Night Shift

What a night shift is

A night shift is a shift whose hours fall wholly or largely within the night work period, in an arrangement where teams take turns to cover more hours than a single working day. How turns are arranged and allocated among staff is a scheduling question, one form of which is described under shift bidding. The term as defined concerns something narrower: what the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) and Ministerial Decision No. 18632 provide on working at night.

Where the night shift rules sit: a ministerial decision, not the Labor Law

Everything below starts from one point. The Labor Law has no chapter on night work. The instrument that has one is Ministerial Decision No. 18632 dated 30/01/1441H on night working hours, in force from 6/5/1441H, which corresponds to 1 January 2020. Decision 18632 defines the night work period, defines who counts as a night worker, and sets health, compensation and organisational obligations. Its enabling power is Article 11 bis of the Labor Law, which the decision names in its preamble.

Of the points taken to be general absences, one is in fact correct: neither the Labor Law nor Decision 18632 sets a rate of pay for night work. On everything other than a rate, the decision says more than it is taken to say, and the sections that follow set it out.

The night shift window: 11 pm to 6 am

Clause First of Decision 18632 defines night work (العمل الليلي) as any work performed between eleven at night and six in the morning, that is from 23:00 to 06:00, a window of seven hours. It defines normal working hours as work performed between six in the morning and eleven at night, and states that this period is the default for working hours. The classification is therefore fixed by the text. It is not left to the establishment’s judgement or to the custom of a sector.

Two classes on a night shift: those who do night work and the night worker

Clause Second of Decision 18632 separates two classes. Anyone who works during any part of the night work period is a person who performs night work (من يؤدي عملًا ليليًا). Someone whose work requires at least three hours of night work is a night worker (العامل الليلي). The test is applied to the hours that fall inside the night window, not to the length of the shift as a whole.

The guide attached to the decision shows this in its worked examples. A shift from 17:00 to 01:30 has two and a half hours inside the window, so the person working it performs night work but is not a night worker. A shift from 17:30 to 02:00 has three hours inside the window, which meets the three hour test, so the person working it is a night worker. Where an obligation in the decision names the class it addresses, that class governs, and the two are not to be merged.

Who the night shift rules cover

Decision 18632 is general. It names no sector, no activity, no establishment size and no worker nationality, and it binds every employer within the Labor Law. It therefore excludes what the Law itself excludes, including domestic workers, whom Article 7 of the Labor Law places outside the Law. Under Clause Seventh of Decision 18632, an establishment that breaches any of its provisions is subject to the penalties laid down in the Labor Law and the related ministerial decisions; the decision sets no separate schedule of penalties, and we attribute no fine amount to it.

Night shift compensation: required, with no rate

Compensation for night work is an obligation under Clause Third of Decision 18632. It is not a contractual extra or an internal policy that the employer may choose to adopt. At the same time, the decision sets no percentage, no multiplier and no minimum amount anywhere in its eight pages. The duty stands and its form is left open, so a specific rate attributed to the decision adds something the decision does not contain.

The obligation is worded as compensation in the form of benefits in working hours, in pay, or in any similar benefits, and the instances that follow are introduced by the decision as examples. For everyone who performs night work, they include a suitable transport allowance specific to night work, the provision of suitable transport where other transport services are not available, or compensation for transport fees on top of the basic transport allowance. For the night worker, they include an allowance suited to the nature of night work, or a reduction in actual working hours for night work while keeping the same counted weight of normal actual hours and the allowances and benefits received. A night allowance of this kind is one form of the pay tied to a working condition that is described under wage differential.

A prohibition runs the other way. Apart from the compensation and benefits provided in the decision and in the Labor Law, Decision 18632 prohibits any discrimination in wages between those who perform night work and other workers doing the same kind of work under the same contract. Night work must be compensated, and it may not be used to reduce pay.

The 25% in the night shift rules is a threshold, not a rate of pay

A confusion can arise at this point. Clause Fourth of Decision 18632 makes the compensation and benefits provision apply to a person who works in the night work period for a full month, or for not less than 25% of total monthly work over two months or more, or for more than 45 working days in a year. It does not apply to night work during the Ramadan season, and the decision does not define the start or end of that season.

So the 25% is a threshold that triggers the compensation provision, not a percentage added to pay, and reading it as a wage rate turns the sentence upside down. The limitation in Clause Fourth reaches the compensation and benefits provision only. The health services, the ban on wage discrimination, the twelve hour rest and the three month ceiling are not subject to it.

Rest of at least twelve hours between two night shift working days

For everyone who performs night work, Clause Third of Decision 18632 requires that the rest period from the end of one working day to the start of the next is not less than twelve hours, having regard to Articles 98 and 101 of the Labor Law. It is an express minimum, and its source is the decision, not the Law. It is distinct from the twelve hour ceiling in Article 101 of the Labor Law, which bars a worker from remaining at the workplace for more than twelve hours in one day. The number is the same, the direction is the opposite, and the instrument is different: one is a minimum gap between working days, the other a maximum presence within a day.

A three month ceiling on consecutive night shift work for the night worker

The same clause sets a ceiling on continuity for the night worker: the maximum period of continuous night work may not exceed three months, after which the worker is rotated into normal working hours for not less than a month. The rotation gives way only where the worker wants to continue, and in that case the worker’s written consent must be obtained and kept on file, with the worker’s right protected if they later withdraw it. Spoken agreement does not satisfy the clause, and withdrawal remains open to the worker.

Night shift health services, transfer and prohibition

• First aid and emergencies. For everyone who performs night work, the decision requires suitable arrangements for first aid and emergency procedures, including moving workers quickly to a place where suitable treatment can be given. It also requires facilities to prepare or heat food, or to order and obtain food and drink easily, or suitable food and drink on the premises.
• The medical report. A night worker may submit a report on their health so that their fitness for night work, or their need to avoid it, is assessed. It is kept in the worker’s employment file, is not disclosed to others without the worker’s consent except as to unfitness for night work, and may not be used against the worker. The occasions are before appointment as a night worker, at regular intervals while so appointed, yearly at most, and where health problems arise during the appointment that are not caused by factors other than night work.
• Transfer on unfitness. A night worker found unfit for night work on health grounds is moved to another post in normal working hours for which they are fit. The cases include a medical certificate that the worker needs to avoid night work, and a medical certificate that a pregnant worker or a mother needs further periods away from night work for her health or her child’s.
• Pregnancy. In the same clause, Decision 18632 states that night work is prohibited for a pregnant worker for a period of at least twenty four weeks before delivery, and that suitable work in normal working hours must be provided for her. It is a prohibition, not a reduction in hours.
• The six hour figure. In the two certificate cases, where no equivalent post in normal hours exists, the decision requires working hours to be reduced to six hours, which it states as a minimum (ست ساعات كحد أدنى), while keeping the same pay, allowances and benefits linked to night work.

The decision further requires equal treatment with daytime workers in qualification, training, placement, seniority and promotion, and regard, so far as possible, for older workers and those with family responsibilities. It also obliges the employer to produce, provide and publish a guide to procedures and rights (دليل إجراءات وحقوق) for those who perform night work.

General Labor Law rules that apply to a night shift as well

• The hours ceiling. Article 98 of the Labor Law sets eight actual hours a day where the employer has adopted the daily standard, or forty eight hours a week where it has adopted the weekly standard.
• The presence ceiling. Article 101 of the Labor Law bars a worker from remaining at the workplace for more than twelve hours in one day. It is a ceiling separate from the one in Article 98 of the Labor Law and applies alongside it, and it can bear directly on a long night shift broken by intervals.
• Continuity and breaks. Article 101 of the Labor Law also bars work for more than five consecutive hours without a period for rest, prayer and food of not less than half an hour each time.
• The weekly rest. Article 104 of the Labor Law makes the weekly rest day one on full pay, of not less than twenty four consecutive hours, and bars replacing it with a cash payment. The consecutive condition can constrain night rotas in particular: rest made up of two pieces at the ends of two different days does not meet it.

These Articles are set out in full in our guide to working hours and the weekly rest.

Rotating night shifts under Article 100 of the Labor Law

Under Article 100 of the Labor Law, in establishments where the nature of the work requires work by rotation, the employer may, with the Ministry’s approval, employ a worker for more than eight hours a day or forty eight hours a week, provided that the average working hours, calculated over a period of three weeks or less, does not exceed eight hours a day or forty eight hours a week.

Both conditions are required together: the approval and the averaging window. A rota of uneven shifts that relies on an average balancing out over a month or a quarter has gone beyond the window in the text, and an establishment whose average does balance but which has no Ministry approval has met one condition and left the other.

Overtime does not depend on the time of day of the night shift

Article 107 of the Labor Law requires an additional wage for overtime hours, and since Royal Decree M/44 it allows paid compensatory leave in place of that wage with the worker’s consent, on terms set by the Implementing Regulation. Its second paragraph provides that where the employer has adopted the weekly standard, hours beyond those adopted for that standard are overtime hours, and its third paragraph treats all hours worked on holidays and Eids as overtime hours.

Work falling at night does not, of itself, give rise to overtime pay under Article 107 of the Labor Law. Decision 18632 adds no overtime pay and no rate either; what it adds is the duty to compensate described above. How the ceiling in Article 98 of the Labor Law relates to the hours that attract overtime pay is a question for the overtime provisions, which are covered in our guide to compensatory rest and the basis for computing overtime, and the definition of night shift does not settle it.

Night shift categories with substitute limits under Article 108 of the Labor Law

Article 108 of the Labor Law excludes four categories from Articles 98 and 101 of the Labor Law. One of them is workers assigned to guarding and cleaning, except civil security guards, a category that can figure in night rotas. Article 23 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) sets substitute limits for it: a maximum of twelve actual hours a day for guarding and cleaning workers, reduced to ten in Ramadan, with the week not exceeding forty eight hours, or thirty six in Ramadan for Muslims. Work that is necessarily intermittent is limited to ten hours a day, eight in Ramadan, with a rest of not less than ten consecutive hours in every twenty four. The categories themselves are set out under working hours exemptions.

Three points follow. Hours beyond those limits are counted as overtime. The exclusion is from Articles 98 and 101 of the Labor Law only, not from the weekly rest in Article 104 of the Labor Law and not from the overtime provisions. And it is an exclusion from two Articles of the Law, not from Decision 18632, whose obligations continue to bind these categories as they bind other workers.

Night shift rules for young persons, and a correction on women

Article 163 of the Labor Law prohibits employing young persons (الأحداث) during a night period of not less than twelve consecutive hours, except in the cases the Minister determines by decision, and Article 34 of the Implementing Regulation sets out exceptions to it. The rule is confined to young persons, its period is longer than the seven hour window of Decision 18632 and it comes from a different instrument, so neither is measured against the other. Its exceptions are covered in our guide to working age and the limits on employing juveniles.

A correction is needed on a claim that circulates: that the Labor Law bars women from working at night. We found no basis for that statement in the text in force. Articles 149 and 150 of the Labor Law are marked repealed, by Royal Decree M/5 dated 7/1/1442H, and the text in force does not reproduce what they provided, so we do not report that former content and do not infer it. What applies today is a specific prohibition, not a general one: the prohibition in Decision 18632 on night work for a pregnant worker for at least twenty four weeks before delivery. Separately, Article 131 bis of the Labor Law leaves it to a decision of the Minister to determine hazardous or harmful occupations and the categories of worker barred from them or admitted to them on special conditions; in the sources we reviewed we found no decision issued under Article 131 bis of the Labor Law, and it is not presented as a restatement of the repealed Articles. Clause Fifth of Decision 18632 also requires compliance with the other regulations and ministerial decisions on women’s work and on the organisation of women’s working environment, which are separate instruments with their own provisions.

What an establishment can measure on a night shift rota

• The gap between two shifts for the same employee, not only the employee’s hours. Its minimum is twelve hours under Decision 18632.
• The number of consecutive months for each night worker. The ceiling is three, and the rotation period that follows is a month or more.
• Hours of each shift that fall inside the 23:00 to 06:00 window. They decide which class a worker belongs to and which obligations address them.
• How night shifts are spread across teams. Concentrating them on one group can be an unstated burden.
• The rate of work injuries, broken down by shift, so that night shifts can be compared with day shifts on the same basis.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 7 (the exclusion of domestic workers), Article 11 bis (the enabling power named in Decision 18632), Article 98 (the hours ceiling), Article 100 (rotation), Article 101 (presence and breaks), Article 104 (the weekly rest), Article 107 (overtime), Article 108 (excluded categories), Articles 149 and 150 (cited as repealed), Article 131 bis (the Minister’s power to designate hazardous occupations) and Article 163 (young persons at night); together with Articles 23 and 34 of the Implementing Regulation and Ministerial Decision No. 18632 dated 30/01/1441H on night working hours. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended Articles 7 and 107 of the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 11 bis, 98, 100, 101, 104, 108, 131 bis or 163 of the Labor Law. The calculation of overtime pay itself has its own sources.

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

Related terms

• On Call Time
• Core Hours
• Hazard Pay
• Working Hours Exemptions
• Wage Differential