Tamheer

What Tamheer is

Tamheer (تمهير) is the brand name of the graduate development product (منتج تطوير الخريجين) offered by the Human Resources Development Fund (صندوق تنمية الموارد البشرية), abbreviated HRDF and branded Hadaf (هدف). The product lets holders of a diploma, or of a bachelor’s degree or higher, apply for the training opportunities posted on it without having to visit the bodies concerned, with the aim of developing their skills and giving them practical experience in the field. The Fund gives 18/07/2023 as the launch date of the service.

Tamheer is training on the job, not employment. The distinction is not a point of wording. It decides which legal provisions apply to the trainee and which do not, as set out further down.

Tamheer duration and form of training

• The establishment sets the duration, which may be no shorter than 3 months and no longer than 6 months.
• Two opportunities at most, which together may not exceed 6 months.
• Full time, at the establishment’s premises. Training under the product is neither remote nor part time.

Tamheer eligibility conditions set by the Fund

• Saudi nationality, and registration on the Fund’s website.
• A diploma from a technical, health or administrative institute or college, lasting at least one academic year (two semesters), from an accredited body, or a bachelor’s degree or higher from a Saudi university or a foreign university recognised by the Ministry of Education, with an equivalence decision for a foreign qualification.
• Previous work experience of no more than one calendar year in the public or private sector.
• An age of no more than 30 calendar years.
• No current employment in the public or private sector.
• The applicant is not on the Fund’s list of barred persons, has not been excluded from the product, and has not used up the two opportunities or the six months.

The product is not limited to particular fields of study, and the Fund says so in its frequently asked questions. Taking Tamheer to be aimed at some fields and not others adds a condition that the product does not contain.

The Tamheer stipend: SAR 3,000, whatever the qualification

The Fund’s programme guide, in its edition for individuals dated August 2026 and in its edition for establishments dated June 2025, sets a stipend of SAR 3,000 a month. Its wording places diploma holders in technical, health and administrative fields and holders of a bachelor’s degree or higher in a single clause governed by that one figure. The stipend is therefore the same for both groups. A split into two different figures by qualification, which circulates outside the Fund’s documents, does not rest on any text issued by the Fund.

The stipend is paid on days of actual attendance, within a financial cycle that starts on the 18th of the month and ends on the 17th of the following month. The Fund lists three reasons for not paying it:

1. Absence of more than 10% during the financial cycle.
2. No valid IBAN in the trainee’s name.
3. Attendance not recorded by the trainer between the 13th and the 17th of each calendar month.

The third reason is a duty on the establishment, not on the trainee. An establishment that neglects it holds up a payment due to someone else.

Tamheer conditions for the host establishment

• The host may be a government or semigovernmental body, or a distinguished private sector establishment. The product is not confined to the private sector.
• A ceiling on the number of trainees. It is set at 10% of the host’s total workforce, Saudi nationals and others combined, with a maximum of 100 trainees for the same period.
• A Nitaqat band of medium green or above for private sector establishments and nonprofit establishments.
• An account for the establishment on the Fund’s website, an activity that fits the activities, sectors and occupations the Fund targets, and no place on the list of barred establishments.

The 10% figure is a hosting ceiling in Tamheer alone. It is not a Saudization ratio, and it is not the training ratio that the Labor Law leaves to be set by a decision of the Minister. The three are different figures from different sources, and they can be confused.

The terms above come from the Fund’s page for the graduate development product and from its programme guides, as worded on the dates they were consulted. Programme terms change by decision of the body that runs them, so anyone applying, or posting an opportunity, takes the terms from the announcement in force at the time of application.

Why a Tamheer trainee is not registered with social insurance

The Fund lists registration of the trainee with social insurance, or in the systems of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, as a ground for excluding the trainee from the product. A Tamheer trainee is therefore not an employee of the employer.

That status places the trainee’s contract in Chapter Two of Part Four of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), Articles 45 to 49 of the Labor Law, the chapter headed “the qualification and training contract with persons who are not employees of the employer”. Because the trainee is a graduate, the details are in Article 16 bis (1) of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية). Chapter One of the same Part, Articles 42 to 44 of the Labor Law, addresses an existing worker, and its provisions are not carried over to a Tamheer trainee. How the Labor Law treats a person according to status is set out under employment status.

Tamheer terms and the Labor Law: two layers kept apart

The duration, conditions and stipend above are the terms of a product offered by the Fund. What follows are provisions of the Labor Law and its Implementing Regulation, which apply in their own right to a graduate’s training contract, whether the trainee came through a programme or approached the establishment directly.

The Labor Law does not require an establishment to join any HRDF programme. The Fund’s programmes are support products that an establishment chooses to enter, and the statutory training duties are a separate subject, taken from their text.

Article 47 of the Labor Law allows the Minister to require establishments to accept a set number or proportion of students and graduates of universities, colleges, institutes and centres, for training and to complete their practical experience, “provided that a training contract is concluded between the trainee and the employer”. Article 16 bis (1) of the Implementing Regulation widens the definition: students and graduates means students and graduates of official educational institutions and of accredited colleges, institutes and training centres, whether or not they are seeking work. Article 16 bis (1) of the Implementing Regulation refers the number or proportion to a decision of the Minister. In the sources we reviewed, we found no ministerial decision setting that number or proportion.

The text of Article 43 of the Labor Law, as amended, refers the proportion of Saudi workers to be trained to a decision of the Minister, and it carries neither a figure nor a threshold for the number of workers. No figure from elsewhere, including the Tamheer hosting ceiling, is carried into it.

Establishment duties in a Tamheer graduate’s training contract

Article 16 bis (1) of the Implementing Regulation places seven duties on the establishment:

1. A plan and a programme suited to the trainee’s academic qualification or to the skills of the occupation, according to the mechanism and the number or proportion set by decision of the Minister.
2. Publication of the application requirements and procedures, the training conditions and the benefits, in a way that lets candidates reach them.
3. A training contract stating the duration of the training, its start and end dates, the occupation or skill, and the roles, responsibilities and obligations of both parties. “The establishment may provide a bonus to the trainee”: the text gives a choice here, not an obligation.
4. A worker assigned responsibility for training activities.
5. No training costs charged to the trainee.
6. A training certificate showing the establishment’s name and location, the duration of the training, the occupation and skill, the year of training and the overall assessment grade.
7. No obligation on the trainee to work for the establishment after completing the training, unless the training contract provides otherwise.

In return, Article 16 bis (1) of the Implementing Regulation places two duties on the trainee: to keep to the training period and to the tracks and programmes set out in the contract, and to protect the establishment’s secrets, tools and property and observe the rules of occupational safety and health.

Before an establishment receives its first Tamheer trainee, three items follow from that list: the written contract with its prescribed content, the worker assigned to training activities, and the certificate at the end. They are needed whether the establishment joins a programme or takes on a trainee directly. Where the training runs through several work stations, how that fits a written training contract is covered under rotational training. The content of each training contract is taken from the text of the Implementing Regulation itself, case by case.

The seventh duty and the Tamheer trainee after training

For a student or graduate, the starting position is that the training contract creates no tie after it ends. A tie exists only if the contract writes one in. That rule is specific to this group.

The general qualification and training contract with a person who is not an employee follows a different rule, in Article 48 of the Labor Law, which allows the employer, once the training period is complete, to require the trainee to work for it for a period equal to the training period. For an existing worker, a condition that the worker stays on after training is limited by Article 15, item 6, of the Implementing Regulation: it may not exceed a period equal to the length of the training programme where the employment contract is of indefinite duration, or the remainder of the contract where the contract is for a fixed term. So there are three provisions in three places, and applying one of them in another provision’s place is the error to avoid. A graduate who comes through campus recruitment into a training contract is covered by the first of the three, not the other two.

Labor Law provisions that apply to a Tamheer training contract

Article 49 of the Labor Law lists what applies to a qualification and training contract: annual leave and official holidays, the maximum working hours, daily rest periods and the weekly rest, occupational safety and health rules, work injuries and their conditions, and whatever the Minister decides. The list is closed, so nothing that is not named in it is inferred from it. The maximum hours and the weekly rest themselves are covered in our guide to working hours and the weekly rest.

Article 17 of the Implementing Regulation gives the labour courts jurisdiction over disputes that may arise from training and qualification contracts. A dispute over a Tamheer training contract therefore has a court to go to, and the contract is not a memorandum of understanding.

Tamheer training in the establishment’s records

Article 5 of the Implementing Regulation, which implements Article 17 of the Labor Law on workplace records, requires a register of the training of Saudis (سجل تدريب السعوديين). It shows the name of the training programme, its type, its duration and the year of training, together with the number and names of the workers trained on it and their proportion of the employer’s workers.

The register counts workers who were trained, and it is addressed to the establishment as part of its workplace records. It is not a register of trainee data, and a request for trainee data from it asks the register for something it does not hold.

Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation adds, for establishments that are obliged to train, documentation of each worker’s training data, covering the programme’s name, type and duration, the training provider and the mechanism and method of delivery, within no more than 30 days of the training, on the electronic platform the Ministry specifies. Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation also requires such an establishment to let a trainee combine training tasks with work during official working hours where work is assigned. It builds its duties on “every employer whose establishment is obliged to train” and does not define that description, so its duties are not applied to every employer. In the sources we reviewed, we found no definition of an establishment obliged to train. Both points are matters of the Labor Law and its Implementing Regulation, not terms of Tamheer.

The legal basis of the Tamheer explanation

The statutory provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Articles 42 to 49 of the Labor Law (the two chapters of Part Four on training), Article 17 of the Labor Law (workplace records) and, from the Implementing Regulation issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 dated 19/8/1446H, Articles 5, 15, 16, 16 bis (1) and 17 of the Implementing Regulation. 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. The programme facts are those of the Fund’s page for the graduate development product and of its programme guides for individuals and for establishments.

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

Related terms

• Employment Status
• Rotational Training
• Campus Recruitment
• Employee Onboarding
• ADDIE Model