Laws on freelance work lack clarity

DAMMAM: The Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) launched freelance work programs for employing women and people with special needs in private enterprises using information technology and other means.

However, this kind of work in the Kingdom needs serious and resolute work regulations for maintaining the rights of both employers and employees.
The functional privileges are unfair between freelance and full-time staff, although the productivity of the freelance employee might outweigh the full-time employee’s productivity. Therefore, it is a must to provide a mechanism to measure the performance of all employees, grant them equal privileges and preserve the rights of both employers and employees.
Salah Al-Harbi, assistant professor of human resource management, said “the jobs that depend on freelance employment for some employees often rely on productivity, which depends on the employee’s effort,” explaining that freelance work is better for the employee whose workplace is far away from the residence in terms of saving transportation expenses.
Al-Harbi said that freelance work is available in many countries and is preferred by women and the disabled who do not like leaving the house, confirming that the freelance employee might be deprived of a lot of privileges, and this is one of the main disadvantages of this type of work.
He called on the Labor Offices to set out the regulations and rules that preserve the rights of the two parties, and identify freelance employee privileges and duties, praising the HRDF’s initiative which includes a clear and specific regulation to organize this work and identify its nature in terms of being contractual jobs or government jobs.
Abdulrahman Al-Sanie, a specialist in the field of economics and marketing, said: “This initiative is the right step in providing more job opportunities for these two categories — women and the disabled — and to reduce the unemployment rate, which currently is high among Saudi women, especially in the private sector.”
He said that the beneficiaries of this program constitute about 30 to 40 percent of the population, thus representing considerable purchasing power that could stimulate the economy, confirming that the program aims at promoting the interaction of the private sector toward social responsibility.
On the potential obstacles to this program, Al-Sanie said: “They include the lack of a clear vision for the assessment of labor productivity to determine salaries, promotions and incentives, as well as the weakness of the marketing campaign to identify the importance and objectives of this program for the public.”