At many private businesses, the last month has been a mad rush to prepare for the year end closing and to approve 2014's budget. The past year was horrific for both Saudi companies and their staff as they struggled to comply with the enforcement of regulations long on the books in the Kingdom. It seems that the New Year will bring new business challenges as well, and workers may get a surprise when they discover what the outcome of changes in regulations really mean. Information technology companies are particularly wary of the 40 – hour work week. Worldwide, IT professionals are used to coping with the issues presented as they try to manage network maintenance around business schedules. Unexpected outages are all in a day's work for systems administrators. But the 40 hour work week that has been proposed by the Shoura Council has punitive measures for any company whose staff work more than eight hours in a single day. That would have dire implications for the goal of keeping networks up and customers supported while keeping employees under the eight hour limit. In discussions with local information technology companies it appears that they understand that they will be forced to hire more staff, and they are committed to abiding by all regulations, but their attitude toward staff benefits and employee productivity is also changing. For instance, if Saudi tech employees think they will be getting big raises and bonuses in 2014, they might want to wait to spend that money. “By reducing the working hours from the current 48 – hours per week to 40 – hours per week, the government will effectively mandate a 16 percent raise for every employee in the Saudi private sector,” said one Saudi manager. “Even if companies are currently operating for 45 hours weekly, then that will be more than a ten percent raise. As I currently understand the proposed regulations, each worker will work fewer hours weekly for the same compensation - that's a raise. Unless the worker is paid hourly, companies would be unable to reduce compensation, but they will still need staff to cover IT contracts, network support and IT services.” Local IT companies are already facing staffing issues after the employment rectification process which happened over the spring and summer of 2013. At that time, companies only kept the staff onboard who were actually required and most of those employees are fully occupied. By the government mandating a 40 hour week, companies will most likely hire more workers, as is the government's goal, but that will be expensive. “When I hire a new employee that means I must pay not only for the hours I need to return my operations to full functionality, but I must also pay for his benefits and other overhead costs,” said the GM of a local IT firm. “This means I will look very closely at salary increases, if any, and I will also control the working hours of my staff more closely. It is expected that companies offering attendance and access control systems will thrive - if they have staff available to install the systems. For employees, the days of arriving 15 minutes late, taking smoking breaks or sneaking out to go to the bank will be over. Many companies are discussing “pay for performance” compensation, where any future salary increases are tied to key performance indicators and measurable targets. The use of readily available, often cloud based, task tracking software, will ensure that slackers are easily identified. There will also be changes to IT support contracts across the Kingdom. Most Saudi companies opt for business day only IT service level agreements. In the past that meant that IT services would be offline for at most a single day. Now two days of system downtime will be the norm and 24 X 7 support contracts will be much more expensive. Worried that it is becoming costly to keep corporate networks operational, more Saudi companies are discussing either completely outsourcing their IT or moving to mostly cloud based operations. If the recent Snowdon revelations have taught us anything, certain sensitive corporate data should never go to the cloud or even be held by computers that connect to the Internet. Will local companies know where to draw the line when it comes to data sharing, how to evaluate cloud providers or draw up IT outsourcing contracts? Probably not, which means that 2014 will definitely be an “interesting time” for information security providers in Saudi Arabia.
