To counter the Corona threat ... a third of Gulf companies plan to work from home

With Gulf Talent spread worldwide, a third of Gulf business owners are planning to employ employees from home, according to Gulf Talent.

The website, which specializes in employment services, indicated that, according to a recent survey, it is likely that management and human resources staff in companies working in the fields of hospitality, aviation, logistical planning, etc. will be required to work from home or take unpaid leave.

The site added that - based on the results of a survey - it received responses from 1,600 executives of companies and human resource experts in the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, stating that 35% of Gulf-based companies could ask employees to work from home.

This percentage includes 6%, which has already started planning work from home as a result of the recent outbreak of the virus, and 5% confirmed that it has plans to launch soon, and 12% is looking at this possibility, as well as 12% had had arrangements to work its employees remotely before the appearance of Corona.

Meanwhile, 54% of the survey respondents said that their companies do not have remote work plans yet, while 11% say they will definitely not think of employees working from home.

The highest rates
Companies in Bahrain recorded the highest rate of remote action plans across the region, at 38%.

Among the companies that turned to work remotely, 45% plan to include all employees, while the rest of the companies apply this procedure selectively to certain job categories, where administrators and human resources employees are the most fortunate in switching to work from home, while engineering and operations are less Share remote jobs.

Given that the remote work is new for most companies in the region, the survey found that many of them started to be active in preparing technical and organizational work for the employees from home.

In contrast, the multinationals surveyed indicated the greatest degree of willingness to move to tele-work.

Some of the executives surveyed speculated that the payment to telework could radically change the way regional companies operate in the long run, while retaining many components of teleworking even after the current need for that ends.

Unpaid leave
Regardless of the remote working arrangements, many of the companies surveyed reported a host of other measures to deal with the impact of the Corona outbreak, such as restricting business travel, providing health advice to employees, and limiting external staff meetings with customers and suppliers.

In the face of reduced business resulting from the outbreak of the virus, some companies have reported plans to reduce costs by cutting staff and unpaid vacations, mainly in the hospitality sector, followed by aviation, logistics, and event organization.

Many restaurants and retailers reported a jump in delivery service requests, while purchases inside stores declined, as customers preferred to stay in their homes and order goods to be delivered to them.