Workforce Localization Tools
Navigating Workforce Localization: A Practical Guide for Middle East Organizations
In Brief
Note
This module summarizes content from Chapter 8 of the thesis. The audio overview was generated with NotebookLM using the full thesis content. The narratives are based from interviews with 23 foreign professionals working in Saudi Arabia.
Primary reference: Faqihi, A. (2025). Workforce localization and the global workforce: Multilevel mechanisms, paradoxes, and behavioral responses in Saudi Arabia. PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia.
Faqihi, A., & Wechtler, H. How workforce localization shapes expatriate agency: Narratives of voice, silence, and knowledge practices in Saudi Arabia.
The question behind this module
Policies are written at the national level. Quotas are set at the organizational level. But localization is lived at the individual level, by real people navigating a system that depends on their expertise while signaling that their time is limited.
Modules 3 and 4 showed you the patterns: the mechanisms through which localization unfolds, the profiles that skilled migrants develop in response. This module goes one level deeper. It asks not what people do but why, and what it costs them. Because understanding the reasoning behind the behavior, the moral logic, the calculation of risk, the quiet decisions about what to give and what to protect, is what allows organizations to move beyond managing compliance toward managing people.
Four narratives emerged from conversations with foreign professionals working in Saudi Arabia across engineering, construction, project management, and safety. Each captures a distinct way of making sense of the same situation. Together they show that localization is not only a policy challenge. It is a human one.
The Altruist
"It's for the country to develop and progress. My duty is to pass all my knowledge to the next person."
The Altruist came to Saudi Arabia with a sense of purpose that goes beyond the contract. They see their role as mentors and builders, not just technical experts. Saudization, for them, is not an imposition. It is the point. They run weekly meetings. They explain the why, not just the how. They measure their own success not by how long they stay but by whether the person who replaces them can do the job better.
"Upon my leaving, a Saudi is in my position to do exactly or even better than what I am leaving the position for. That would make me very, very happy."
They are not without frustrations. They see the skills gaps, the pressure to move fast, the moments when their input is overlooked. But those frustrations make them more committed to mentoring, not less.
What sustains this position is recognition and a sense of genuine inclusion. The Altruist has been made to feel that their contribution matters and that the organization values what they bring. Remove that, and this position becomes very hard to maintain.
For managers: The Altruist is doing exactly what localization needs. Your job is not to manage them but to protect the conditions that produced them.
The Compliant
"It is a legal requirement. It's not something you can avoid. If the company says you do this, I do."
The Compliant has made a straightforward peace with the situation. They follow the rules, respect the hierarchy, and do the job well. They are not resistant, not resentful, and not particularly invested in what happens after they leave. They share knowledge when asked. They help when approached. But they do not initiate, they do not push, and they do not take the mentoring relationship personally.
"We are here temporarily. One day we will go."
This is a legitimate and honest position. It is also the most common one in organizations where localization is managed primarily as a compliance exercise. The work gets done. The boxes are ticked. But the deeper capability transfer, the kind that requires genuine investment in the successor's development, does not happen. No one has given the Compliant worker a reason to invest in it.
For managers: The Compliant worker reflects the organization back at you. If your localization program is primarily procedural, this is the response it produces. They are not the problem. The design is.
Title 03
The Pragmatist
"I think it's an absolutely amazing thing. I'm not hesitant to share information because hiding information from one another is not conducive in general."
The Pragmatist supports localization, believes it is the right policy for the country, and approaches it with calm professional confidence. They are not on a mission. They are here for the work, the experience, and the career opportunity. When the time comes to move on, they will do so without regret.
They contribute well. They share knowledge because that is what professionals do, not because of any particular moral conviction. They mentor where it makes sense for the job. They adapt to cultural differences without making a drama of it.
"I wouldn't overly concern myself with working yourself out of a job."
What distinguishes the Pragmatist from the Altruist is not the quality of their contribution but its motivation and its limits. The Pragmatist gives what the work requires. The Altruist gives what the person needs.
For managers: The Pragmatist is a reliable and self-sufficient contributor. They need little managing and will leave cleanly. What they will not do is go beyond the professional to the developmental. If you want genuine capability transfer, you need more than this, and you will not get it by asking more of the Pragmatist. You will get it by creating the conditions that produce Altruists.
The Apprehensive
"Saudization is there to replace expats. So you'll be silly not to think that the guillotine of your job or your role will have to come eventually, whether it's in a year or twenty."
The Apprehensive supports localization in principle. They believe it is necessary and right. But they are living with the anxiety of what it means for them, and that anxiety has started to shape what they do.
They have been excluded from decisions that were then handed back to them to implement. They have seen colleagues promoted into roles they were not ready for. They have learned that speaking up in certain contexts carries a real cost.
"Sometimes I'm left completely out of a meeting or a discussion, and the decision is made, and I'm told: make that decision work. It is very isolating, and it affects me very deeply."
"I didn't share, because I knew if I brought this piece of information to the knowledge, I would suffer because of it."
"I have a good idea on how Saudization can happen. I shared it with one Saudi colleague I trust. He said: have you told anyone this? I said no. I'm kind of afraid to. I think I'll lose my job."
This is the narrative that most directly connects to the organizational risk identified in Module 4. The Apprehensive worker is not withholding from indifference. They are withholding from experience of what openness has cost them. They want to contribute. The conditions are preventing it.
For managers: The Apprehensive worker is not a type to be managed. They are a signal. What they are describing tells you something specific and actionable about how localization is being experienced in your organization. The question is not how to make them less anxious. It is what your organization is doing that made this a rational response.
What the four narratives tell us
The same policy, the same Nitaqat tier, the same organizational structure can be producing all four of these positions simultaneously within a single workplace. What determines which predominates is not the policy but the daily experience of being inside it: whether contributions are recognized, whether decisions are made transparently, whether speaking up is safe, whether the worker feels like a professional with something to offer or a headcount problem waiting to be solved.
Altruists and Pragmatists produce knowledge transfer. Compliants produce compliance. Apprehensives produce the kind of careful, self-protective silence that Module 4 showed you is the single greatest risk to localization success.
You will not find out which narrative your global workforce is living by reading a compliance report.
MODULE 5
The Human Dimensions of Localization
Four Narratives of Agency
05
Learning Outcomes
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Explain why the same localization policy produces fundamentally different human responses depending on how it is experienced on the ground
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Identify and describe the four composite narratives of expatriate agency under Saudization
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Recognise which narrative is present in your organization and what it signals about your management practice
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Use the narratives as a diagnostic lens to move beyond compliance data toward a richer understanding of your global workforce
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Connect the human accounts in this module to the behavioral profiles and causal mechanisms examined in Modules 3 and 4
Youtube: Workplace Impact --- Contact: Ali Faqihi x Heidi Wechtler