Health and Safety Officer

What a health and safety officer is

A health and safety officer, also called an occupational health and safety officer or OHS officer (مسؤول السلامة والصحة المهنية), is the person to whom an establishment assigns the work of carrying out and following up its duties to prevent workplace hazards: posting the safety instructions, providing protective equipment and training workers to use it, preparing for fire, and following up on injuries. The job title can vary, and the same role can appear as safety officer, or as HSE officer where it also covers the environment.

The title is an organisational one, created inside the establishment. In the statute, the duty is placed on the employer: Articles 121 to 123, 125 and 126 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) address the employer, not any particular job, and Article 124 of the Labor Law sets the worker’s own duties to use and preserve the protective means and to follow the safety instructions. The duties themselves are those of occupational safety and health, which is a separate term.

What a health and safety officer handles in practice

The duties whose performance needs a named person to follow them up are the ones that can fall to the officer:

• Posting the safety instructions. Article 122 of the Labor Law requires the instructions on work and worker safety to be posted in a visible place in the establishment, in Arabic and, where needed, in another language the workers understand.
• Briefing, protective equipment and training. Article 123 of the Labor Law requires the employer, before the worker starts work, to inform them of the hazards of their occupation and to oblige them to use the protective means prescribed for it. Article 123 of the Labor Law separately requires the employer to provide suitable personal protective equipment to the workers and to train them in its use, and that second duty carries no timing qualifier.
• Fire precautions. Article 125 of the Labor Law requires the technical means to fight fire, including escape exits that are secured and kept usable at any time, and detailed instructions on fire prevention posted in a visible place.
• The first aid cabinet. Article 142 of the Labor Law requires every employer to prepare one or more first aid cabinets, and leaves their contents, their numbers and the conditions of the person giving first aid to the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية), which sets them out in Article 29 of the Implementing Regulation as a table of quantities.

Articles 127 to 131 bis of the Labor Law deal separately with major industrial accidents. Those Articles are covered in our guide to major hazard establishments and the prevention of major industrial accidents.

Where the texts behind the health and safety officer role name a specific person

This is the point on which the definition turns. In the sources we reviewed, we found no requirement for every establishment to appoint a safety officer. Those sources do name a responsible person in specific places, and we identified four:

1. Article 29 of the Implementing Regulation. It requires notices, displayed visibly in the workplace, showing where the first aid cabinet is and the name of the person responsible for it. A name is required by the text in that case.
2. Article 192 of the Labor Law, in the part of the Labor Law on work in mines and quarries. It requires the employer to set up an equipped rescue point near the place of work and to appoint a trained technical worker to supervise rescue operations and first aid.
3. Article 191 of the Labor Law, in the same part. It requires the employer or the responsible manager to lay down a set of orders and instructions on general safety.
4. Article 16 of the Implementing Regulation, which implements Article 44 of the Labor Law. It requires an employer whose establishment is bound to train to assign a worker responsible for training activities. Its relevance lies in what it shows: the Implementing Regulation names an assigned person when it means to.

Articles 191 and 192 of the Labor Law are confined to mines and quarries by the part of the Labor Law in which they appear, so they do not carry over to any other establishment.

In the sources we reviewed, we also found no requirement of a qualification, a certificate or years of experience for whoever takes on the health and safety officer role, and no worker threshold at which an establishment must appoint one full time. Article 121 of the Labor Law refers the rules, procedures and levels of protection, safety and occupational health to a decision of the Minister, and we did not find that decision. That we did not find a published decision does not mean that no requirement exists: the referral stands in the text of Article 121 of the Labor Law, and what we did not find is the decision itself. A detailed requirement attributed to Article 121 of the Labor Law alone is therefore attributed to the wrong place.

Royal Decree M/44 of 8/2/1446H amended the Labor Law. That decree did not amend Articles 121 to 126, 131 bis, 141, 142 or 143 of the Labor Law, according to both the footnotes of the consolidated text published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development and the ministry’s table of the amendments. The same consolidated text carries no M/44 footnote on Articles 187, 191 or 192 of the Labor Law.

Work injury reporting and the health and safety officer: the condition on the one week step

Article 141 of the Labor Law provides that the procedures for reporting work injuries are set by a decision of the Minister. In the sources we reviewed, we did not find that decision.

Article 28 of the Implementing Regulation, which implements Article 141 of the Labor Law, sets a procedure for one case only: an establishment that is not subject to the occupational hazards branch of the social insurance system. In that case the employer reports a worker’s injury to the competent labour office within a week of learning of it. The office then decides whether it is a work injury, refers the injured worker to a government hospital where there is no medical report fixing the degree of disability or where either party contests the report, and sets the compensation according to that degree. A party who rejects what the office has decided can take the matter to the labour courts.

The condition is part of the rule, not a footnote to it. Applying the one week period to an establishment covered by the occupational hazards branch applies it outside the case for which Article 28 of the Implementing Regulation was written. For an establishment within that branch, the reporting route is set under the social insurance system, which we did not review for this term.

A newer layer in the health and safety officer’s work: the fitness regulation

Alongside the articles of the Labor Law, the regulation on occupational fitness examinations and noncommunicable diseases (لائحة فحوصات اللياقة المهنية والأمراض غير المعدية), the fitness regulation for short, was issued by Ministerial Decision 33232 of 11/3/1447H and published in the Umm Al Qura gazette on 2/5/1447H, corresponding to 24/10/2025. Under Article 20 of the fitness regulation, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development issued a procedural guide (الدليل الإجرائي) that sets out how its mechanisms work.

Article 21 of the fitness regulation provides that it is published in the official gazette and takes effect 180 days after the date of publication. The ministry publishes no calendar date on which it takes effect, and we do not compute one: what is published is the date of publication and the 180 day rule, and anything beyond that would be arithmetic rather than text.

The fitness regulation states its basis in its preamble: Articles 131 bis, 143 and 187 of the Labor Law. None of its 21 articles contains language of repeal or substitution, so the fitness regulation details the statutory duty rather than replacing it. We found no source for any stronger statement of the relationship.

Two points that the fitness regulation leaves open relate to the officer’s work. Neither its 21 articles nor its procedural guide contains a provision on the cost of the examinations, on fees, or on reimbursing them. The nearest is Article 4(2) of the fitness regulation, which requires the employer to provide the resources needed to carry out the examinations; that is not an allocation of cost, so we do not state that the employer bears it. On sanctions, Article 19 of the fitness regulation says only that the penalties in the relevant laws, regulations and decisions apply. It sets no fine, no amount and no schedule, and we do not borrow the schedule of another instrument to fill the gap.

How the fitness regulation limits the records a health and safety officer works with

• The confidentiality wall. Article 17(4) of the fitness regulation prohibits the employer from viewing any medical details and limits its right to knowing the final occupational decision alone, which is one of three: fit, fit with restrictions or considerations, or unfit, without disclosure of the diagnosis or the medical data. The procedural guide extends the prohibition to administrative staff who are not healthcare practitioners accredited by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. What may reach the employee file is therefore a word or a phrase, not a report.
• Retention periods. Under Article 17(7) of the fitness regulation, the body keeping the medical records must keep the occupational health record for at least ten years from the date of the last examination, or five years after the employment relationship ends, whichever is longer. Where the worker was exposed to substances or agents with a long latency period, such as asbestos or ionising radiation, the record is kept for at least thirty years after the work stops and until the worker reaches the age of 75. The qualifier “whichever is longer” cannot be dropped: the two periods do not run one after the other, and only the longer of them applies.

Periodic and exceptional examinations in the health and safety officer’s work

The procedural guide sets the periodic examination every three years for all occupations classified as high risk, unless the competent occupational physician determines otherwise, or the council that the guide refers to (المجلس) sets rules, on the basis of the nature of the occupation and the assessment and analysis of its risks. For other occupations the guide gives no number: the periodic examination is carried out at regular intervals according to the nature of the occupation and the assessment and analysis of its risks. The three years therefore cannot be extended to every occupation, and even for high risk occupations they hold only where neither the physician nor that council has set something different.

Which occupations count as classified high risk is a matter for that council and the risk assessment. We did not find the list, so we attach the three year interval to no named occupation.

The guide also names cases in which the employer must request an exceptional examination: an accident, a noticeable change in performance or behaviour, early signs of occupational or other diseases, and similar cases appearing among a number of workers. That last case moves the monitoring from the individual worker to a pattern.

Failed fitness examinations and the health and safety officer

Where a worker does not meet the occupational fitness requirements after a periodic examination, Article 13(2) of the fitness regulation provides that the worker is barred from continuing in their occupation and that the supervising management must take the necessary steps to change their occupation, unless sufficient evidence shows that they can perform their duties competently, through additional examinations or recommendations set by a competent occupational physician. Article 4(8) of the fitness regulation adds a duty on the employer to do what is needed to find alternative work where the worker’s job is medically prohibited, with flexible working hours, part time work or other arrangements, and a full reassessment before any return to the original job.

An objection can be lodged within thirty days, and the committee that hears it decides within fifteen days. Its decisions are binding unless they are challenged before the competent bodies. The procedural guide also prohibits any action against a worker who makes a report in good faith.

Before a health and safety officer role is built into an organisation structure

An establishment that wants to know exactly what applies to it starts from its activity and from the provisions that govern that activity, then checks the ministerial decisions issued for that activity at their source. What binds a mine does not bind an office, and it is the text itself that draws the distinction.

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

Related terms

• Hazard Pay
• Employee File
• Social Insurance (GOSI)
• GOSI Contributions