The Employment Standards Office (ESO) of the 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 strategy, initiatives carried out and key milestones from 2016 to 2018.

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

Since its inception in 2015, the ESO has offered a variety of professional services free of charge to the QFC community. In particular, the 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 aimed at monitoring the level of compliance with employment standards.

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

In 2017 the ESO established the "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.

Ingianni added: "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 the Qatar National Vision 2030 which lead to sustainable economic growth. 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."



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

The QFC is an onshore jurisdiction that allows registered companies to enjoy competitive benefits, such as working within a legal environment based on English common law, the right to trade in any currency, up to 100% foreign ownership, 100% repatriation of profits,10% corporate tax on locally sourced profits, and an extensive double taxation avoidance agreement network with 81 countries.