Peer Review Panel

What a peer review panel is

A peer review panel, sometimes called a peer review committee, is an internal body made up mainly of colleagues at a level close to that of the employee concerned. A case relating to that employee is put before it, the panel examines it, and it arrives at a recommendation that goes to whoever holds the decision.

What the panel produces is a recommendation, not a ruling, and that limit governs everything that follows. The panel does not impose a penalty and does not lift one. It does not stand in for a procedure that a statutory text requires, and it does not change a period that a text has fixed. In what we have read, we found no text that deals with peer review panels by name, so it cannot be stated that such a panel is required, nor that it is forbidden.

Where a peer review panel sits: before the decision or after it

A panel of this kind has two possible places in the disciplinary process, and only two:

• Before the decision. The facts are put to the panel once the required procedure has been completed, and the panel gives its view on whether the proposed penalty is proportionate to them. In this position the panel advises the person with authority to decide.
• After the decision. The employee’s grievance against a decision already issued is put to the panel, which examines it and sends its recommendation to the competent body at the employer. In this position the panel supports that body and does not replace it.

Confusing the two positions produces a panel that examines the facts before the decision and then examines the grievance against it, which means reviewing its own opinion. The separation between the two is written into the document that constitutes the panel, rather than left to practice.

Article 72 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) refers to the competent body at the employer without describing who sits on it, and we found no provision in the Labor Law setting its composition. That composition is something to look for in the establishment’s approved work regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل). It should not be assumed that the body is the peer review panel, nor that it is not.

What a peer review panel cannot change

The matters below are unaffected by the existence of a panel or by the quality of its work, because each comes from a statutory text that is not addressed to the panel at all.

• The procedure required before any penalty. Article 71 of the Labor Law provides that no disciplinary penalty may be imposed on a worker until the worker has been notified in writing of what is alleged against them, has been questioned, and has had their defence investigated, with all of this recorded in a minute placed in the worker’s own file, the employee file. The duty is addressed to the employer, and none of it falls away because a panel of colleagues has discussed the matter with the employee in its session. Article 71 of the Labor Law forbids imposing a penalty before the steps it lists, and it does not state what follows if a penalty is imposed without them. We found no source among our references that settles the fate of a decision issued before the procedure was completed, so a panel’s recommendation is not built on that question, and neither is the definition of a peer review panel.
• The list of penalties that may be imposed. Disciplinary penalties are confined to a closed list, and Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing any penalty not provided for in the Labor Law or in the establishment’s approved work regulation. A panel that recommends a penalty from outside those two sources does not create a basis for it. How the closed list applies to one measure that can look like a penalty is worked through under demotion, and the role the Labor Law gives the regulation is set out in our guide to the Saudi work organisation regulation.
• The grievance periods. Article 72 of the Labor Law gives the worker thirty days, excluding official holidays, from notification of the penalty decision to file a written grievance with the competent body at the employer. The employer then has fifteen days from submission to decide the grievance in writing. If the grievance is rejected, or not decided in writing within those fifteen days, the worker may object before the labor courts (المحاكم العمالية) within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date of rejection or the expiry of the period for deciding the grievance, whichever is earlier. A panel that meets every two weeks does not pause any of these periods. It uses them up.

Staffing a peer review panel: how many remain eligible to sit

The hard part of a panel of this kind is not the idea but finding its members, because every ground for stepping aside reduces the number available. Take a department of 12 employees, where three peer members are needed and the following are excluded:

• the employee concerned: 1;
• their direct manager, and whoever took the decision if that is someone else: 2;
• anyone who witnessed the incident or is named in it: 2;
• anyone in a direct reporting line with the employee concerned: 2.

The exclusions come to 1 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2, which is 7, leaving 12 minus 7, which is 5, from whom three are chosen. That works, though only just.

Now run the same arithmetic on a department of 8 employees, with the same 7 exclusions. That leaves 8 minus 7, which is 1, and one person is not a panel. On these assumptions, the smallest department from which a panel of three can be formed is 3 plus 7, which is 10. An organisation whose departments are smaller than that cannot form the panel from inside the department, however much it wants to.

These figures are an example showing how the grounds for stepping aside eat into the pool of available members. They are not a standard, and they are not a recommendation. The definition of a peer review panel does not fix how many members it has, nor what share of them must be peers.

An organisation that solves the problem by widening the choice to other departments gains the numbers but loses what made the members peers. A member from another department is not a peer in the work, does not know the circumstances of the incident as a peer would, and their presence becomes a formality that completes the quorum. That is a choice to be made knowingly, not a solution.

The strain grows with use. If the panel hears 5 cases in a year, and having sat on an earlier case involving the same person is a ground for stepping aside in a later one, the pool of five shrinks with each round, until the choice lies between reusing the same members and suspending the panel. This is worth calculating before the panel is set up, because a panel that stops after three cases does more harm than a panel that was never created.

What a peer review panel’s recommendation needs to carry

A recommendation that ends in a single word, suitable or unsuitable, gives the person deciding nothing to work with, because it does not show where the panel’s view differed from theirs. A useful recommendation carries four things:

• What the panel examined, stated in full. The weight of an opinion depends on how much it was built on, and an opinion whose basis is unknown cannot be weighed.
• What the panel was unable to verify. This can be more useful than the first item, because it points the person deciding to what must be completed before the matter is settled.
• The reason for the view, not just the view: whether the difference lies in how the facts were assessed, in whether the penalty fits them, or in the fact that a similar case was handled differently in the same department. The third reason is the one that reveals a problem wider than the case.
• Any dissenting view, recorded with its reason. A panel that always reaches a single view is either genuinely in agreement or has a member who does not write down what they think, and a minute with room for only one voice cannot show which.

We found no published measurement on which to base a claim about the effect of peer review panels on the quality of decisions, or on how far employees accept them.

Members of a peer review panel and the duty of confidentiality

Sitting on the panel gives its members sight of facts about a named colleague, of what is in that colleague’s file, and of what they said in their defence. Access of this kind is to be limited to those who need it for a stated purpose, and a member is bound by the same duties as any worker. Among the worker’s duties in Article 65 of the Labor Law is preserving professional secrets relating to the work or the establishment whose disclosure would harm the employer’s interest. That final qualifier is part of the item’s wording, and the duty is narrower with it than without it.

A practical point follows. The document that constitutes the panel states which parts of the file are made available to its members and which are not, and when what was handed to them is returned or destroyed. An organisation that leaves this to judgement has spread one employee’s file across three colleagues with no known limit, and that is harm in itself, which a sound recommendation does not undo.

How a peer review panel differs from neighbouring bodies and tools

• 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. Its members are not appointed to examine an individual case. A peer review panel is formed for a case or a type of case, and no statutory effect follows from its existence.
• The internal investigation. It is the procedure by which the establishment verifies what is alleged against a worker before any decision is taken about them, and it is a duty the text places on the employer. The panel examines what the investigation concluded, or the decision built on it, and does not take its place.
• 360 degree appraisal. This is a performance appraisal tool that gathers the views of those around the employee in a set cycle. Its subject is ordinary performance rather than a particular incident, and it produces a picture of performance rather than a recommendation on a decision. Peer appraisal sits close to it: it runs at a fixed date whatever did or did not happen, and it leaves a periodic rating rather than a view on one case.
• The safety committee. It has a different subject, governed by the rules of that field, and its membership is not based on closeness in job level.

Where a peer review panel does not hold up

• A case touching a matter that is not shared with colleagues, such as a grievance linked to a health condition or to an incident involving a third party. Putting it to three colleagues widens the circle of people who know about something that should be kept narrow, even if the recommendation turns out to be sound.
• A case in which the person complained about is a candidate member. In a small department this is harder to avoid, since such a case eats into the same pool counted above.
• A panel with no written rules for its session: who speaks, what members may see, how the recommendation is recorded, to whom it goes, and within what time. A panel set up by a two line decision produces a recommendation whose author and basis nobody can identify.
• A panel whose recommendations receive no response. A member who has sent two recommendations and never learned what became of them will not write a third with any care, and at that point the panel survives as a name in the policy, having lost the purpose for which it was created.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 65 (the worker’s duty to preserve professional secrets), Article 67 (no penalty outside the Labor Law or the work regulation), 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). 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; it did not amend Articles 65, 67, 71 or 73.

Before a peer review panel is set up

A peer review panel is judged by two questions. Does the pool left after the grounds for stepping aside stay large enough to form it time after time? And do its recommendations receive a known response? If both answers are yes, the panel adds to the decision something nothing else adds: a view from people who know the conditions of the work from inside and have no stake in the outcome. If either answer is no, the effort is better spent on completing what the text requires, and doing that properly carries more weight than a panel that meets twice and then cannot be convened.

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

Related terms

• Peer Appraisal
• Performance Calibration
• Subordinate Appraisal
• Employee File
• Demotion