The company is following a well-prepared recruitment plan to maintain the quality of its services The company hired its first Saudi woman in December 2017 JEDDAH: Saudi Ground Services, which provides services to airlines and passengers at airports, is planning to step up its recruitment of Saudi women by hiring almost 5,000 in the next five years. The company hired its first Saudi woman in December 2017. Since then it has employed dozens and plans to recruit more, which it says reflects its awareness that empowerment of women is a key priority of the Kingdom’s’s Vision 2030. “Today we have about 170 female employees, and in the five years to come we will be hiring about 5,000 women,” said CEO Omar Najjar. He added that the company’s belief in equal employment opportunities for both genders is in keeping with Vision 2030’s aim to empower and encourage women to work in the government and private sectors. The company is following a well-prepared recruitment plan to maintain the quality of its services he said, and added that women could work for SGS in administrative, planning, marketing, communication, public relations, human resources, information technology and legal affairs jobs. “They can also be helpful at airport lounges as customer-services officers and they provide the necessary soft care to people with special needs,” he added. To meet the objectives of the Kingdom’s National Transformation Program (NTP) 2020, Najjar said SGS is working hard to implement its own transformation plan, which aims to make SGS the preferred choice of ground-handling company in the Kingdom and the region, by restructuring the company and enhancing its services to meet world-class standards. “The company sees the human element as one of the key success factors for the transformation plan,” he said. “We have recently, through the SGS Academy, introduced a range of new specialized training programs for both male and female employees.”