A large private estate in Saudi Arabia can employ dozens of people. Domestic staff across multiple residences, drivers, security, maintenance, cooks, nannies, personal staff. At that scale, the staff aren’t a detail of the household. They are the operation. And most Saudi families manage them far more loosely than they’d ever manage a business.
I’ve run large teams on the ground in the Kingdom, including commissioning operations with ninety-plus engineers and a clean safety record. Managing people at scale is the job I know best, and the principles transfer directly to a private estate. Here’s where it tends to break down.
Hiring reactively instead of properly
The common pattern is hiring by referral and need. Someone leaves, a replacement is found through a contact, and nobody’s role is clearly defined. It’s fast, and it feels efficient, but it builds an estate staffed by people whose exact responsibilities, terms, and reporting lines are vague. When something goes wrong, nobody’s sure who was responsible.
Proper recruitment means knowing exactly what role you’re filling, vetting candidates seriously, defining the terms clearly, and placing the right person rather than the available one. At the scale of a Saudi estate, the cost of a bad placement is high and it recurs.
Managing staff like it’s a real job, because it is
Hiring is half the problem. The other half is that private staff, once hired, often aren’t managed at all. No clear structure, no one coordinating them, no accountability beyond the principal noticing when something’s wrong. Good people drift or leave. Standards slip. The household runs on who happens to be reliable that month.
Managing estate staff properly means someone owns it: schedules, coverage, performance, the chain of who reports to whom, the handling of issues before they reach the principal. On a large estate this is a full function, not an afterthought.
The scale problem is specifically Saudi
Saudi estates are often larger and more spread out than elsewhere in the Gulf. Multiple properties, large staff counts, significant distances. The looser your management, the more the gaps multiply. What you can get away with in a single villa becomes chaos across three residences and forty staff.
The honest summary
At the scale most Saudi estates operate, private staff are the single biggest operational factor and the one most often left to chance. Recruited casually, managed lightly, and relied on completely. Getting the people right, and keeping them managed, is what separates an estate that runs smoothly from one that lurches from problem to problem.
That’s the work I do. If you’re running a large estate in the Kingdom and the staffing is more improvised than managed, email me at privateoffice@gulfprestigelifestyle.com.
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