Seasonal Employment

What seasonal employment is

Seasonal employment (العمل الموسمي), also called seasonal work, is employment tied to a period in which demand recurs and then recedes. For that period alone, the organisation brings in workers in addition to its existing team.

The definition has two parts. The first is the period itself: demand rises within it and falls back once it has passed, and the same rise returns when the period comes round again. The second is the additional workforce: the people engaged for the season are added to the team for the length of that period, and the reason for engaging them ends when the period ends. Seasonal employment is therefore described by the pattern of demand over time, and the additional workers are how the organisation meets that pattern.

Where seasonal employment appears

Seasonal employment appears in activities whose demand is concentrated in known seasons. Retail meets it in the shopping seasons, hospitality in the travel seasons and agriculture in the harvest seasons. Events tied to fixed dates meet it on those dates.

What these activities have in common is that the peak is expected and recurring. The organisation knows that the season will come, because it has come before, and it knows that the season will come again after this one. That is what separates seasonal demand from sudden demand. A sudden peak is not expected in advance and does not return on a known pattern, whereas a seasonal peak has both qualities.

Seasonal employment under the Labor Law

Seasonal engagement takes place through an employment contract that is documented electronically, like any other employment contract. Article 18 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) adopts the unified models of the employment contract in its Annex 5, and requires the employer to document workers’ contracts electronically through the platform approved by the Ministry.

Among those unified models is an approved seasonal work contract model. It stands alongside the permanent contract model, the casual or temporary work contract model and the part time work contract model, so the Implementing Regulation provides four approved models in all.

Describing a job as “seasonal” is therefore not an internal label that an organisation attaches to a role. It is the choice of a specific model, together with the mandatory clauses that the model contains. The designation selects the form, and the form brings its mandatory clauses with it.

The duration of a seasonal contract, its renewal, and the effect of both on continuous service are matters governed by the Labor Law. They are checked against the Labor Law before any arrangement is built on them, and internal wording does not change them. The rules on contract term and renewal are covered in our guide to fixed term and indefinite term contracts and when a contract converts.

What the planner of seasonal employment decides before the season

Because the seasonal peak is expected, four decisions can be taken before it begins.

• The size and length of the peak. It is taken from a previous season, not from estimation. A figure drawn from a season that has already passed records how much additional work arrived and how long it lasted, while an estimate records only what someone expected to happen.
• What is assigned to seasonal workers and what stays permanent. Roles that need knowledge of the organisation are not filled by workers who leave after a month. A worker engaged for a month is gone before such knowledge has been built up, so those roles remain with the permanent team.
• Preparation time. It is the time a new worker needs before they can carry the work, which is the stage that employee onboarding covers for any new hire. Someone who starts on the day the peak begins learns during the peak, so the cost of learning is paid at the worst time: when the work is at its heaviest and the team has the least time to teach.
• Who supervises. It is decided alongside the number of workers. Increasing the number without increasing supervision moves the pressure onto the supervisor already in post, who then directs the additional workers on top of the existing team.

The hidden cost of seasonal employment

The cost of a seasonal worker is not the wage alone. It also includes recruitment, onboarding, the additional supervision, and the time the permanent team spends teaching. These items are what make the cost hidden: none of them sits in the wage figure, so a comparison built on the wage leaves all of them out.

An organisation that compares the wage of a seasonal worker with the wage of a permanent worker, and with nothing else, reaches a mistaken conclusion. The comparison sets one item against one item, when the seasonal side carries several further items that the wage does not show.

An organisation that measures the full cost, by contrast, can find that extending the hours of the existing team, where the law permits it, costs less and gives higher quality. The limits within which working hours can be set are covered in our guide to working hours and the weekly rest in the Saudi Labor Law.

What seasonal employment builds from one season to the next

A season that is forgotten once it ends is rebuilt from nothing every year. Each year the organisation recruits again, prepares again and teaches again, as though the previous season had not taken place.

What breaks that cycle is simple, and it has three parts.

• A list of those who performed well, with a short assessment. It records who did the work well during the season, with a brief evaluation of each person, so that the record outlasts the season.
• An early invitation for the following season. It goes to the people on that list ahead of the next season.
• Onboarding material that is ready. It is prepared once and kept, so it does not have to be written again for each new intake.

A seasonal worker who returns does not need to be taught from the beginning. Bringing such a worker back is closer to sourcing candidates from a pool the organisation already holds than to searching for new candidates from scratch.

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