Saudi Arabia has opened an online channel for individuals who want to hire foreign workers currently employed by private companies, allowing those workers to be moved into domestic jobs under a defined set of conditions.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development said the service runs through its electronic platform and is meant to regulate transfers out of private sector establishments and into employment by individuals, under specific rules.
The worker being transferred must hold a valid work permit. Transfers are closed to anyone employed in senior professions, a group the ministry defines as educational, technical, healthcare and specialist occupations, and to anyone working in a profession reserved for Saudi nationals. The role the worker moves into has to be classified as domestic work.
Both sides of the transfer carry a documentary requirement. The previous employer has to provide an electronically certified waiver endorsed by the chamber of commerce. The incoming employer must show financial capacity, either through a salary certificate or a bank statement. Applications also need a copy of the worker’s residence permit showing the fingerprint and signature, together with details of the domestic occupation being requested and of the new employer.
Supporting documents can be uploaded in PDF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, DOCX and XLSX formats, with a ceiling of 3 MB per file.
The launch arrives at the same time as the mandatory rollout of the Kingdom’s Wage Protection Programme for domestic workers, which requires salaries to be paid through approved channels. The ministry has presented that requirement as a safeguard for the rights of employers and workers alike, and as a way to make payment records in the labour market easier to check.
Household hiring caps still apply after a transfer goes through. Saudi citizens may employ up to four domestic workers and expatriate residents up to two. Above those limits, an annual fee of SR9,600 applies for each additional worker.
Exemptions from that fee are available in humanitarian cases, including households where a member has a disability or is living with a chronic or serious illness.
The service adds a formal application route for a type of move that affects a substantial slice of the workforce in the Kingdom, where domestic employment sits under a separate regulatory framework from private sector jobs. The ministry did not publish figures for how many transfers it expects to process.
