In 2001 The Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) started functioning officially to serve and develop Aqaba Special Economic Zone. ASEZA has five commissions that carry out the tasks of the authority, and under the commission of Administration and Financial affairs, lies the Human Resource Directorate (HR) .This Directorate has an interesting story, and it developed to be one of the most important directorates in ASEZA, one in which USAID’s Aqaba Zone Economic Mobilization (AZEM) Project has played a critical role to launch it and build its capacity.

When ASEZA started its operations, it had a Personnel Department, which was handling routine procedures such as monitoring employee's attendance, vacations, sick leaves and salaries.

This department encountered a huge change in 2004 when the AZEM project started. The project suggested a total upgrade to the existing personnel system's policies and procedures, and introduced job descriptions, employee training and evaluation, in addition to other important aspects that helped transform the personnel department into a Human Resource Directorate.

There has been a massive change after the transformation, one of these highlights is the disappearance of long lines of job seekers, which means that the directorate developed a hiring system, and this was done to eliminate the nepotism "Wasta" in the hiring process. So now you rarely hear the phrase "we want to employ my cousin's son / daughter at your directorate", and see people visiting Directorate heads or commissioners for that purpose, as the situation was before.

Now the hiring process includes Standard English, comprehension and psychometric entrance exams, which was absent before as there were no tools of qualification assessment.

As for training, it is now based on the actual needs, and each directorate has its own training budget. Training employees has empowered them and developed their skills and abilities to perform their jobs in a better way, which contributed to job satisfaction as well.

At the start, ASEZA had only 15 jobs described. Now the HR has a total 360 job descriptions completed according to best practices. Before establishing the HR directorate, there was no proper job evaluation, jobs were evaluated based on education and experience of the job holder this meant that salaries were based on the job holder, which led in most cases to a high turnover and difficulty in maintaining employees. Now things are much different, the HR directorate evaluates jobs according to Hay System, and jobs are based on three standards; knowledge, accountability and mental requirements. Salaries are based on the job evaluation and the turnover became minimal in critical jobs.

The HR Directorate accomplished many successes, and did great achievements that transformed the directorate into an active bee nest in ASEZA; a new code of conduct was introduced to explain acceptable behavior of employees on the job, and with their colleagues, Supervisors and sub-ordinates. The code explains the roles and responsibilities of the employee, and encourages them to develop their skills and professional abilities, and submit suggestions that can be useful in developing the performance in their directorate.

The code sets manners of dealing with clients, in order to serve them in the most efficient way, and provide accurate information without deception, in addition to rules against discriminating between clients based on their status, or religious or political beliefs. It also indicates how to treat confidential information, and abstaining to declare or comment on issues still under process inside ASEZA. The code is very clear regarding accepting gifts; the rule is that no ASEZA employee should accept any gift that can in return be for a favor on the expense of the authority, also not to under go any activity the contradicts with ASEZA's operations, such as any activity that would lead to special treatment for some people, that could endanger ASEZA's relation with the community.

In 2005 and 2006 AZEM project conducted two employee satisfaction surveys to help the HR directorate identify the gaps.