Meet the man pushing for more Saudi women in the workplace

As Saudi Arabia rolls out plans to increase women’s participation in the workforce to 30 percent, local recruitment firm Glowork is stepping up efforts towards narrowing the gender gap in the country.

Glowork began as a social enterprise operating an online job site for women and has expanded rapidly since it launched five years ago. The company has placed over 27,000 women since that time and expanded into headhunting, career fairs, research, and career counseling.

“There is a high demand for Saudi women who are seeking for jobs,” Khalid Alkhudair, the company’s founder and CEO told Argaam. “We had more than 40,000 women attendees who are looking for job opportunities in our last year annual career fair (A Step Ahead) along with a huge number of CV’s that we receive on a daily basis.”
 

Glowork has been able to give women access to job opportunities in sectors that were previously inaccessible and promote the concept of flexible work, enabling hundreds of women to work for employers from home.

“We managed to create several new angles to enable women into the labor market. We cover most sectors including retail, food, education and health care. Challenging industries have been anything related to science, technology, education and math education,” Alkhudair explained.

Yet, pushing for social change does not come without its obstacles, especially in a country where attitudes on women employment have been slow to change. What was more challenging, Alkhudair says, was building a company that could create a social impact and also be profitable.

Although it received strong support from the government and local businesses, it was only later when companies became willing to pay for its services and invest in what it was selling.

In 2013, SAS holding, a Riyadh-based investment management and franchising firm, acquired a 51 percent stake in Glowork for $16 million. 

The kingdom will continue to be the main focus of Glowork’s efforts as it positions itself for growth as the government begins implementing labor market reforms under Saudi Vision 2030. However, the recruitment firm’s message is being heard in other parts of the region.

Glowork has recently partnered with the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Foundation to launch its app that seeks to easily connect female job seekers with potential employers in the private sector based on their skill sets. It has also recently opened an office in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is currently looking at other markets for new opportunities.

“We are very ambitious and we see our work expanding to the rest of the region. We have a big mission in the kingdom and if we continue to succeed we believe we can take our practices to the rest of the region,” Alkhudair added.

Write to Joumana Saad at joumana.saad@argaamplus.com