Posted Working Hours Schedule

What a posted working hours schedule is

A posted working hours schedule (جدول مواعيد العمل المعلن) is the timetable that an employer displays in a visible place at the workplace. It shows the working hours, the rest periods and the weekly rest day and, where work is organised in shifts, the start and end of each shift. Its basis is paragraph 2 of Article 17 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل).

The schedule is not the attendance register, and it is not the work organisation regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل). It tells workers in advance what time will be asked of them. It does not record what actually happened.

What Article 17 of the Labor Law provides

Article 17 of the Labor Law has two paragraphs. Paragraph 1 requires the employer to keep at the workplace the records, statements and files whose nature and contents the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) determines. Article 5 of the Implementing Regulation sets out seven of them: the list of workers’ names, the wage statement, the penalties register, the attendance and departure register, the register of training for Saudis, the medical examination register and the work file of each worker.

The posted schedule is not one of the seven. It comes from paragraph 2 of Article 17 of the Labor Law, which the Implementing Regulation reproduces just before its Article 5. The Arabic text is:

وعليه أن يضع في مكان ظاهر بموقع العمل جدولاً بمواعيد العمل، وفترات الراحة، ويوم الراحة الأسبوعي، ومواعيد بدء كل نوبة وانتهائها في حالة العمل بأسلوب المناوبة.

The English rendering is ours, not an official translation. The employer must place in a visible place at the workplace a schedule of working hours, rest periods and the weekly rest day, together with the start and end times of each shift where work is done in shifts.

What a posted working hours schedule contains

Paragraph 2 of Article 17 of the Labor Law names four elements, and each is governed by a provision elsewhere in the Labor Law:

• Working hours. The time at which the working day starts and ends. Article 98 of the Labor Law bars actual work beyond eight hours a day where the employer has adopted the daily standard, or beyond 48 hours a week where it has adopted the weekly standard. During Ramadan, for Muslims, it lowers those limits to six hours a day or 36 hours a week.
• Rest periods. When they fall and how long they last. Article 101 of the Labor Law provides that a worker may not work more than five consecutive hours without a break of at least half an hour for rest, prayer and food, and may not stay at the workplace for more than twelve hours a day.
• The weekly rest day. Under paragraph 1 of Article 104 of the Labor Law the day is Friday for all workers, and the employer may substitute another day for some of them after notifying the competent labour office. Under paragraph 2 of Article 104 of the Labor Law the day is paid in full and lasts no less than 24 consecutive hours.
• Shift times. The start and end of each shift, which the text requires where work is done in shifts.

Article 17 of the Labor Law does not oblige the employer to name the daily or the weekly standard. The posted times nonetheless show which one has been adopted, since the hours in a day and the hours in a week can be worked out from them directly.

Articles 98, 101 and 104 of the Labor Law state the base rule for each element, and other provisions of the Labor Law vary it. Article 99 of the Labor Law allows the daily hours to be raised to nine for some categories of workers, or in industries and work where the worker is not employed continuously, and lowered to seven for some categories, or in hazardous or harmful industries and work. The categories, industries and work are specified by the Minister by decision. Article 103 of the Labor Law lets the Minister decide that certain work must continue without a rest period, with a period for prayer, food and rest still given. Article 106 of the Labor Law allows the employer to disregard Articles 98 and 101 and paragraph 1 of Article 104 of the Labor Law in four cases, and Article 108 of the Labor Law takes certain categories outside Articles 98 and 101. Each provision carries separate conditions, so a posted schedule cannot be checked against the base rule alone.

The shift condition and what it governs

The condition that work is done in shifts comes at the end of the sentence, after the fourth element. On its wording it attaches to the shift times alone, so an establishment that does not work in shifts posts the first three elements. In the sources we reviewed, we found no official explanation that reads it any other way.

Article 100 of the Labor Law concerns establishments where the nature of the work requires the work to be performed in turns. With the approval of the Ministry, the employer may raise the hours above eight a day or 48 a week, provided that the average over three weeks or fewer does not exceed eight hours a day or 48 hours a week. The Article applies only where the nature of the work requires turns and the Ministry has approved, so a branch does not fall within it merely because it runs two shifts. For an establishment that does, the schedule may show a shift longer than eight hours on a given day, and the average remains the measure. Patterns of shifts are covered under shift work.

Where the schedule is placed and by what means

Paragraph 2 of Article 17 of the Labor Law puts the schedule in a visible place at the workplace. It is posted where the workers work and where each of them can see it, not in an administrative file or in the manager’s office. The text mentions neither paper nor a screen, and in the sources we reviewed the words «أو أي وسيلة أخرى» (or any other means) do not appear in it.

That marks a difference between two provisions. Article 13 of the Labor Law, on announcing the work organisation regulation, accepts a visible place in the establishment or any other means that ensures the people bound by the regulation know its provisions. Article 17 of the Labor Law goes no further than the visible place. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text that decides whether a screen or an application is enough, and none that decides whether one schedule can serve an establishment with several sites. In the sources we reviewed, we also found no template, size or language prescribed for the schedule. Posting a schedule at each site is the safer course, but that is a practical precaution and not a requirement drawn from the text.

Whom the duty covers

The text addresses the employer without distinguishing by the size of the establishment, and it applies wherever the Labor Law applies. It does not reach the categories that paragraph 1 of Article 7 of the Labor Law excludes from the Labor Law: family members of the employer in an establishment that employs no one else, players and coaches of sports clubs and federations, domestic workers and those in a like position, agricultural workers and private herders and those in a like position, and non Saudis who come to perform a specific task lasting no more than two months.

Part time workers raise a question that the text does not settle. Paragraph 5 of Article 5 of the Labor Law applies the Labor Law to them within the limits of occupational safety and health, work injuries and what the Minister decides. Item 4 of the first paragraph of Article 27 of the Implementing Regulation subjects them to the provisions of the Labor Law on leave, weekly rest, official holidays and overtime. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text that says whether the posted schedule falls within that. Part time contracts are covered under part time work.

The posted schedule and the model work regulation

The model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد للائحة تنظيم العمل), which is Annex 1 of the Implementing Regulation, carries particulars of the same kind as the schedule. Article 26 of the model work regulation leaves the establishment to fill in the number of working days a week and the weekly rest day, and it provides for eight hours a day, reduced to six in Ramadan for Muslim workers. Article 27 of the model work regulation repeats the rule of five consecutive hours, a break of half an hour and a presence limit of twelve hours.

Article 26 of the model work regulation must not be confused with Article 26 of the Implementing Regulation, which deals with sick leave that falls within annual leave. An establishment that has adopted the model writes its particulars into its regulation, and it then posts a schedule that shows its hours to the workers at the workplace. The two documents should agree with each other. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text that makes one a substitute for the other.

An example: a retail branch with two shifts

Take a branch that has adopted the daily standard and opens from six in the morning to eleven at night, in two shifts. Its posted schedule shows:

• First shift. 6:00 to 14:30, with a break from 10:00 to 10:30.
• Second shift. 14:30 to 23:00, with a break from 18:30 to 19:00.
• Weekly rest day. Friday.

The check on each shift runs as follows. Eight and a half hours on site, minus half an hour of break, leaves 8 actual hours, which is the limit in Article 98 of the Labor Law. The break falls four hours after the start, so no worker works five consecutive hours without a break, as Article 101 of the Labor Law requires. Time on site is 8.5 hours, which is 3.5 hours under the twelve hour ceiling in the same Article. A worker who works six days has a weekly total of 6 × 8 = 48 hours, which is the limit of the weekly standard.

The second shift ends at eleven at night, so no part of it falls within the night work period that Ministerial Decision No. 18632 defines as the hours from eleven at night to six in the morning. Night work is subject to separate provisions, covered under night shift. The times are invented to illustrate the arithmetic. They do not mean that these particular hours are the ones required.

What resembles a posted working hours schedule and is not one

• The attendance and departure register. It is one of the seven registers in Article 5 of the Implementing Regulation, and it records when a worker actually arrived and left. The schedule announces the planned times and the register shows what occurred. Corrections to the register are covered under attendance regularisation.
• The work organisation regulation. It is a wider document, which the establishment prepares on the model of the Ministry and announces under Article 13 of the Labor Law. The schedule is a separate duty under Article 17 of the Labor Law.
• The maximum working hours. They are a ceiling set by Article 98 of the Labor Law, and they are covered under statutory working hours. The schedule announces the hours that the establishment has chosen within that ceiling.
• Rest periods. Their rule is in Article 101 of the Labor Law, and the provisions are covered under rest periods. The schedule is the place where their times are announced, not the place from which the rule comes.

Is a penalty fixed for leaving the schedule out?

In the sources we reviewed, we found no provision of the Labor Law that sets a penalty specific to omitting the posted schedule. We checked the Schedule of Violations and Penalties (Ministerial Decision No. 112377) and, in the rows we read, found none that names the posted schedule. The Schedule of Violations and Penalties does contain a row on not using Arabic in contracts, data, records, worker files and the instructions that the employer issues, and a row on not granting the statutory weekly rest and the daily rest periods.

We also found no text that requires a separate schedule for Ramadan, and none that says whether a change to the hours must be announced before it takes effect.

What to record

These are practical recommendations, not conditions found in Article 17 of the Labor Law:

• The date of the schedule. The posted schedule can carry the date from which it applies, and a copy of each earlier version can be kept, so that what was posted on a given day can be established.
• Consistency with other documents. The posted times can match the shift roster, the working hours in the employment contract and the entries in the attendance register, because differences between them produce disputes that are hard to settle.
• Notice of change. The posted schedule can be updated whenever the hours change, and the workers can be told of the change.

Provisions relied on for the posted working hours schedule

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 17 (the records and the posted schedule, both paragraphs), Article 98 (the daily and weekly limits), Article 99 (the nine and seven hour variations), Article 100 (work performed in turns, with the approval of the Ministry), Article 101 (the five hour rule, the half hour break and the twelve hour presence limit), Article 103 (continuous work by decision of the Minister), Article 104 (the weekly rest day), Article 106 (the four cases in which Articles 98 and 101 and paragraph 1 of Article 104 may be disregarded), Article 108 (the excluded categories), Article 13 (announcing the work organisation regulation), Article 5 (part time workers) and Article 7 (the excluded categories). From the Implementing Regulation, in the edition published by the same Ministry in April 2025: Article 5 (the seven registers) and Article 27 (part time workers); and from Annex 1, the model work regulation, Articles 26 and 27. Also relied on: Ministerial Decision No. 18632 (the night work period) and the Schedule of Violations and Penalties (Ministerial Decision No. 112377). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, did not amend Articles 98 to 106 or Article 108 of the Labor Law; Article 101 was last amended by Royal Decree M/46 of 5/6/1436H.

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