Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country that has made a big name for itself. Previously a mecca for pearl hunting, Qatar’s economy changed dramatically when massive oil reserves were discovered there in 1940. Since that time, more oil and gas reserves have been found, setting the country up for a century or more of prosperity.

With just 3.109 million people calling the country home and a GDP that has climbed to $22.78 billion, Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world. Its per capita GDP in 2025 is an impressive $71,650 annually, making Qatar a high-income country.

Export Category Export Value (USD)
Petroleum Gas $60 billion
Crude Petroleum $27 billion
Refined Petroleum $8.1 billion
Ethylene Polymers $5.5 billion
Aluminum $3.2 billion

Qatar has a labor force of 2.024 million people, though roughly 90% of these workers come from abroad, especially the Philippines and across South Asia. There is very little agricultural production in the country, and this sector contributes only 0.26% of the GDP and employs just over 1% of the labor force. Industry employs about 40% of workers, while services account for nearly 59% of employment.

It’s no surprise that oil distillation products are the country’s biggest export, followed by plastics, fertilizers, aluminum, and inorganic chemicals, which it exports to China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the UK. While oil and gas have powered the economy for decades, Qatar has been attempting to diversify, with tourism and transportation becoming increasingly important.

If you want to start doing business in this strong economy, you’ll likely need to get your hands on local employees. In this guide, we’ll explain how partnering with a Qatar PEO is one of the best ways to manage your workforce in this country.

What Are PEOs in Qatar?

When you want to hire employees for your business in Qatar, you have two main choices. You can hire and manage them on your own, generally by hiring an HR team and, often, consulting with legal experts. As an alternative, you can engage a professional service provider to help you.

A PEO or Professional Employment Organization is a type of provider that can co-employ workers with you and take care of their HR needs while also maintaining compliance with Qatar’s employment laws. As a co-employer, a Qatar PEO takes on important responsibilities for your workers, including payroll, benefits administration, leave management, and general admin duties. As the worksite employer, you’ll still need to monitor time and attendance while also setting schedules and managing daily tasks for your employees.

However, outsourcing to a PEO greatly reduces your administrative burden and frees up your time and resources to focus on other activities. PEOs in Qatar employ legal experts to ensure that the contracts and working conditions that they arrange for their clients’ employees are always in line with local regulations. Modern PEOs provide services from their resident experts, as well as through their extensive online platforms.

These platforms act as administrative tools, organizing data and automating as many HR functions as possible to increase efficiency and accuracy. A similar type of service provider that you may have encountered is an EOR or Employer of Record. EORs also manage HR services and take care of compliance for their clients.

However, they work in a slightly different way from PEOs. When you engage a PEO, it works as a co-employer to help manage HR for your employees, but you need to own an entity in Qatar and contract your employees directly. On the other hand, a Qatar EOR lets companies that don’t own entities in Qatar hire employees in the country.

The EOR uses its own registered entity and contracts employees to work for its clients, becoming their legal employer. Despite this difference, people often use the terms PEO and EOR interchangeably.

Start hiring with a Qatar PEO

Let us handle the complexities of hiring, compliance, and payroll in Qatar while you focus on growing your team.

  • Hire employees in Qatar with a Qatar EOR
  • No local entity is needed
  • Pricing starts at USD 199 per employee
  • Remote People can also help you find the best talent in Qatar
Get Your Customized Proposal

Why Hire Through a PEO in Qatar?

Qatar has a robust economy that, while based on oil and gas production, is also growing in other industries. While the Qatari government is very welcoming to foreign investment, it can still be a challenge to hire employees in this country for a number of reasons. Engaging a PEO can mean the difference between success and failure when hiring workers locally.

For example, your PEO partner will help you manage compliance with local labor regulations, which include:

  • Regular hours: Workers in Qatar generally work eight hours a day, six days a week, for a total of 48 regular hours weekly. During the holy month of Ramadan, however, this is reduced to six hours a day and 36 hours a week. Employees are entitled to at least an hour’s break for rest, meals, and prayer, after working for five hours.
  • Overtime: When employees in Qatar work more than their regular hours, they must be compensated for their overtime hours at 125% of their normal wages. Workers cannot work more than 10 hours per day, except in extraordinary circumstances, so they may only perform two hours of overtime per day.
  • Annual Leave: After working for an employer for 12 months, employees in Qatar become entitled to three calendar weeks of annual leave. After working for five years, this leave entitlement increases to four calendar weeks per year.
  • Maternity and paternity leave: Pregnant employees in Qatar who have worked for their employers for at least one year are entitled to 50 days of fully paid maternity leave, 35 of which must be taken after giving birth. Employers are responsible for paying their normal wages during this leave. Paternity leave is not mandated in Qatar, though many employers choose to give a few paid or unpaid days of leave to new fathers.

There are other challenges to doing business in Qatar, which include getting credit and trading across borders. The World Bank also ranks Qatar 108th out of 190 countries for ease of setting up a new business. Surprisingly, this places Qatar below the global average.

It requires eight procedures and 8.5 days for men to set up even a simple limited liability company (LLC), while it takes women an extra step and an extra day.

A PEO can help to make this process easier by assisting with registration with the General Retirement and Social Insurance Agency (GRSIA) so you can hire employees legally. Some PEOs will also help you with recruitment if you need to find skilled employees in Qatar, and most will help you with negotiations, contract management, and onboarding.

Which Services Do PEOs Provide in Qatar?

Professional Employment Organizations in Qatar provide a wide range of services to help their clients manage employees more efficiently and compliantly. Their core services normally include:

Payroll Management

Payroll is a difficult function to perform at home, so you can imagine how much more challenging it can be in a foreign country like Qatar, where you’re not familiar with local regulations. This is why PEOs choose to automate payroll processing through their platforms. When you take on new employees, they are added to your payroll and given specific calculations based on their salaries and benefits entitlements.

You’ll still need to monitor their attendance and working hours and provide this data to the PEO for each pay period. It will use this data to calculate their gross earnings, deduct benefits, and end up with net earnings that it will pay to your employees. Most PEOs pay salaries by direct deposit, but some may offer options like prepaid employee cards or checks as well.

Employee Benefits Administration

When you work with a PEO, it takes on the responsibility of administering mandatory benefits for your employees. These can include breaks, public holidays, and leaves for maternity, sickness, and annual vacations. It also handles the calculation of social security benefits, letting you know how much you and your employees need to contribute.

BenefitEmployee ContributionEmployer Contribution
GRSIA old age, illness and incapacity, and death insurance5.0% of salary10.0% of salary

It’s important to note that employers are not required to make contributions for workers who are not Qatari citizens.

You may also choose to offer additional benefits like private health insurance, life insurance, and pension plans to help you attract and retain top talent in Qatar. If so, your PEO partner can help connect you to plan providers and administer these benefits for an additional fee.

Tax Compliance

Unlike in most countries, Qatar doesn’t assess tax on income from workers’ salaries. This is true for both Qatari nationals and workers from abroad, so you have no obligation to withhold income tax from your employees’ salaries.

Recruitment and Employment Contracts

Some foreign investors connect with talent in Qatar before looking for a PEO to outsource their HR needs to. However, others want to hire in this country but don’t know how to find the workers that they require. For these companies, several PEOs offer platform tools and features for recruitment.

Applicant tracking systems (ATSs) and connections to popular job boards can help PEO clients source talent on their own. For those who want more help, some PEOs also provide active recruitment services. Their professional recruiters can locate high-quality candidates quickly and may also help with interviews and selection.

When candidates have been chosen, most PEOs will provide you with salary and benefits recommendations and help you negotiate terms with them. Once the terms of employment are agreed upon, the PEO can formalize them by generating legally compliant contracts that it can get signed by your new hires. 

Contracts in Qatar must be concluded in Arabic. Fixed-term contracts are allowed in Qatar and have few controls. While they can be made for a maximum of five years, these contracts can be renewed without limit.

Probation periods are allowed and can last up to six months, as long as they are stipulated in workers’ contracts. During probation, employees can be terminated if found to be unfit for their duties, but they must be given one month’s advanced notice of their dismissal.

Onboarding

With contracts signed, onboarding your new employees can begin. As their worksite employer, you’ll likely need to provide your workers with orientations and job-specific training. You will also need to give them access to the tools, equipment, systems, and data they may require to perform their daily tasks.

At the same time, your PEO partner will take care of the administrative side of onboarding. It will create a profile for each new worker, add them to your payroll, and collect their personal information and important documents. It will also register them with the GRSIA so they can collect Social Security benefits.

Terminations

Terminating workers in Qatar can be challenging, but your PEO partner will help you perform this activity compliantly. Workers can be dismissed without warning for gross misconduct. In other circumstances, workers can be dismissed without cause, but they must be given written notice of their dismissals.

Employees who’ve worked for you for less than two years must be given one month’s notice, while they must be given two months’ notice if they’ve worked longer. Terminated workers must also be given severance pay at the rate of three weeks’ basic wages for each year of service to the employer.

Advantages of Using a PEO in Qatar

PEOs in Qatar help make employment easier, safer, and more efficient for their clients. Some of the main advantages of working with a PEO include:

  • Efficiency: Most PEOs can onboard your workers in Qatar in less than a week. This helps you get into the Qatari market as quickly as possible.
  • Risk mitigation: A PEO partner will report to the authorities on your behalf, monitor changes in the law, and maintain legally compliant contracts to protect you from penalties. 
  • Outsourced administrative burden: Rather than working with an in-house HR team and consulting with external legal experts, you can receive all the support you need from a single service provider. This frees up your time and resources to focus on core business activities.
  • Cost savings: Working with a PEO can be much more cost-effective than managing HR on your own.

Steps to Engage a Qatar PEO

To get started working with a PEO in Qatar, you can work through this quick and easy process:

1

Choose a PEO

Consider your hiring needs and set a budget based on them. Look for a reputable provider that can offer you the services you require while staying within this budget.

2

Arrange a Consultation

Contact the provider you’ve selected, or a handful of candidates, and meet for a consultation. You’ll be able to express your needs and receive a quote for services.

3

Sign a Service Agreement

If you’re happy with the services and price offered, you can enter into a service agreement to engage your new PEO partner, then start onboarding your workers to its platform.

Partner With a PEO in Qatar To Expand Your Business Successfully

Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and continues to attract international businesses with its rich energy reserves and expanding service sector. However, navigating Qatar’s unique labor laws and high expatriate workforce can pose challenges. Partnering with a PEO makes hiring and compliance much easier.

Unsure which PEO to pick in Qatar? Contact Remote People, your trusted PEO, to be the best solution for your business. We provide top-rated PEO services that help unlock your business potential in Qatar. Reach out today to get started!