Middle East employers look to equity incentives to attract and retain talent

Employers in the Middle East are turning to equity incentives as competition for talent intensifies across the region. The Hays GCC Salary Guide 2026 suggests around two-thirds of employers across the Gulf increased headcount last year despite widespread skills shortages, highlighting the pressure on organisations to strengthen their reward strategies. One response – which we’ve noticed across our own client base in the region – is a growing interest in share-based incentives designed to attract and retain key employees over the longer term. We’ll speak to a share plans expert who is advising clients on this issue.

Reporting on the Salary Guide, HRME News highlights persistent skills shortages alongside strong hiring plans, while Arabian Business points to rising salary optimism heading into 2026. Against that background, employers are reviewing how competitive their overall reward packages really are and looking beyond cash pay to longer-term incentives that help attract internationally mobile talent and encourage employees to stay.

Equity incentives have long been a familiar feature of reward strategies in markets such as the UK and the US, but they are becoming more prominent across the Middle East as multinational employers extend share plans into the region and businesses look for ways to retain key employees over longer time horizons and align their interests more closely with those of shareholders.

So let’s hear more on this. Earlier I caught up with share plans specialist James Sullivan-Tailyour who joined me by video link to discuss it. So what’s driving the growing use of equity incentives across the Middle East?

James Sullivan-Tailyour: “Well I think it's two things. It's partly the increased competition for talent globally, but particularly in the Middle East, and that's driving employers to think about the tools that they have for making themselves and their offering compelling and competitive in attracting people to the Gulf. It’s also about retaining people in the region for the long term and equity incentives are a really good way of delivering long term value, as well as enhancing the stickiness of employees and the alignment of their interests with that of the employer because as a shareholder, or at least an option holder with a right to receive shares, their interests are directly aligned with the shareholders and as the market develops and grows in sophistication and maturity businesses are thinking about retaining talent not just for a short two or three year period, but over a much longer time horizon. They are also thinking about their exit strategy for their shareholders and how they can align the interests of employees with those shareholders and deliver on those ambitions to sell or to list, as the case may be.”

Joe Glavina: “Are employers simply replicating UK and US share plans, or are they adapting them for the region, the Middle East?”

James Sullivan-Tailyour: “Well, there's always a tension between global consistency and local practicality and reflecting regional nuance but, in the main, most employers, certainly most multinational employers, want their incentive plans to be as consistent as possible and so that might may well mean that if they're offering equity-based compensation to their employees in, say, the US or the UK or Europe, they want to offer the same or very similar equity-based compensation structures for employees in the Gulf. But you always have to bear in mind that there are local nuances that might mean that you need, for particular local law reasons, to adopt a different structure and that might be particularly the case in some jurisdictions like Saudi Arabia where offering equity-based compensation is more complicated, but it also depends on the organisation's particular employee makeup and the HR needs for that workforce. It may be that in certain geographies there is still more of a premium placed on cash-based compensation. There isn't a one size fits all and we do tend to see that most companies want consistency where possible but there are differences, and there are also differences in terms of whether the organisation is perhaps a founder led business, or a listed business, or a private equity backed business.”

Joe Glavina: “Is equity moving beyond the executive tier and becoming more widely used?”

James Sullivan-Tailyour: “There certainly is a growing trend for sort of more broad based equity compensation, so going beyond the sort of the C-suite and down into the organisation, certainly to your sort of C-1, C-2 levels where you have key employees who are delivering value for the organisation and are critical to its long term success but also, more generally, where organisations are trying to foster a particular culture and promote a sense of togetherness, equity compensation can be a really valuable tool because you are creating shareholders out of your employees and that's both good internal and market signalling as part of what your culture is about, what values you're promoting, as well as being a very compelling and competitive offering in terms of attracting employees to join your organisation.”

Joe Glavina: “Finally James, what’s your takeaway message for viewers?”

James Sullivan-Tailyour: “Well, my message to them is, I think, don't just assume that in the Middle East cash-based compensation is the right approach. It may well be the right approach for you, but there are a lot of advantages with equity-based compensation, particularly around the direct alignment with shareholder interests and promoting a particular company culture that are really powerful. An equity-based incentive scheme can be used to really powerfully drive those particular behaviours and values and culture, so it's definitely worth having a look at whether an equity-based scheme, or extending an existing equity-based scheme, is right for your organisation.”

If you’d like help with introducing equity-based incentives into the Middle East, or help extending an existing share plan into the region, please do contact James – his details are there on the screen for you.

- Link to Hays GCC Salary Guide 2026