HR Software for a Dubai Entertainment Company with Teams in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Three Remote Countries

About The Fridge Entertainment and Why Their HR Requirement Was Different

The Fridge is one of the UAE's most recognised live entertainment companies, known for award-winning productions, talent booking, and large-scale event programming across the region. Based at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai's creative district, the company also operates an office in Riyadh and manages a growing number of remote team members based in Spain, Philippines and Germany.

Managing HR for a creative entertainment business is not straightforward. The workforce is spread across five countries, each with different working week structures, different annual leave entitlements under local labour law, and different end-of-service benefit calculations. At the same time, the company works with a large pool of freelancers for event production who needed to be managed through a structured directory rather than informal spreadsheets.

The Fridge approached TrueBays needing a single HR and payroll platform that could handle all of this under one roof: UAE and Saudi labour law compliance, separate leave and gratuity rules per country, a structured freelancer directory, performance management, and an Employee Self-Service portal for up to 35 users including their remote international team.

• Client

  The Fridge Entertainment (The Fridge Entertainment LLC)

• Industry

  Live Entertainment, Events and Talent Production

• Headquarters

  Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE

• Offices

  Dubai + Riyadh + Remote (Spain, Philippines, Germany)

• Total Employees

  29 Staff + Freelancer Pool

• Solution

  HRMS + Payroll + ESS + Freelancer Directory + Performance Management

• Explore

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The HR Challenges Facing a Creative Entertainment Business with a Distributed International Team

Most HR software is built for a single country, a single labour law, and a single working week. The Fridge operates across five countries with three different working week structures and two distinct labour law frameworks. This created five layered challenges that no off-the-shelf system could solve without significant configuration:

1. Different Labour Laws for UAE and Saudi Arabia: The Dubai team and the Riyadh team have different annual leave entitlements, different public holiday calendars, different end-of-service benefit calculations and different rules for leave types such as maternity, paternity and compassionate leave. Running both under the same HR rules would have created compliance exposure in both markets.

2. Three Different Working Week Structures: The Dubai office works Monday to Friday. The Riyadh office works Sunday to Thursday. The three remote employees in Spain, Philippines and Germany work Dubai hours regardless of their local time zone. A single attendance and leave calendar could not accommodate this without custom configuration per employee group.

3. Freelancer Management Had No Structure: The entertainment industry relies heavily on freelancers for event production, talent management and technical production support. The Fridge was managing their freelancer pool through informal channels with no centralised directory tracking CVs, experience, contact details and skill sets. Finding and re-engaging the right freelancer for each production was slow and inefficient.

4. Complex Air Ticket and Settlement Policies: The company provides one air ticket per year to eligible employees, with the amount added to salary based on each employee's date of joining. End-of-service calculations differ between UAE (standard UAE gratuity law) and Saudi Arabia (15 days per year of service based on full monthly salary divided by 30). Calculating these accurately and consistently without a system was a significant manual burden.

5. No Self-Service Access for a Geographically Spread Team: With staff across five countries, the HR team in Dubai could not be the single point of contact for every leave request, payslip query and letter request from 29 employees in different time zones. A self-service portal was not optional, it was operationally essential.