Reskilling

Reskilling: a definition

Reskilling (إعادة التأهيل المهني), also searched for as employee reskilling, is the preparation of an employee for a role different from the one they hold now, after that current role has shrunk, has changed in content or has disappeared, so that the employee moves to another role inside the organisation instead of leaving it.

Why an organisation turns to reskilling

When a role disappears, the alternative to reskilling is to end the employment relationship with the person who held it, and then to recruit someone new for a different role. Reskilling is weighed against that alternative, not against doing nothing.

Weighed that way, reskilling keeps something the alternative loses. The employee already knows the organisation, its procedures and its working relationships. For a new hire, that knowledge is built over months.

The sound comparison is therefore between the cost of reskilling and the full cost of replacement, not the cost of reskilling alone. Replacement, in the sense of that comparison, is the whole alternative described above: ending one employment relationship, recruiting for the new role, and the months in which the person recruited builds the knowledge of the organisation that the existing employee already holds. Setting the cost of reskilling against nothing, or against the recruitment step alone, leaves out part of what replacement costs.

What makes reskilling possible in the first place

Reskilling rests on four conditions.

• Transferable capabilities. The skills an employee carries that are not tied to a particular tool are what reskilling builds on. A skill bound to one tool is of use where that tool is used, while a skill tied to no tool can be carried into the new role.
• A reasonable distance between the two roles. A move to a role far removed from the current one needs preparation that comes close to hiring someone new.
• A real role at the other end. Reskilling an employee for a role that does not exist produces an expectation that cannot be met.
• The employee’s willingness. A forced move into a path the employee does not want produces weak performance and a departure that has only been postponed.

The side of reskilling that is overlooked

Reskilling is a professional event and a personal one at the same time. The employee leaves behind work they had mastered and becomes a beginner again at something else, and for months they may be less capable than the people around them.

Ignoring that side makes a reskilling programme purely technical, and a programme built that way can then falter for reasons that are not technical. Three measures ease the personal side of the move:

• A clear statement of the expected learning period. The employee is told plainly how long the learning is expected to take.
• A graduated expectation of performance. Performance in the new role is expected to build up step by step, not to arrive at once.
• A reference colleague in the new role. A colleague already working in the new role is named as the person the employee can turn to while they learn it.

Reskilling and the employment contract

Moving to a different role can mean changing what the employment contract records about the employee’s occupation or wage. The contract is the reference point. A permanent move that changes one of its terms is made by the written agreement of both parties, in a form that protects the rights of each of them, not by a verbal understanding.

The occupation and the wage are both among the particulars a contract carries. Article 52 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) lists, among the minimum contents of the unified model that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development sets for each type of employment contract, the agreed wage including benefits and allowances, and the type of work and its place. Article 52 of the Labor Law also requires the contract to follow that model. As to the form of the contract itself, Article 51 of the Labor Law requires it to be written in two copies, one held by each party, and to be documented in accordance with the statutory provisions and as the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) specifies.

Article 60 of the Labor Law bars assigning a worker work that differs materially from the agreed work without the worker’s written consent. Its exception is limited to cases of necessity arising from exceptional circumstances, and to no more than 30 days in a year. An exception confined to 30 days in a year does not reach a permanent move. How Article 60 of the Labor Law applies to a temporary change of duties is covered under acting assignment.

Article 60 of the Labor Law opens by preserving another provision of the Labor Law, Article 38, which bars the employer from employing a worker in a profession other than the one recorded on the worker’s work permit, and bars the worker from working outside that profession before the statutory procedures for a change of profession have been taken. Article 41 of the Labor Law leaves the conditions and procedures for a change of profession to the Implementing Regulation, and Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation defines that procedure as licensing a worker who is not a Saudi national to work in a profession other than the one they are licensed to practise. Where reskilling moves such a worker into a different profession, the written agreement of the two parties is therefore not enough by itself: the statutory procedures for the change of profession have to be taken before the worker works in the new profession.

Royal Decree M/44, in force from 19 February 2025, amended Articles 51 and 52 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 38, 41 and 60 of the Labor Law.

How reskilling differs from job rotation

Job rotation is a temporary move made to broaden an employee’s experience, after which the employee returns to their role or moves on to another. Reskilling is a deliberate and permanent move that responds to a role disappearing or changing.

Job rotation is a tool of development, whereas reskilling is a tool of continuity: it keeps the employee in the organisation when the role they held no longer continues in its old form.

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