Practical support to meet Emiratisation targets without treating them as a box-ticking exercise: workforce planning, compliant reporting, senior Emirati hiring through our search practice, and the onboarding and development that keeps nationals in the business.
Private-sector companies in the UAE with fifty or more employees must increase the share of Emiratis in skilled roles by two percentage points each year, with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation applying monthly financial penalties for each unfilled position. Since 2024, selected companies with twenty to forty-nine employees in priority sectors have also been required to hire at least one Emirati a year. Rules and thresholds change, and we track them so you do not have to.
We start by auditing your current position: headcount by skill category, Emirati employees on the correct visas and contracts, Nafis registrations and how the numbers are being reported. From there we build a hiring plan that matches real roles to available national talent, rather than creating positions to satisfy a quota.
For senior roles we run the search ourselves. Our network includes Emirati executives across government-related entities, banking, real estate and energy in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and we assess for fit and ambition in the same way as any other appointment.
The part most programmes miss is retention. We design onboarding, mentoring and development paths for Emirati hires, and set up the line-manager coaching that determines whether they stay past the first year.
Groups operating across the Gulf face similar frameworks in Doha and Riyadh: Qatarisation targets for government and semi-government entities, and the Nitaqat system in Saudi Arabia with its colour-banded quotas by sector and size. We apply the same approach in each market and coordinate reporting across your entities.
MOHRE applies a monthly financial contribution for every Emirati position not filled, increasing each year, and companies found to be circumventing the rules face additional fines and restrictions on work permits. A compliant plan costs a fraction of that.
Yes. Emirati appointments at Director, VP and C-suite level run through our executive search practice with the same process and guarantees as any other search.
Companies registered only in free zones are currently outside the MOHRE quota, though many choose to build Emirati talent anyway for government clients and licensing. Mainland entities within a group are in scope.