The past couple of years have witnessed the Middle East shift from an oil-based, energy intensive sector to focus more knowledge-based work. Fuelled by a larger global rise of the knowledge economy and technological advancements, the current business and workforce landscape of the region is one that’s fast changing.

In a world of work where WEF estimates around 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted between 2023 and 2028 and companies across major GCC countries are pivoting to newer business models, HR leaders find themselves at the heart of the Middle East’s workforce revolution.

To enable HR leaders to make better talent decisions, support business-aligned workforce development, and reveal critical gaps that threaten their success in 2025, People Matters recently unveiled its SHRPA State of HR Industry Report– Middle East Insights. Built from responses and conversations with HR and business leaders across the region, the report offers a roadmap of supercharging HR impact, connecting the past trends on challenges and gaps with strategies and imperatives for a successful future.

Talent management concerns take center stage

The impact of ambitious growth aspirations and a collective shift across the Middle East leverage economic and technological shifts to their advantage has magnified HR’s role and effectiveness. Key talent management concerns like attracting the right people, building qualified leaders, and enhancing engagement and EX emerged as top HR challenges with a greatest potential for business impact.

Highlighting the challenge that HR leaders face today Maan Fatani, explained that “talent management is still difficult for many organisations, even though it's clear how important it is. Addressing skills gaps is always hard, and matching people's skills to their specific job needs is even harder. The journey is still long and difficult.”

Among these, building the right leaders trumped many other business critical concerns to be a top challenge for 98% of respondents from the region. This overwhelming focus on leaders doubles down on the focus on weathering change with success. Investments in HR tech also are projected to be the highest in the region for leadership building.

Given the often paradoxical nature of work, one where they are expected to don multiple hats and balance seemingly opposing forces like being both outcome and people focused, the expectation from leaders is to make sense of a complex and uncertain world and have the right mindset for success.

A recent conversation with Maan Fatani,Group Vice President of HR & Shared Services - Middle East Paper Company (MEPCO), Waleed Al Rashed, Senior leader - People Development, Government Entity, Zainab Maghrabi, Leader of Capability Strategy and Transformation, Saudi Geological Survey delves further into the leadership challenges across the in the Middle East.

The question of HR tech impact remains crucial to answer

The SHRPA report unpacked the often murky and unclear HR tech industry, only to reveal its strategic importance and how companies with the right HR tech architecture are outperforming their competitors across major talent indicators.

From recruitment to L&D and experience management, the report showed that laggards (those with just basic HR automation ) are falling behind progressive (advanced and integrated AI/analytics infrastructure) and adopters ( data-driven decision makers) in delivering results with satisfaction.

Speaking to us as part of the SHRPA report, Imran Ahmad, Group Chief HR officer, Jashanmal National Co. noted that “HR in the Middle East often prioritizes a "people-first" approach, balancing low-tech and high-touch solutions. Technology is used for basic tasks and self-service, while more strategic functions like recruitment and performance management are slowly adopting new technologies.”

While today there is a shift among HR across the Middle East to become more agile and data-driven, tech adoption at pace and supported with the right identification and implementation strategies will be critical for HR leaders in the region. Strategies that will hinge on overcoming misalignment of expectations that HR, tech, and business leaders have raised in the report.

Key talent imperatives for the Middle East

The SHRPA research provides valuable insights for HR professionals and business leaders in the Middle East region, emphasising how talent and technology are essential for future growth. As the business environment changes, staying informed and adaptable will be crucial to overcoming challenges and making the most of new opportunities.

Shfting focus from understanding key trends that dominate the HR industry in the Middle East, the SHRPA report looked at top three gaps that will be vital for HR leaders in the region to overcome in the coming year. The gaps today are:

• Change management gap: Gap in the change readiness and change execution.
• Acknowledgement gap: Gap in realising that HR tech performance is directly correlated with HR’s effectiveness in leveraging it.
• Value realisation gap: Gap between HR tech evaluation & utilisation challenges by HR leaders and HR tech partners’ perception of it.

To address these gaps today, HR leaders need to address the following challenges: 

• Enhance change execution speed
• Develop HR function’s resilience
• Build sustainable technology infrastructure

To understand how HR leaders across the Middle East are planning to meet these imperatives and benchmark your strategies against regional standards, download the SHRPA State of HR Industry– Middle East Insights report.