The Employment Standards Office (ESO) of Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), one of the world’s leading and fastest growing onshore business and financial centres, has released its annual report which provides an overview of the ESO’s key milestones and strategy initiatives carried out from 2016 to 2018.

Through its mission ‘Improving Workplace Relationships’ and strategy inspired by Qatar National Vision 2030, ESO aims to stimulate a productive labour market, foster economic growth and support the national economic diversification strategy.

Since its inception in 2015, ESO has offered a variety of professional services free of charge to the QFC community. In particular, ESO has provided QFC clients with over 1,000 advisory services, a variety of workshops, awareness and training sessions, and performed a significant number of labour investigations and workplace inspections to monitor the level of compliance with employment standards.

The ESO Dispute Resolution Centre – the first and unique administrative dispute resolution centre for employment in the region, operating under the guidelines of the International Labour Organization (ILO), has amicably resolved over 80% of employment complaints received.

In 2017 the ESO established ‘Think-Lab’, the first social dialogue platform where employees, employers and institutions meet to discuss employment matters, labour market trends and new policies for the evolving labour market.

The ESO cooperates with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs and the ILO on critical initiatives to support the Qatari labour market and the implementation of ILO standards.

According to ESO Commissioner Luigia Ingianni, as an integral part of Qatar’s strategic economic diversification efforts, Qatar Financial Centre is committed to maintaining a sustainable business ecosystem. She said that by living the QFC values – integrity, synergy, passion and excellence, dynamism and client focus – they are continuing to build trust among employers, employees and QFC institutions, while also improving the climate for investment and economic growth.’

Working in synergy with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social affairs, international stakeholders as well as employers and employees from the private sector enables us to foster human, social and economic developments, three of the four pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030.

Through our strategy, we are also committed to supporting the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by continuing to exploit our resources to foster equality, inclusion, human development, partnerships, as well as safe and healthy work conditions within our community.’

ESO is QFC’s independent institution administering the QFC Employment and Data Protection Regulations. ESO comprises the Employment Directorate, which includes Dispute Prevention, Dispute Resolution, Labour Market Information System and Occupational Safety and Health, and the Data Protection Directorate, the QFC data protection supervisory authority working in line with EU GDPR principles.

For updates and more information about ESO and QFC, visit qfc.qa.