UAE employers may need to rethink what they offer workers in 2027 as selective hiring, artificial intelligence (AI) and changing employee expectations reshape the labour market.
Companies will need to look beyond salaries and traditional benefits, according to Nishant Mahajan, Partner, People and Investments, Marsh Middle East and Africa.
He said job security, wellbeing, career opportunities and workplace flexibility will increasingly influence how employers attract and retain talent.
UAE employers shift from headcount to skills
The change comes as companies reassess how they build their workforces.
Instead of adding headcount across the board, employers are focusing on the capabilities they need. They are also redesigning jobs, moving employees into new roles and using technology to improve resilience.
Talent shortages remain a key concern. Marsh’s Global Talent Trends 2026 research found that 62% of Middle East business leaders cited talent scarcity as a concern. The global figure stood at 54%.
However, talent scarcity does not necessarily mean companies will increase hiring.
Employers can remain cautious about overall headcount while competing for people with scarce skills. As a result, the market may become more selective rather than simply expand or contract.
Companies further along in their workforce transformation are prioritising talent in areas such as organisational transformation, technology governance, risk management, skills development and innovation.
AI is changing how UAE jobs are designed
AI is also pushing employers to examine jobs at task level.
Mahajan said companies should identify which tasks require human input, which can benefit from AI support and which can be automated.
For example, AI can handle initial customer-service triage and summarise customer histories. Employees can then focus on complex cases and relationships.
In finance, automation can take over parts of reconciliation, reporting and analysis. This allows professionals to spend more time on judgement and decision-making.
HR teams can also use AI for workforce analytics, skills matching and administrative work. However, sensitive talent and managerial decisions still require human oversight.
The shift creates a new set of responsibilities as well. Employees will need to validate AI outputs and manage issues around governance and risk.
AI skills become relevant across functions
AI fluency is also moving beyond technology teams.
Mahajan said the strongest employee profile for 2027 could combine domain expertise, AI skills and human judgement.
As AI handles more routine work, employers may place greater value on skills such as judgement, creativity, empathy, risk management and accountability.
“AI fluency should increasingly be viewed less as a specialist technology skill and more as a capability that cuts across functions,” Mahajan said.
Marsh’s research shows the mixed impact AI is already having on workers.
About 83% of Middle East employees surveyed said AI makes them more productive. Meanwhile, 74% expected AI to improve jobs.
Yet 43% also feared that AI could lead to job losses.
UAE workers value skills development
Employee expectations were already changing before the region’s uncertainty in 2026.
Marsh’s research found that 64% of Middle East employees would trade a 10% pay rise for opportunities to develop AI and digital skills.
Meanwhile, 74% of HR leaders identified employee experience and the employee value proposition as a top priority.
The findings predate the regional conflict. Therefore, they should not be used to claim that the events of 2026 directly changed employee expectations.
They do, however, show the workplace pressures that employers were already facing as they entered 2026.
What UAE employers need to consider in 2027
For employers, the shift could change how they approach hiring and retention.
Rather than relying only on higher pay, companies may need to make career development, skills building and flexibility part of their wider employee proposition.
At the same time, workforce planning will increasingly involve deciding where humans add the most value and where technology can take over routine work.
The result could be a UAE hiring market where fewer roles are created through simple headcount expansion, but demand remains strong for people with the right combination of industry knowledge, AI fluency and human judgement.
