In order to create new work opportunities for Saudi women and shift gender roles in the workforce, Khalid set up Glowork. Khalid started by assembling a team of experts from different fields who were skilled in training methods, research & development, and learning & development.… Read more
In order to create new work opportunities for Saudi women and shift gender roles in the workforce, Khalid set up Glowork. Khalid started by assembling a team of experts from different fields who were skilled in training methods, research & development, and learning & development. The online platform they built provides easy access to the Saudi job market. Virtual marketing and clear presentation of information on the portal help women overcome mobility barriers and limited communication channels to both find and seek new employment opportunities. Glowork’s platform has encouraged women to post their CVs and companies to welcome female applicants to their job openings. All services are offered at no cost to female job seekers and citizen organizations (COs), however, private companies pay a small fee to join the network. With all profits reinvested into expanding Glowork’s social impact, Khalid’s model serves as a precedent in the country for a fee-for-service organization devoted to a social cause.
Khalid goes beyond the job matching to create new strategies to increase over-all female workforce participation by getting companies used to hiring women. Rather than confronting the current cultural norm that encourages women to work from home, Khalid came up with an innovative work-from-home solution. His “Virtual Office” initiative allows women living in remote areas and those who prefer to work from home to do so through technology. This advanced technology simulates all the needed resources that are in an actual office space while providing businesses with a way to track their employees’ performance, from customer service to research to sales. The Virtual Office system can even be adapted to cater to women with special needs and is convenient for women living in rural and isolated areas to actively seek jobs and work from home.
To date, Glowork has created over 6,000 jobs for women; 50 dedicated to women with special needs, which signals a significant step toward promoting another level of inclusion. Currently, the website carries a database of over 1.2 million CVs of highly qualified women and 159 companies who are committed to recruit from this pool.
To build the supply of qualified women seeking employment on his platform, Khalid established relationships with every university and college in the region that has female representation, to ensure that educational institutions are aware of his initiative and share new job postings with female students seeking employment. Khalid also provides practical support by conducting weekly in-person workshops to instill positive career aspirations within young women beyond traditionally accepted roles. He reaches graduating female students by organizing job fairs, which bring the companies to the universities, while also promoting internship opportunities. Before Khalid entered the universities, only male students were encouraged to pursue internship opportunities for college credit. He is reorienting young students and introducing them to companies earlier in their college careers.
Khalid is also tapping into new sectors which are currently occupied by immigrant males but which are more appropriate for women. For example, Khalid negotiated with the Ministry of Labor to convert whole sectors like cosmetics, lingerie, and accessories to a female labor force. Saudi women had stopped going to these shops and resorted to buying online due to the cultural discomfort of buying such personal products from a male. Opening up these sectors is estimated to provide 400,000 jobs in the next three years to be filled by Saudi women only. In other sectors where men and women could work side by side but have not, Khalid works directly with companies, such as one large hotel, encouraging them to employ women in the food and beverage and tourism sectors. These changes have had the added benefit of significantly government spending on unemployment benefits.
While continuing to build strategic partnerships, Khalid has worked diligently with the Ministry of Labor, the Human Resource Development Fund, and a number of relevant citizen organizations. Additionally, Khalid is in a position to promote fair women’s employment policies with his recent appointment to the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Labor. Currently, he is the voice within the committee pushing to change policies that require small-and medium-sized enterprises to have separate entrances for women, to have equal salary regulations for women, and to require private companies who have more than fifty female employees to build an office daycare facility.
While employing more women and gradually changing gender roles, Khalid is taking incremental steps to promote policy changes to reach his goal to end the segregation of men and women in many facets of life, starting with the workplace. Khalid is making positive strides in a community aching for change and a government willing to advance in the area of women’s rights due to international pressure and the threat of neighboring uprisings.
Khalid is building on the momentum by penetrating new markets. He plans to increase the number of staff and extend the platform’s services throughout the country. For regional expansion, he will call on experts in those markets to help him gain access to country specific information and navigate its varying dynamics. Khalid has made initial steps toward replicating his fully operational framework in Qatar, Yemen, Oman, and Libya. He has gained recognition from regional and international organizations like Wamda, Arabnet, the ILO, and UNICEF.
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