Background
Our client is a large Network engineering company based in the US. They had won a short term project in the UAE in which they had to deploy staff from the UK for 6 weeks to do consultancy work in the UAE. The company has never worked in the UAE before and their expertise where needed in this particular project. They had limited knowledge of how it works in the Middle East and reached out to Connect Resources for advice and to understand our services and what we can do for them.
Challenge
The main challenges we faced here is the short term option and also the limited knowledge the client had and their employees on how hiring worked in the Middle East.
Challenge 1 – The client only wants the employees to be in the UAE short term and doesn’t want to pay the full amount for an employment visa and insurance.
Challenge 2 – The employees must be paid compliantly and without a work permit we cannot payroll the employee through the WPS system.
Challenge 3 – Medical insurance is needed especially on a site project where the employee is not working remotely and will require being onsite with the engineers.
Challenge 4 – The project is so short term that if the client has to wait for an employment visa after arriving in the UAE then they would be losing money on the engineer as he needs a work permit to enter the site in Dubai.
The client didn’t want the employees in Dubai staying in a hotel and not working with the client for 1 to 2 weeks as it would be a waste of time and money.
These were the main challenges we discussed and had to overcome in order to win this project.
Connect Resources Solution
Connect Group is a 22 year old company with extensive experience in HR and visa related services in the UAE so we had to come up with a plan that would best suit our client and also make sure they didn’t spend unnecessary costs to complete the project.
Challenge 1 Solution – We advised the client to opt for a Mission visa which is a short term 3 month visa and it means the employee has a work permit to work in the country for less than three months. The employee cannot change that mission visa to an employment visa but for this case the project wasn’t going to exceed two months.
This option also saved the client less than half the cost of an employment visa.
Challenge 2 Solution – On a mission visa the employee is under a work permit so we could compliantly pay the employee for the short term project or the client could opt to payroll the employee through their entity.
Challenge 3 Solution – As part of the mission visa application the employee is enrolled on basic medical insurance and therefore in the case of emergency the employee would be covered by medical insurance.
Also, saving the client more money because on the employment visa the client would have to provide basic insurance and can cost up to 800 AED extra.
Challenge 4 Solution – This was an easy solution as the client needed the workers to arrive in the UAE and start to work onsite immediately. We can apply for a mission visa for employees outside the country. So we applied while the employees were in the UK and then they arrived into the country on that work permit enabling them to go straight to work the day after they arrived.
Results
Connect Group successfully completed the project and there were no delays on obtaining the mission visas as we give clear and concise timelines to our clients.
The employees arrived on the work permits and went to work on site the day after. The client made the transfer of salaries to the employees at the end of the month.
Most importantly because we have such knowledge in the market and we have completed many projects similar to this we knew it was the best option both commercially and operationally for the client and we ended up saving the client a lot of money to complete the project.
It’s with this long term experience that clients opt to work with Connect Resources; we want to provide the client with the best solution whether it’s a short term or long term project.
