Doroob

What Doroob is

Doroob (دروب) is the electronic training programme (برنامج التدريب الإلكتروني) offered by the Human Resources Development Fund (صندوق تنمية الموارد البشرية), abbreviated HRDF and branded Hadaf (هدف). The Fund’s page for the programme describes it as one of the Fund’s initiatives. Doroob is a training platform whose programmes the Fund pays for. It is not an employment programme, and it is not a statutory duty on an establishment.

The party bearing the cost is the Fund, not the public treasury. The Fund’s resources are set in the regulation that governs it (تنظيم صندوق تنمية الموارد البشرية), approved by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 107 dated 29/4/1421H: an annual fee on permits for foreign workers, to which are added the proceeds of labour fines that Article 232 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) directs to the Fund.

The distinction is not a point of naming. A sentence saying that the government pays for Doroob training names the wrong payer, and suggests a public budget line behind it that someone could claim against. On the Fund’s regulation, the money belongs to the Fund and is disbursed by decisions of its board.

Doroob registration is open, Doroob support is targeted

The distinction between registration and support can be lost when Doroob is discussed, and the Fund’s page keeps the two apart:

• Registration. Any Saudi citizen, male or female, may register on Doroob and enrol in its training programmes, with no fee to pay.
• Support. It means the Fund bearing the cost of paid content, and it is aimed at specific groups.

The Fund names four groups for support: job seekers; private sector employees; people with disabilities who are in either of those two situations; and residents of remote areas in the same two situations.

The last two groups carry a condition that can be missed. Each is named inside the first two situations, not beside them. The support reaches a person with a disability who is a job seeker or a private sector employee, and a resident of a remote area on the same terms. So the list is not four parallel groups. It is two situations, with two descriptions that apply within them.

The Fund describes its share of the cost as borne either in full or at a set percentage (كليًا أو بنسبة محددة). A statement that Doroob covers the full cost in every case adds something the Fund’s wording does not say. In the sources we reviewed, we found no table setting that percentage for each programme or for each group, so the share in a particular case is a matter for the Fund’s terms at the time.

Doroob’s two products and their durations

• Customised training (التدريب المخصص). It offers specialised content following the Fund’s training guide (دليل التدريب), for a duration of up to 6 months.
• Open access training (تدريب الوصول المفتوح). It offers a broad catalogue from which the beneficiary chooses, for a duration of up to 3 months.

Alongside the two products the Fund lists interactive sessions (الجلسات التفاعلية): live sessions given by a specialist, which are recorded and published on the platform afterwards.

The words “up to”, in both durations, describe a ceiling and not a promise. The length of a particular programme is stated in the announcement for that programme; the figures above say where the range ends, not how long any given programme runs. A plan that schedules a course as six months because the ceiling is six has been built on the ceiling, not on the course. The list of Doroob programmes available at a given time, and the providers offering them, changes by decision of the Fund and is found on the platform itself.

The Doroob support cap and the limit on repeat support

The Fund sets two limits that apply together: support up to 3 times a year for each beneficiary, provided that the support does not exceed a ceiling of SAR 8,000 per trainee. The count alone does not show what is available, since it is the financial ceiling that governs.

How the two limits combine shows in arithmetic on figures assumed for illustration:

• If the first programme costs SAR 3,000, SAR 5,000 of the ceiling remains for the other two occasions.
• If the second programme then costs SAR 4,000, SAR 1,000 remains, and that is all the third occasion can carry, whatever its cost.
• If a single programme costs SAR 8,000, the ceiling is used up on the first occasion, and two occasions remain with no balance behind them.

The practical rule is that the count limits repetition without adding to the balance, and that the two figures should be stated together. Quoting three times a year on its own suggests more room than the Fund’s terms grant; quoting the ceiling on its own drops the limit on repetition.

When a Doroob programme is not completed

1. The first time: a warning.
2. The second time: suspension from support for 24 months from the date of the second warning, with unsupported services remaining available.

The first warning is cleared after one year if no suspension has been issued in the meantime. So enrolling in a programme one does not intend to finish is not without consequence, and the consequence falls on the beneficiary, at their next opportunity.

The detail to watch is the start of the suspension: it runs from the date of the second warning, not from the end of the programme and not from the date of the first warning. If a second warning is issued ten months after the first, the 24 months run from that later date, so 34 months in all will have passed since the first warning by the time the suspension ends.

Because the first warning lapses after a year, a failure to complete that occurs after the lapse has no live warning for it to follow. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text setting out how that case is counted, so this is an inference from the wording, not a statement the Fund has made. Anyone who needs an answer for a specific case should take it from the Fund.

How Doroob differs from a learning management system

A learning management system is a system the organisation owns. It hosts the organisation’s content, records who completed which content and when, and assigns mandatory learning paths to groups of employees. The problem it solves is a matter of evidence before it is a matter of teaching.

Doroob works differently. The platform sits outside the organisation, and the relationship on it runs between the Fund and the individual beneficiary. An organisation that refers its employees to Doroob does not thereby obtain a completion record in its systems or in the employee file it keeps, and it gains no mandatory path that it can assign and follow up. An organisation that treats Doroob as a substitute for its internal system has given up the completion record, not merely a piece of software.

How Doroob differs from Tamheer

Doroob can also be confused from a second direction, as if it were on the job training for graduates. The Fund offers a separate product for that, Tamheer (تمهير), which the Fund calls its graduate development product (منتج تطوير الخريجين), with a name, conditions and place of training that are not those of Doroob. The difference shows in where the training happens, who the counterparty is, and which conditions apply:

• Place. Tamheer training takes place at the establishment’s premises, with the trainee present; Doroob is electronic content studied wherever the beneficiary happens to be.
• Counterparty. In Tamheer the establishment is a party that hosts the trainee and follows their progress; in Doroob the relationship runs between the Fund and the individual.
• Conditions. Each product has eligibility conditions set out in its terms. A condition, an amount or a duration from one product is not carried over to the other.

One error in this area is to group the products together because the same body offers them, and then to move a figure from one product to another on the strength of that common source.

Doroob and the training duties in the Labor Law

The Labor Law does not require an establishment to enrol in Doroob or in any other programme of the Fund. The statutory training duties sit in Articles 42 to 49 of the Labor Law and in the articles of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) made under them, and they are a separate subject with a text of their own. Doroob is a support product that an individual can use.

In the sources we reviewed, we found nothing settling whether the time an employee spends on a Doroob programme counts within working hours or outside them, neither on the Fund’s Doroob page nor elsewhere. Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation requires an establishment bound by the training duty to enable a trainee who is also assigned work to combine training tasks and work tasks during official working hours. That provision is written for the training an establishment provides under its statutory duty and does not name Doroob, so we have not taken it as settling the question for a programme an employee takes as an individual.

Where Doroob sits in a training decision

Doroob is a channel for delivering training, and the decision that comes before it is not made by the platform. A training needs analysis places a check ahead of any training, with three branches. Does the employee not know how to do the work? Then training fits. Does the employee know how, but cannot act for lack of a tool, an authority or time? Then training changes nothing. Does the employee know how and is able to act, but does not? Then the cause lies in incentives, clarity or management.

If the first branch holds, the question of direction remains. Upskilling is progress along the same career path, while reskilling is preparation for a different role. The platform does not settle that direction. What settles it is the measured skills gap, the distance between the competencies a role requires and those the employee holds.

Doroob in borderline cases

• A person outside the groups targeted for support. They can still register and enrol in whatever content carries no cost, since registration is open to every citizen. Confusing registration with support in this case produces a wrong expectation, not exclusion from the platform.
• A private sector employee. Support reaches the employee as an individual in a targeted group, not because the employer is a party. Enrolment gives the employer no status and no entitlement. In the sources we reviewed, we found no source attributing to enrolment in Doroob any effect on a ratio or classification that concerns the establishment.
• An organisation that wants proof of completion. It needs a record in a system it controls, and what happens outside the organisation may not provide one. A mandatory internal requirement built on an external platform rests on a record the organisation does not hold.

The statutory provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 232 of the Labor Law (the proceeds of labour fines going to the Fund) and Articles 42 to 49 of the Labor Law (the statutory training duties, cited to show that they are a separate subject from Doroob). From the Implementing Regulation, issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 dated 19/8/1446H, Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation is relied on for the duty to let a trainee combine training and work tasks during official working hours. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Articles 42, 43, 44, 46, 47 and 48 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 45 or 49 of the Labor Law, or Article 232 of the Labor Law, which was last amended by Royal Decree M/46 of 1436H. The Fund’s resources are those set in its regulation approved by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 107, and the programme facts are those of the Fund’s page for Doroob.

Before a decision rests on Doroob figures

The figures above are taken from the Fund’s page for its electronic training programme, as worded on the date it was consulted, and the terms of the programmes change by decision of the Fund. None of them should be presented as a current reading of what is on offer today. Anyone relying on one of them in a live application should take it from the Fund’s announcement at the time of applying, not from a summary written months earlier.

One point does not change when the terms change: the platform delivers training and does not determine the need for it. An organisation that sends its employees to free content before measuring its skills gap has spent time without securing a result.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• ADDIE Model
• Competencies
• Employee File
• Rotational Training
• Massed Practice