UAE Business: Nearly two-thirds UAE professionals prefer to be self-employed – Gulf Digital News

UAE Business: Nearly two-thirds UAE professionals prefer to be self-employed – Gulf Digital News

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of UAE respondents in the Entrepreneurship in the Mena survey would like to be self-employed or have their own business if given the choice.

Conducted recently by Bayt.com, a top job site in the Middle East, and market research agency YouGov, the survey found that even among those who are employed, 64% are currently thinking of starting their own business. 20% of respondents have tried to start their own business in the past, while 7% never thought of establishing a new company.

Freedom to choose work-life balance (44%), personal fulfilment (41%), ability to give back to the community (40%) and high monetary gains (39%) emerge as the top reasons for preferring to be self-employed.

Independence

Those who have already started their business seem to have similar reasoning. When asked about the reasons Mena professionals have for starting their own business, the top answers were ‘greater independence in what I want to achieve’ (32%) and ‘wanted more income’ (32%).

On the other hand, 30% of UAE professionals claimed they would prefer to seek employment in a company. The main reasons are having regular income (40%), learning new skills (39%) and stability of employment/ job security (34%).

Ola Haddad, Director of Human Resources at Bayt.com