Boomerang Employees

What boomerang employees are

Boomerang employees are people who worked for an organisation, whose employment relationship with it ended, and who then return to it under a new contract. Taking them back is known as boomerang hiring.

Being a returner describes a person’s history, not their contract. The second contract stands entirely apart from the first and starts a new relationship with a start date of its own. Two opposite errors can follow from losing sight of that. One is treating the return as a continuation, so that assumptions from the first relationship are carried into the second with nothing left to support them. The other is applying the full procedure for a first appointment, as though neither side knew the other. Between those two errors sit two questions about boomerang employees: the text of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) settles one of them and does not settle the other.

Can boomerang employees be placed on probation again?

This question the text settles. Article 54 of the Labor Law provides that a worker may not be placed on probation more than once with the same employer. It then sets out a limited exception: by written agreement between the two parties, the worker may be made subject to a further probation period, on condition that either:

• the probation is for another profession or another job; or
• at least six months have passed since the worker’s previous relationship with the same employer ended.

Three features of that provision carry weight and are lost if it is summarised. The general rule is the prohibition, and the exception comes after it. The exception needs a written agreement, so the organisation cannot invoke it by its decision alone. And the two conditions are joined by “or”, so meeting either one is enough; they do not both have to be met.

Built this way, the provision keeps probation from becoming a device that restarts whenever a contract is made again. During probation either party may end the contract, and if probation could be repeated without limit, a person could be returned to that position every time one relationship ended and another began. Article 54 of the Labor Law closes that off with its general rule and opens an exception with two defined conditions: either the work is different, so that the probation has something new to test, or enough time has passed for a fresh test to have a purpose.

Article 54 of the Labor Law uses the words another profession or another job without setting a criterion for measuring the difference, and we found nothing in our sources that sets one out. A change of job title alone is not evidence that the work has changed. The article states the prohibition and the two conditions of the exception; what follows from placing a returner on probation outside both conditions goes beyond what it states, and that is a matter for the competent authority.

A second probation that meets one of the conditions remains a probation under Article 53 of the Labor Law, with everything that article requires. We found no provision in our sources settling whether the 180 day ceiling in Article 53 is counted across both probations together or applies afresh to the second, and that question is a matter for the competent authority. The rules on probation in general are covered in our guide to the probation period under the Saudi Labor Law.

The two conditions for boomerang employees on the calendar

Take an employee whose employment relationship ended on 1 February and whose return is under consideration:

• Returning on 15 May to the same job. Six months have not passed (the gap is about three and a half months), and the new role is neither another profession nor another job. Neither condition is met, so the exception has no application under the wording of the article.
• Returning on 15 May to another profession. The first condition is met on its own, and the length of the gap does not arise, because the conditions are joined by “or”.
• Returning on 1 September to the same job. Seven months have passed, so the second condition is met.

The period runs from the end of the previous relationship, not from the last day actually worked where the two differ, and not from the date the final entitlements were paid. In practice those dates can differ, which makes recording the date the relationship ended a condition of calculating the period, not an administrative detail.

Once a probation is agreed, it is subject to what Article 53 of the Labor Law requires of every probation: it must be stated expressly in the employment contract with its duration clearly specified, its total may not exceed 180 days in any case, and either party may end the contract during it.

Does the earlier service of boomerang employees count?

This question the text does not settle in the way it can appear to. Article 2 of the Labor Law defines continuous service (الخدمة المستمرة) as the worker’s uninterrupted service with the same employer or their legal successor, from the date service began. It then lists three cases in which service is treated as continuous: leave and holidays prescribed by the Law; time off to sit examinations as the Law provides; and unpaid absence of no more than twenty intermittent days in the work year.

All three cases arise within a relationship that is still in place, and none of them covers a relationship that ended and was followed by another. “Uninterrupted” and “from the date service began” are what the article says, and we found no provision in our sources adding a period of earlier service that has ended to a later period with the same employer. So we do not state that the earlier period is added, or that it is not, as an effect attributed to the article. What we do state is that the definition rests on service being uninterrupted, and that anything beyond that has its own sources and is a matter for the competent authority.

The same caution applies to the end of service award. The definition of boomerang employees does not settle whether earlier service is added, as set out above, and the award and its calculation are governed by separate articles that are not derived from the definition. How the award works is explained under end of service benefits.

One practical consequence needs no statutory ruling: what the second contract says is what can be relied on. An organisation that wants the earlier period to count writes that down; one that does not want it to count writes the opposite; and one that writes nothing leaves the question to the first dispute about it.

The earlier file on boomerang employees, the fullest record and the riskiest

With a returner the organisation holds something it has for no other candidate: a complete internal record of their performance, their tenure and what happened during the first relationship, kept in their employee file. That removes the need for external checks but brings a different problem. What is in the file was written for administrative purposes at the time, and it is now being consulted as a basis for a hiring decision. An appraisal written three years ago was written in a context its author knew and today’s reader does not, and its author may no longer be with the organisation at all.

The working rule is to examine the file alongside its dates: what role the person held at the time, who appraised them, and against what standard. A high score under an appraisal system that has since been dropped does not correspond to a high score under the current one. Leaving out the date carries a judgement from one period into another.

A related point concerns documents. Article 64 of the Labor Law requires the employer, when the contract ends, to return to the worker all certificates and documents they deposited, and to give them on request and free of charge a service certificate (شهادة خدمة). So the documents a returner presents today are those the organisation handed back to them earlier, and the certificate covering their first period of service was issued by the organisation itself. Verifying them is an internal exercise, not an external one, and it needs no outside party.

What boomerang employees are not

• Service aggregation (ضم المدد). It is a different term from continuous service under the Labor Law, and how it works is not derived from the definition of continuous service set out above. We found nothing in our sources that sets out its rules, so we state nothing about its effect. Confusing the two can produce a confident answer to the wrong question.
• Temporary to permanent conversion. That is a move from one status to another without a break, whereas a boomerang return comes after a break. The difference is exactly what the probation and service questions above turn on.
• Promotion or internal transfer. That is movement within an existing relationship which leaves the start of service untouched, whereas a boomerang return is a second relationship.
• Simply staying in touch. Someone who left and remains in an alumni network is not a returner until they come back under a contract. The network is a channel that makes a return possible; it confers no status.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 2 (the definition of continuous service), Article 53 (the requirements of any probation and its ceiling), Article 54 (one probation with the same employer, and the exception to that rule) and Article 64 (returning documents and giving a service certificate when the contract ends). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended Article 53; it amended Article 2 without changing the definition of continuous service; and it did not amend Article 54.

Why organisations consider boomerang employees at all

What gives a returner a real advantage is what they do not need to learn: knowledge of the product, a map of who decides what, and how the internal systems work. That can shorten the time they take to reach full productivity, not the time it takes to select them.

Against that stand two risks that can be overlooked. The first is that their knowledge is as old as their absence. An organisation whose systems and structures have changed over two years takes back someone who believes they know it but knows what it used to be, and that can be harder to deal with than knowing nothing, because it gives the person no reason to ask. The second is that a return can be used to skip steps in assessment on the strength of memories of past performance, and such memories can be selective.

One rule covers both risks: a boomerang return is handled as a new appointment with shortened onboarding, not as a resumption. The assessment is made against the role required today, not the earlier one, and employee onboarding concentrates on precisely what has changed. What the exit interview recorded when the person left is useful at this point: if the reason they left still exists in the organisation, the return brings them back to it.

Whether a return succeeds more than a new hire is a different question. We found no published measurement settling it for the Saudi market, and we build no recommendation on it.

Before the second contract with boomerang employees is signed

Three dates are fixed before anything else: the date the first relationship ended, the date the second begins, and the gap between them. The six month condition for a second probation rests on them. They cost little to record and can easily go unrecorded, because the two sides know each other and documenting can seem unnecessary.

Then the contract settles what the text does not: whether there is a probation, which of the two conditions it rests on, and where the two parties stand on the earlier period of service. An organisation that leaves all three to shared understanding builds the second relationship on an assumption, with each side believing that the other knows.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Exit Interview
• Job Hopping
• Attrition
• Retention Rate
• End of Service Calculation