relevant and can fall in love with,” said Suhail Masri, VP Employer Solutions, Bayt.com. “On any given day, we have thousands of vacancies on our jobsite that people can apply to for free, across the entire career-level and industry spectrum. Meanwhile employers searching for qualified people to hire are able to find their ideal candidates quickly and easily with Bayt.com's industry leading CV Search tool which recruiters can try for free on http://www.bayt.com/en/search-cv/. Over the last decade and a half we have redefined the vanguard when it comes to the evolution of recruitment portals to the realm of essential full-fledged social engagement platforms.”

When asked whether their workplace has a culture of transparency and honest communication, 60.2% ‘agreed’ that this was true and another 11.8% ‘strongly agreed’. More than three quarters claim that their manager provides feedback and cares about their professional growth and development (76.8%), and only 7.3% ‘strongly disagree’ that this is the case. Moreover, the poll also showed that for 81.7% of MENA respondents, exceptional performance is recognized and rewarded at their workplace, compared to only 10.9% who said that this is  not the case for them. 

When it comes to giving  100% of their effort and passion at work, more than half of the respondents ‘agree’ (54.3%), and 35.9% ‘strongly agree’. Actually, only a small minority of respondents ‘disagree’ to always giving their best performance at work (2.3%), and 2.1% ‘strongly disagree’.

Another mere 6.6% of the respondents said that they do not look forward to going back to work after a vacation or weekend while the majority of the respondents claimed to look forward to returning to work (86.9%), and 37.6% strongly agreeing with this sentiment. 

Masri continued: “Feeling passion and ownership towards work has a considerable impact on both the employee and the employer. Employees who are motivated, passionate, and happy at work tend to stay at their companies longer, and employers benefit from the improved loyalty and team retention rates. A great way for employers to assess how passionate a potential candidate is about the work they do is by studying their activity on Bayt.com Specialties, which is a specialized content sharing and Q&A platform that empowers professionals to share their interests and expertise in their career specialties. Professionals benefit from this platform tremendously insofar as nothing leaves a better impression with potential employers than expert job-related knowledge and sound networking acumen. Moreover, the Bayt.com Specialties platform is highly popular as a reference for employers for its professional’s skills rankings which are earned through peer endorsements.”

 Data for the Bayt.com ‘Passion for Work in the MENA’ poll was collected online from January 12 to 30, 2016, with 6,106 respondents from countries in the MENA region including UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen amongst others.