Endeavour Lebanon organized a round table yesterday to discuss management of human capital in small and medium enterprises in Lebanon, which highlighted the problem of poor usage of local talents by Lebanese companies compared to international companies. The round table begun with a definition of human capital management which entails three main abilities, namely: ability to attract talents, to make use of talents, and capacity to develop talents.
The assistant manager of Weber Shandwick, Farah Bashasha, discussed the weakness of Lebanon’s performance at the level of international competitiveness in human capital as Lebanon scores a modest regional classification and a low 103 scoring globally, and this according to the reports of the international economic forum for 2013-2014. For their part, Jordan ranked 63d with Qatar and UAE ranking 13 and 19th respectively based on the same source. According to the speaker who quoted the study done by Endeavour Insight, Lebanon’s competitiveness classification remains low despite the fact that the country enjoys some of the best educational and business administration institutions. However, Lebanon witnessed a downfall at the level of other competitiveness requirements namely: ICT and general infrastructure, the efficiency of the job market, modest innovation in business in more generally the mismatch between skills acquired by university graduates and the requirements of the job market. The administrative director of Endeavour Lebanon, Tarek Al-Saadi pointed out to continuing problem of brain drain and the absence of any corrective measures or public policies thus allowing foreign companies to use Lebanese talents whilst local companies are late in realizing their needs for human resources.
Source: Al-Nahar 11 February 2014
