{"id":9456,"date":"2026-09-04T22:14:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T18:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/building-hr-function-from-scratch\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T22:21:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:21:44","slug":"building-hr-function-from-scratch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/building-hr-function-from-scratch\/","title":{"rendered":"Building an HR Function From Scratch: A Practical Sequence for Growing Organisations"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\n.section-h{border-left:4px solid #1b6fc4;padding-left:14px;margin:40px 0 18px;font-size:1.3rem;color:#0d2440}\n.pull-fact{border-left:4px solid #1b6fc4;background:#f2f7fc;padding:20px 26px;margin:28px 0;font-size:1.08rem;font-weight:600;color:#0d2440;line-height:1.6}\n.step{border:1.5px solid #dde3ec;border-radius:14px;padding:22px 26px;margin:16px 0;display:flex;gap:18px}\n.step .num{background:#1b6fc4;color:#fff;width:34px;height:34px;border-radius:50%;display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;font-weight:800;flex-shrink:0;font-size:.95rem}\n.step h4{margin:0 0 6px;color:#0d2440;font-size:1rem}\n.step p{margin:0;color:#4a5568;font-size:.9rem;line-height:1.75}\n.worked{background:#f2f7fc;border-radius:12px;padding:26px 30px;margin:24px 0}\n.worked h4{margin:0 0 10px;color:#0d2440;font-size:1rem}\n.worked p{margin:0 0 12px;color:#3a4a5e;font-size:.9rem;line-height:1.8}\n.worked .label{font-weight:700;color:#1b6fc4;font-size:.82rem;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.03em}\n.checklist{background:#f2f7fc;border-radius:12px;padding:22px 26px;margin:20px 0}\n.checklist h4{margin:0 0 10px;color:#0d2440;font-size:.98rem}\n.checklist ul{margin:0;padding-left:20px;color:#3a4a5e;font-size:.88rem;line-height:1.9}\n.fail-box{background:#fdf3f8;border-radius:10px;padding:16px 20px;margin:10px 0;font-size:.88rem;color:#4a1030}\n.related-wrap{background:#f8fafc;border:1.5px solid #dde3ec;border-radius:14px;padding:28px 32px;margin:36px 0}\n.related-wrap h3{margin:0 0 16px;font-size:1.05rem;color:#122f42}\n.related-grid{display:grid;grid-template-columns:repeat(auto-fit,minmax(240px,1fr));gap:14px}\n.related-card{background:#fff;border:1px solid #dde3ec;border-radius:10px;padding:14px 16px;text-decoration:none;display:block}\n.related-card strong{display:block;color:#122f42;font-size:.9rem;margin-bottom:4px}\n.related-card span{color:#6b7a99;font-size:.8rem}\n.cta-wrap{background:linear-gradient(135deg,#1b6fc4,#0d2440);border-radius:16px;padding:36px 40px;margin:36px 0;color:#fff}\n.cta-wrap h3{color:#fff;margin:0 0 10px;font-size:1.25rem}\n.cta-wrap p{opacity:.9;margin:0 0 20px;font-size:.95rem;line-height:1.7}\n.cta-links{display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;gap:10px}\n.cta-links a{background:rgba(255,255,255,.15);border:1px solid rgba(255,255,255,.3);border-radius:8px;padding:10px 18px;font-size:.85rem;color:#fff;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600}\n<\/style>\n<p>Most organisations that need this guide don&#8217;t get to plan the sequence, HR arrives reactively, usually the moment a hiring decision goes wrong, a nationalisation audit request lands, or a labour inspection notice appears on someone&#8217;s desk. But there is a genuine right order to build the function in, and getting it wrong means solving expensive problems later that a slightly different sequence would have prevented entirely. This guide walks through that sequence with a single worked example carried throughout, so the steps stay concrete rather than abstract.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pull-fact\">The single most common mistake: writing an employee handbook before establishing basic legal compliance. A polished handbook full of policies that don&#8217;t match actual local labour law obligations is worse than no handbook, because it creates a documented gap between stated policy and legal reality that an inspector or a departing employee&#8217;s lawyer can point to directly.<\/div>\n<div class=\"worked\">\n<h4>Worked example: a 40-person logistics startup in Riyadh, six months after its first hire<\/h4>\n<p><span class=\"label\">Starting point<\/span> The founder has been handling HR personally: contracts drafted from a template found online, no formal policies, and hiring done entirely on personal networks. The company has just crossed the threshold where Nitaqat classification applies, and nobody has checked the current Saudi national ratio against it.<\/p>\n<p>This example continues through each step below, showing what actually gets built and in what order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"section-h\">The sequence, in order<\/h2>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">1<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Get compliant before you get sophisticated<\/h4>\n<p>Before anything else: confirm employment contracts match local labour law requirements, working hours and leave entitlements are correctly applied, and end-of-service calculations are handled correctly for your jurisdiction. This is unglamorous and it&#8217;s the step most commonly skipped in favour of things that feel more like &#8220;real HR,&#8221; which is exactly why it creates the most legal exposure when skipped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"worked\">\n<p><span class=\"label\">Applied<\/span> For the Riyadh logistics startup, step one means: auditing every existing contract against current Saudi labour law, confirming Qiwa documentation is in place for every Saudi employee (a hard requirement for Nitaqat credit as of 2026), and checking the current Saudization ratio against the applicable band before doing anything else. This alone surfaces that three contracts were never properly documented on Qiwa, meaning those employees currently don&#8217;t count toward the company&#8217;s Saudization percentage at all, a compliance gap the founder didn&#8217;t know existed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">2<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Build the workforce plan before you build policy<\/h4>\n<p>Understand headcount by role, nationality mix relative to any nationalisation targets you&#8217;re carrying, and where growth is actually planned over the next 12 to 24 months. Policy written before this exists tends to be generic and gets rewritten within a year once real patterns emerge, wasting the effort spent writing it the first time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">3<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Standardise recruitment before you standardise anything else<\/h4>\n<p>A consistent, structured hiring process, job descriptions, interview scorecards, a defined offer process, does more to prevent future HR problems than any policy document. Most disputes and most bad hires trace back to an unstructured, inconsistent hiring process at the start, where different interviewers assessed different things and nobody documented why a decision was made.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"worked\">\n<p><span class=\"label\">Applied<\/span> The startup&#8217;s hiring so far has been informal referrals with no structured interview and no written rationale for any offer. Before the next hire, they build one interview scorecard per role family and a standard two-stage process. This isn&#8217;t bureaucracy for its own sake, it&#8217;s the thing that protects the company if a rejected candidate later challenges a hiring decision, and Saudi labour law disputes over hiring practice are not hypothetical at this company&#8217;s scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">4<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Write the core policy suite, not an exhaustive one<\/h4>\n<p>You need: a code of conduct, leave policy, disciplinary and grievance procedure, and an anti-harassment policy, as an absolute minimum. Resist the urge to write comprehensive policy on everything at once. A short, genuinely enforced policy suite beats an exhaustive one nobody has actually read, and a policy that exists on paper but is never applied consistently is arguably worse than no policy, since it creates a written standard the company then visibly fails to meet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">5<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Set up a minimal performance system<\/h4>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t need to be sophisticated at this stage. It needs three things: clear goals for each role, a scheduled point to discuss progress, and a documented way to handle underperformance if it arises. Build the sophistication later, once the basic rhythm exists and people are used to the idea that performance gets discussed regularly rather than only in a crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"step\">\n<div class=\"num\">6<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Only then invest in culture and engagement initiatives<\/h4>\n<p>This is usually where founders and early leaders want to start, and it&#8217;s the step most likely to fail if the first five haven&#8217;t happened. Engagement initiatives layered on top of unclear roles, inconsistent policy, and an ad hoc performance process tend to surface the underlying dysfunction rather than fix it, because an engagement survey will accurately capture that people feel uncertain about expectations, which no culture event fixes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"worked\">\n<p><span class=\"label\">Applied, six months later<\/span> By the time the Riyadh startup considers an engagement survey or a values workshop, the first five steps are in place: contracts and Qiwa documentation are current, the workforce plan accounts for the Nitaqat trajectory as headcount grows, hiring is structured, four core policies exist and are actually referenced when issues arise, and a lightweight quarterly check-in process is running. The engagement conversation that follows is now about genuine culture questions, not about the underlying uncertainty the earlier gaps would have produced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"section-h\">A note specific to the region<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re building HR from scratch in the GCC, nationalisation compliance needs to enter the plan at step 2, not as an afterthought once headcount has already grown past the point where meeting the target is easy. Both Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Nitaqat and the UAE&#8217;s Emiratisation framework are structured to tighten over time, not loosen, so a workforce plan that ignores the trajectory will need expensive correction later. If you operate across multiple GCC or African jurisdictions, resist copying policy wholesale from one country to another. Labour law differs meaningfully enough between neighbouring markets that a policy compliant in one can create real exposure in the next, even where the wording looks similar on the page.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"section-h\">Common mistakes in this sequence<\/h2>\n<div class=\"fail-box\"><strong>Starting with culture and engagement.<\/strong> Feels urgent, especially after a difficult period, but without the structural steps underneath it, engagement work treats a symptom rather than the cause.<\/div>\n<div class=\"fail-box\"><strong>Writing exhaustive policy too early.<\/strong> A 40-page handbook drafted before the organisation has any real operating history tends to be generic, gets ignored, and needs rewriting once actual patterns emerge.<\/div>\n<div class=\"fail-box\"><strong>Treating nationalisation as a later problem.<\/strong> Waiting until the threshold is crossed to think about workforce composition means solving it under time pressure and with fewer good options.<\/div>\n<div class=\"fail-box\"><strong>Copying policy across jurisdictions.<\/strong> A leave or termination policy compliant in one GCC market can be non-compliant in a neighbouring one. Always verify locally rather than assuming equivalence.<\/div>\n<div class=\"checklist\">\n<h4>Minimum viable HR function, at a glance<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Compliant contracts, working hours, and leave entitlements verified against current local law<\/li>\n<li>Digital contract documentation in place where required for nationalisation credit (e.g. Qiwa in Saudi Arabia)<\/li>\n<li>A workforce plan with headcount and nationalisation targets by role, projected 12\u201324 months out<\/li>\n<li>Structured recruitment: job descriptions, interview scorecards, offer process<\/li>\n<li>Four core policies: code of conduct, leave, disciplinary\/grievance, anti-harassment<\/li>\n<li>A minimal performance cycle: goals, scheduled check-ins, an underperformance process<\/li>\n<li>Basic HR metrics tracked from day one: headcount, turnover, time to hire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"related-wrap\">\n<h3>Related reading<\/h3>\n<div class=\"related-grid\">\n<a class=\"related-card\" href=\"\/en\/hr-training-gcc-africa-complete-guide\/\"><strong>HR Training in the GCC and Africa: A Complete Guide<\/strong><span>The full function, and how each piece connects<\/span><\/a><br \/>\n<a class=\"related-card\" href=\"\/en\/performance-improvement-plan-that-works\/\"><strong>How to Run a Performance Improvement Plan That Works<\/strong><span>The detail behind step 5 above<\/span><\/a><br \/>\n<a class=\"related-card\" href=\"\/en\/saudization-emiratisation-compliance-2026\/\"><strong>Saudization and Emiratisation Compliance in 2026<\/strong><span>What the nationalisation trajectory referenced in step 2 actually requires<\/span><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"cta-wrap\">\n<h3>Build it once, correctly, rather than twice<\/h3>\n<p>The Human Resource Management Training Course covers this exact sequence in depth, with the regional legal framework, structured recruitment, and the core policy suite built in from the start, for people setting up or inheriting HR without a dedicated team behind them.<\/p>\n<div class=\"cta-links\">\n<a href=\"\/en\/course\/human-resource-management-training-course\/\">Human Resource Management Training Course<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a right order to build HR in, and most organisations discover it reactively. The full sequence, from legal compliance to culture, worked through a real Riyadh startup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9497,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9456\/revisions\/9497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsh.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}