Canadian Just got the offer-have questions

Hopefully some of the Canadians on the forum will answer many of your questions.

1) Many engineer 2 have your education and years of experience and more. You cannot compare another company's GC and les to Aramco's. Every position in Aramco has been assigned a GC. And there are salary ranges within that GC.

4. Medical care and prescriptions, hospital care, emergency care are free within Aramco. Dental/orthodontics is by salary deduction and is equivalent to and sometimes cheaper than in the U.S.

8. EAP is not addrssed in your offer if your children are not old enough to be eligible for it. Students become available for it after 9th grade of if you want your children in the British Curriculum School. Aramco schools are free. I have heard there is a fee for preschool.


9. That $500 for rent includes all maintence, local phone service and utilities. Housing is assignd based on GC and number of children. Your Aramco house will not be equivalent to your house back home.

13. Repat monies are paid in lump sum in advance and you can use it to go anywhere or buy anything you want including travel insurance.

All very good questions, thanks HNZ...unfortunately I'm not able to answer any of them but I am very interested in hearing more replies as I'm in a similar situation. I haven't received an offer yet and am still early into the process.

From my perspective the money sounds pretty good but there are a lot of missing pieces which Canadian companies typically include (long term disability, accidental death and dismemberment, life insurance, dental, etc.). All of these definitely have a dollar value associated with them.

Another aspect which has jumped out at me which I'm yet to get an answer to is how the housing/commute works. From what I've gathered on the boards the main Dhahran compound is presently full. Thus, new hires would likely get set up in Ras Tanura, Abqaiq, Udhailiyah, or Rakah. We'd need to drive from these compounds to the main compound to work. I'm not entirely sure if the kids would also need to take a bus from the compound we live in to Dhahram for their schooling. If this is the case it sounds awfully inconvenient to me and not an overly idea situation. Personally, I'm not looking to make my commute longer while working in a foregin country let alone have my kids going between two separate compounds each day.

Greetings to all. I have been following this forum for a while and I have few (somewhat) related to the topic questions. Looking at a Global payroll offer (for Canadians), there is no mention of any retirement plan other than getting the DBS at end of service. However, I see people posting here about company pension plans (= salary * 0.2 * years of service etc.). So is that in the past now? Also, I would appreciate if a fellow Canadian would recommend a good expat tax adviser/lawyer. I am not sure if my personal message system is on yet, so if somebody is interested to answer I can be contacted at radiopapachango@hotmail.com. Many thanks in advance.

Hnz,

Lots of questions there. I will try and answer some of them

1. GC13 for a person with 14 years experience is low. You should aim for GC14
3. Overbase takes into account the cost of living in Saudi Arabia, taxes you have to pay in your home country etc. etc. It is similar to the Foreign Expat Premium that other international companies offer.
4. The 18% monthly benefits is to replace your health insurance. Aramco has specifically said that this is for you to buy the necessary health insurance for your covee outside of the kingdom. Aramco has a Voluntary Protection Plan that covers death and Permanent disability etc. This is out of pocket and will be deducted from your salary monthly. The premium is quite cheap and you can cover up to 60 times your base salary.
5. Standard overbase is fixed percentage wise and for Canadian passport holders will be 40% of the base salary.
6. The target 13% bonus is wishful thinking. You should do your financial ysis on 1 month bonus or 8% (I assume this is SAIP bonus, Saudi Aramco Incentive Plans)
7. DBS is the monthly deduction that you make to the company at 8% of your base salary. Aramco supposedly matches your contribution and pools this into a non-interest bearing mechanism somewhere.
8. Better check with regards to the EAP, as mentioned by GW, the EAP policy has changed and you should be enle to EAP should you wish to do so (i.e. sending your kids to IK schools or OOK schools). Most importantly, if you want your kids to be enrolled to Aramco School, you need to get the approval for them to attend Aramco school IN WRITING. If they do not mention Aramco Schools for your kids, they will not get in.
9. Yes, you can choose to live in Compounds in Khobar and Aramco will provide you with Rental Assistance (unaccountable amount of up to 3 x Base Salary and accountable amount based on the number of kids of up to SAR275K, most compound outside will cost you SAR250-300K annually). Bear in mind that if you live outside of Aramco compound, your kids will not be eligible for Aramco Schools.
10. Yes those figures are in todays dollars.
11. Severance is the Saudi Government Labor Law if I am not mistaken. It is half months salary for the first 5 years of service (with a service factor of 33%), so if you leave the company at 4.99 years the calculation would be 4.99 x 0.5 x 0.33 (about 0.8 months of your severance salary). After 5 years, the severance is 1 month salary per year of service with a service factor of 0.67 if you serve less than 10 years so the calculation would be 2.5 (your first 5 years) + 4.99 (your next service years) x 0.67. If you serve more than 10 years, the service factor is 100% so if you leave on your 10th year anniversary, your severance would be 7.5 months of your severance salary. Severance salary is basicaly your Base Salary + Your Overbase + Your Monthly Benefits
12. Not sue about this but while you are in Kingdom, you will be covered by SAMSO. There is obviously no retirement medical etc (I know some of you guys are getting that) so maybe that's the money to replace the retirement benefits etc etc.
13. Annual repat is lump sum, if you pay for first class tickets and it is more than the repat amount, then that is out of pocket, if you pay for economy class tickets and you spend a lot less, then you keep the extras.
14. You can change the currency that your salary is deposited to monthly. If you want Aramco to send your salary in Canadian dollars to a Canadian Bank, you can do that, if you have a USD dollar account in Canada, you can change that the next month to have Aramco send it in USD to that account etc.
15. Most of us don't get overtime either. Go home at 4PM.
16. A reasonable annual increment expectation should be 3-4% annually. Don't believe anything higher than that.
17. Can't help you there.

Just so I understood it correctly, they matched your current base + 40% for over base + 18% for supplemental benefits + at least 30% of tax savings. That equals to at least 90% more than your current take home salary plus all other other intangible benefits like accomodation, schooling etc. To me it looks quite good of a jump on total savings as to me thats what I look at and not the gross numbers as they are meaning less which they dont reach your bank!! Just a food for thought. Its been discussed several times on this forum, that Aramco typcially matches base plus all the things your mentioned above. I guess it depends on how much more you would expect to get to make a move. Its 100% or 200%. The world has certainly changed!! There is a lot of unemployment in western world specially in eurpeon countries and hiring companies in the middle east know that they can get same skilled people without paying extraodinary amounts which probably that they were used to 10 years ago but not any more and perhaps, thats what you have in your mind, dont know. Again, nothing to offend but I just wanted to share my thoughts that might help in what you are thinking when accepting or rejecting an offer. Everyone has their own reason to move depending on their current status and stage of life they are at.

Question for azraeil,

I am a C$ hire and Canadian citzen, offer was made in September 2013 (C$ payroll with overbase for compensation for the loss of the medical and pension), I am still not in the Kingdom but passports have been submitted.

My understanding from the relocation advisor is that I will have the opportunity to switch to global payroll once in KSA. Is there any way to switch prior to arrival to avoid the delays of implementing those benefits?

Thanks