The New York Times in this morning’s article (October 26th) said it all:

“Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert.” (To view, click on Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert ) We’re proud to say that our company, Performance-Solutions-Group, Inc. (PSG), was the HR management consulting firm that developed the recommendations for establishing the entire HR infrastructure.

Our team of talented professionals, led by Wil Brewer, President of PSG, worked closely with the senior executives from Saudi Aramco, assigned to manage the establishment of the university while full-time faculty and staff are recruited. During the course of this incredibly excitiing and challenging project, we visited some of the world’s top universities to benchmark best practices for development of our recommendations. This required visits to Dubai, Cairo and Ankara, contact with the Education City schools in Qatar and Imperial College in London, UK, and visits to MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech and other top schools in the US.

PSG put together a set of HR recommendations that focused on organizational structure, compensation, job families, medical, insurance and retirement benefits, special expatriate benefits, recruiting strategies, governance and other HR policies and procedures. PSG was awarded the project over a top international HR consulting firm.

KAUST (check it out at www.kaust.edu.sa) is a brand-new institution of higher learning that will open in two years on the shores of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. The official groundbreaking was held on October 21, as indicated in the Times article. With an endowment of more than $10 billion, the university will grant Master’s and Ph.D. degrees to students who will work with faculty on cutting-edge scientific and engineering research to benefit and drive the economies of the Middle East and other regions of the world.

In formulating its recommendations to a client some 10,000 miles away, the PSG team combined the benchmark findings from the universities visited with relevant corporate and nonprofit best practices. The team also took into consideration the fact that Saudi Arabia was not a location that would immediately appeal to the top-notch faculty KAUST wanted to attract.

KAUST is now using our recommendations to set up its HR department and help recruit the people it needs.

To discuss how PSG can help you assess your current management practices and HR practices and operations, call us at (203) 987-3338 contact us here.

Wilfred B. Brewer
President, Performance-Solutions-Group, Inc.