Who Should Attend ?

Employees preparing for an assignment in Saudi Arabia and their partners

Benefits of Attendance

This seminar aims at significantly improving the ability of the participants to meet the challenges of living and working abroad. The objective is to enable them to identify the stumbling blocks that lie ahead and to be able to adapt and integrate in Saudi Arabia.

At the end of this training, participants will have acquired insights and techniques to:

• Be aware of their own cultural baggage
• Understand Saudi context and culture
• Analyse situations in which misunderstandings may arise and identify ways of communicating more effectively
• Reduce and manage the symptoms of culture shock
• Understand Saudi mindset, different work practices, decision-making processes and negotiating styles
• Strike the right balance between personal et professional lives

Training Approach

• A cross-cultural approach of International Mobility
• Country specific trainers
• Personalized and familiy focused action plan
• Access to the Nomad’ Network, an exclusive online tool for Akteos’ clients and experts:  find resources, exchange experiences, knowledge and insights

Programme Outline

Module 1 : Successful personnal integration in SAudi Arabia

1. Cross-cultural awareness : the key to a successful expatriation

• Taking stock of one's own cultural baggage
• Culture shock and the integration process
• Identifying and going beyond cultural stereotypes

2. Key aspects to Saudi culture

• The largest country in the Middle East
• A strict monarchy in a country of immense geopolitical importance
• The cradle of Islam
• A multicultural society

3. Saudi values and behaviour patterns

• The central role played by religion in daily life
• Strict separation between the roles of men and women
• Clothing as an outward sign of wealth and affluence
• Time management: working to a religious calendar
• The Saudi way of thinking: communication styles
• A fundamental respect for authority and hierarchies
• Attitudes to risk and uncertainty

4. Practical day to day information

• Focus on the host town or city, life in a “living compound”
• Commercial practices: the joys of haggling
• Adapting to life without forbidden products
• High quality infrastructure, the importance of having a private vehicle
• Limited cultural life and leisure activities outside expatriate circles

Module 2 : Successful professionnal integration in Saudi Arabia

1. The Saudi corporate world

• The keys to understanding the way Saudi businesses operate
• Influences and mutual assistance in Saudi companies.
• An oil-based economy and limited attempts at diversification

2. Effective communication with the Saudi Arabians

• Networking
• The importance attached to verbal communication: to say it is to do it
• The value of implicit communication
• The working language: the role of the interpreter

3. Working with Saudi teams

• Building relationships based on trust and confidence
• Establishing and supporting your credibility
• Taking people’s personal ambitions seriously
• Motivating, delegating, providing feedback and praise
• Conflict resolution: using mediation to defuse problem situations

4. Successful meetings and negotiations with the Saudi Arabians

• The preparation phase, identifying decision-makers
• The art of negotiation, the Saudi style
• Learning to be patient: building for the long-term
• Reaching a consensus
• Written contracts, their interpretation and implications

5. Final handy tips

• Caution, patience and humility
• Social standards, gifts, business cards, dress code, etc
• Sensitive subjects: politics, the  monarchy, religion