Almost half of employees across the UAE are logging longer hours to keep pace with duties that never appeared in their original job descriptions, new findings from recruitment firm Robert Walters show.
The research puts that figure at 49 per cent, with a further 25 per cent handing off extra tasks to colleagues when they can. Broadly, 79 per cent of professionals surveyed said their responsibilities had quietly grown over the past year without any formal adjustment. Just 17 per cent had raised the mounting demands with their managers.
Robert Walters has a term for the phenomenon: “shadow workloads.” The firm applies it to situations where duties pile up outside any official revision to a person’s role, pay, or path to promotion.
Technology sits at the center of the shift. According to the survey, 73 per cent of UAE professionals now lean on AI tools to complete work they previously could not have managed on their own.
Andrew Powell, Chief Commercial Officer at Robert Walters, credited AI with lifting productivity and letting staff branch into unfamiliar territory at speed. He cautioned, though, that firms should make sure the technology eases the strain on workers rather than ratcheting up how much and how fast they are expected to deliver.
That caution is echoed in the toll the survey documents. Robert Walters found that 43 per cent of respondents regularly deal with what it labels a “competence hangover” — the exhaustion, dwindling concentration, and depletion that can follow stretches of high-intensity output. Another 31 per cent reported feeling it on and off.
Oli Sanford-Scutt, Senior Director at Robert Walters Middle East, said the scope of jobs had widened as employers scrambled to keep up with a fast-changing commercial landscape. His worry is that the additional load risks hardening into the baseline expectation, folded silently into what workers are simply assumed to do.
Sanford-Scutt also called the UAE’s workforce among the most technologically advanced anywhere in the region, framing its quick embrace of AI as an edge for local businesses. Even so, he said, employers will have to weigh what that adoption means for how much any one person can reasonably carry, and for keeping talent from walking out the door.
Powell noted that stretching into new responsibilities can sharpen individual skills and strengthen an organization overall, provided the added work is acknowledged and handled with care.
To keep those demands from spiraling, the firm suggested employers reshuffle assignments, put money into the right tools, and draft in short-term specialists during crunch periods.
