Warning: you are in danger of being ‘upgraded’

In times of crisis when redundancies are rife among financial services companies, it’s not just the actual job cuts you have to be worried about. Often, if you’re not among the top performers (and there’s a plentiful supply of talent on the market) there’s the prospect of being – to coin a euphemism – ‘upgraded’.

Essentially, this means that companies would probably want to employ that high-performing person anyway, but the fact that they’re on the job market makes it easier to pick them up at a reduced rate. The only problem is that firms need to weed out underperformers, which is where the danger of being upgraded emerges.

This is happening a lot in places like the UK – even in the comparatively safe asset management sector. Now, it appears to be happening in the Gulf.

Job cuts have been comparatively light here, with international banks in particular merely trimming headcount rather than making wholesale cuts. Toby Simpson, managing director of The Gulf Recruitment Group, told Emirates 24/7 that most job cuts where down to “restructuring for growth, or Emiratisation, rather than purely to cut salary costs.”

However, much of the recruitment that is happening is to replace outgoing staff, suggests Hasnain Qazi, Middle East business manager at Huxley Associates: “These banks have also been spot hiring to replace outgoing staff with higher calibre or cheaper resource, depending on circumstances.”

In other words, watch out – you could be upgraded.