Ombudsman

What an ombudsman is in an organisation

An ombudsman in an organisation, also called a workplace ombudsman or ombudsperson, is a person the organisation appoints to receive complaints from employees outside the management chain, to look into them in confidence, and to work towards resolving them or point the person who raised them to the right route, without holding any power to make a decision.

The role is an arrangement the organisation chooses for itself. In what we have read of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), its Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) and the model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد), we found no role bearing this name and no duty to create one, so it cannot be said that an ombudsman is required, nor that one is forbidden. What we did find is the grievance route and its periods. That route is the one an ombudsman cannot replace, and the sections below turn on it.

Three features that make an ombudsman

• A reporting line independent of the people complained about. Someone who reports to a manager whom complaints may concern cannot look into those complaints, and the role loses its meaning with the first case that touches that manager.
• Confidentiality with its limits stated. Before the employee speaks, they are told what can stay between the two of them and what has to be passed on, because some things said may not be kept back. A promise of absolute confidentiality that is not kept costs the role its credibility in the first serious case.
• No power of decision. The ombudsman does not cancel a penalty, does not decide a promotion and does not sanction anyone. That limit is the source of the role’s value: a person with no decision to make can be consulted freely, while a person who holds one is approached with caution.

Dropping the third feature is the error that undoes the role. An organisation that gives its ombudsman the power to change decisions has created an extra layer in the management chain under another name, and then finds that nobody brings it anything they do not want a decision taken on.

What an ombudsman does not hold: the statutory grievance route and its periods

A complaint whose subject is a decision imposing a penalty on the worker has a route set by Article 72 of the Labor Law, and neither an informal inquiry nor mediation takes its place:

1. Notification. The worker must be notified in writing of the decision imposing the penalty. If the worker refuses to take delivery, or is absent, the notice is sent by registered letter to the address shown in their file.
2. The internal grievance. Article 72 of the Labor Law allows the worker to file a written grievance with the competent body at the employer within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date of notification of the decision. The door at this stage is the employer’s own competent body, not the labor office (مكتب العمل) and not a court.
3. The reply period. The employer has fifteen days from submission of the grievance to decide it in writing.
4. The objection. If the grievance is rejected, or not decided in writing within those fifteen days, the worker may object to the penalty decision before the labor courts (المحاكم العمالية) within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date of rejection or the expiry of the period set for deciding the grievance, whichever is earlier.

The three periods belong to different parties and cannot stand in for one another. The first thirty days are the worker’s period to file the grievance. The fifteen days are the employer’s period to reply. The last thirty days are the worker’s period to object before the courts. One error in this area is to give the worker the fifteen days as the time allowed for the grievance. They are not the worker’s period, and treating them as such halves a period the Labor Law has set.

Counting the days: where an ombudsman’s inquiry falls on the clock

Mediation takes days, and the clock does not stop for it. Take a worker notified of a penalty decision on day 0. To keep the arithmetic plain, assume that no official holiday falls within any of the periods, so every day counted below is a calendar day.

• The worker goes to the ombudsman on day 2, and the informal inquiry ends without a settlement on day 26. Of the thirty days, 30 minus 26 leaves 4 in which to file a written grievance with the competent body. That works, provided the worker knew from the first day that the period had an end.
• Had the inquiry run on to day 34, the thirty days would have expired while the worker waited for an outcome from someone with no power to decide anything.

Now continue on the first assumption. The grievance is filed on day 27, so the employer’s period to decide it ends on day 27 plus 15, which is day 42. Three outcomes follow:

• The grievance is rejected on day 33. The last thirty days run from day 33, because the rejection comes before the expiry of the reply period, and they end on day 63.
• The grievance is never decided. The thirty days run from day 42, the expiry of the reply period, since there is no date of rejection, and they end on day 72.
• The grievance is rejected late, on day 55. The thirty days had already started on day 42, because the expiry is earlier than the late rejection, and they still end on day 72. The late letter does not open a new period and does not extend the one already running.

The third outcome is where the danger lies. A worker waiting for an answer from a slow organisation can see the period expire while believing it has not yet begun. So the most useful thing an ombudsman can say in the first meeting is not a view on the substance of the complaint, but the date on which the period ends.

How the exclusion of official holidays applies to a particular calendar, when calculating a particular period in a particular case, is a question for the text that sets the exclusion, and the definition of an ombudsman does not settle it.

How far a grievance reaches beyond the ombudsman’s door

The model work regulation, the model on which establishments prepare their own work regulations, provides that a worker may raise a grievance against any action, measure or penalty taken against them by the establishment, and that the worker is not to be harmed for filing a grievance. The part the Labor Law gives that regulation is set out in our guide to the Saudi work organisation regulation.

That is wider than the subject of Article 72 of the Labor Law, which is the decision imposing a penalty. In an establishment whose regulation is prepared on the model, the grievance route does not stop at penalties, and protecting the person who raises a grievance is among the regulation’s requirements. The obligation comes from the model regulation, not from the text of the Labor Law. The distinction is not a matter of wording: attributing a rule to the wrong instrument leaves whoever relies on it without the instrument that actually supports them.

What an ombudsman is not

• The grievance procedure. A grievance is a procedure and a route, while an ombudsman is a person and a channel. The route has set periods and a body that decides. The ombudsman is not that body and does not pause those periods.
• The collective grievance. This route deals with a complaint shared by a group of workers on a single subject, while the ombudsman receives individuals. An ombudsman may come across something that reveals a collective issue, and at that point the issue belongs on the collective route, not in the ombudsman’s office.
• The workers’ committee (اللجنة العمالية). Article 73 of the Labor Law names this committee and attaches a specific effect to it: fines imposed on workers may be disposed of only in ways that benefit the establishment’s workers, by that committee, and with the Ministry’s approval where there is no committee. An ombudsman represents no one and is not elected. The organisation appoints the ombudsman, and the role does not carry the effect that Article 73 of the Labor Law attaches to the committee.
• Corporate whistleblowing. A whistleblowing report concerns a violation affecting the organisation or a third party, and its purpose is to get the report to whoever investigates it. An ombudsman deals with a complaint the employee raises about their own situation. Merging the two into one channel can lose the report in a complaints file and make the complaint look like an accusation.
• An employee assistance program. Both are confidential routes that do not pass through a manager, but an assistance program is a service delivered by an outside provider about matters affecting the employee’s ability to work, while an ombudsman is an internal appointment whose subject is a complaint against the organisation.
• The human resources department. HR can be a party to decisions that employees complain about, and that alone prevents it from being the independent channel. Having an HR department does not remove the need for the role, and having the role does not take from HR any of the work that belongs to it.

Where an ombudsman arrangement does not hold up

• A small organisation. With a limited number of employees, it is hard to find anyone independent of every reporting line, and the appointment becomes a formality. The more honest course then is to publish the grievance route clearly, with its periods, rather than add a title with no independence behind it.
• A role with no set allocation of time. Someone given this work on top of their main job will put cases off, and in that case the delay comes out of the worker’s period, not the organisation’s time.
• A role with no periodic report. The value that goes beyond resolving cases is seeing them recur: a particular department, a particular policy, a particular period. An ombudsman who is never asked for a report stripped of names is useful only one case at a time.
• A role announced without its limits explained. An employee who believes they filed a grievance by talking to the ombudsman has not filed one, and in this area the gap between that belief and the facts is a whole period.

We found no published measurement on which to base a claim about the effect of an ombudsman on the number of complaints or on their outcomes.

The standing of an ombudsman in the statutory texts

In what we have read, we found no statutory standing for the role of an ombudsman by that name. The grievance route described above is assigned to the competent body at the employer. Article 72 of the Labor Law refers to that body without describing who it is or who sits on it, and we found no provision in the Labor Law setting its name or composition. Those are matters to look for in the establishment’s approved work regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل), together with any record of the grievance kept in the employee file. It should not be assumed that the body is the ombudsman, since an ombudsman, as defined above, holds no power to decide.

Article 71 of the Labor Law provides that no disciplinary penalty may be imposed until the worker has been notified in writing of what is alleged against them, has been questioned and has had their defence investigated, with this recorded in a minute placed in the worker’s file. Articles 71 and 72 of the Labor Law place duties on the employer and do not state what follows if a step they require is not taken. What becomes of a measure taken in breach of either of them is a question the definition of an ombudsman does not reach.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 71 (the procedure before a penalty), Article 72 (notification, the grievance and the objection before the labor courts) and Article 73 (the fines register and the workers’ committee), together with the model work regulation’s provision on grievances. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 72 of the Labor Law, and the periods stated above are taken from the consolidated text published after that amendment. That decree did not amend Article 71 of the Labor Law, and the consolidated text records the amendment of Article 73 of the Labor Law by Royal Decree M/46, not M/44.

Before an ombudsman is appointed

Before appointing anyone, an organisation can set out on a single sheet that every employee can see: where to go for an informal settlement, where to go for a recorded grievance, how many days the employee has, who decides, and within how long. If that sheet exists and is clear, an ombudsman becomes a real addition for anyone who wants to talk before deciding what to do. If it does not exist, the role opens a door the employee walks through without knowing that a clock is running behind it.

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

Related terms

• Corporate Whistleblowing
• Employee Assistance Program
• Employee File
• Demotion
• Informal Communication