Self Managed Team

What a self managed team is

A self managed team (الفريق ذاتي الإدارة), also called a self directed team, is a work team that decides for itself how its work is divided, ordered and carried out, without a supervisor assigning tasks to its members one by one. The unit of decision is the group, not the individual employee and not the manager.

That definition is what separates a self managed team from the arrangements next to it. The term does not describe a team that works well together, a team whose manager consults it, or a team that has no head on the organisation chart. It describes a team to which the day to day operating decisions have passed as a unit, so that questions which used to be taken up to a supervisor are now settled inside the team.

The definition of a self managed team sets no recommended size for the team and no period it must run before the arrangement settles. Both figures can vary with the nature of the work and with how alike the team’s tasks are, and we found no source setting a rule on either that could be carried from one organisation to another.

What passes to a self managed team and what stays outside it

The right hand column is where a mistake can cost the most, because handing over the running of the work can be taken as handing over everything. The definition of a self managed team covers operating decisions. It does not reach pay, discipline or employment decisions, and it does not change the limits on hours and rest that the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) states.

The hours and rest provisions a self managed team works within

Three provisions of the Labor Law bear directly on a team that draws up the roster for its members:

• The hours ceiling. Article 98 of the Labor Law provides that a worker may not actually be employed for more than eight hours a day where the employer has adopted the daily standard, or more than forty eight hours a week where the employer has adopted the weekly standard. During Ramadan the actual hours of Muslim workers are reduced to no more than six a day or thirty six a week. The standard is one the employer adopts, and the Article sets the ceiling against whichever standard was adopted.
• The weekly rest. Article 104 of the Labor Law makes Friday the weekly rest day for all workers. The employer may substitute another day for some workers after notifying the competent labour office, and must enable them to perform their religious duties. The rest day is on full pay, lasts not less than twenty four consecutive hours, and may not be commuted to a cash payment. Outside the Article 106 cases noted below, an agreement inside a team that its members will work their rest days in return for an extra payment is the commutation to cash that Article 104 of the Labor Law rules out.
• The daily rest. Article 101 of the Labor Law provides that a worker may not work more than five consecutive hours without a break of not less than half an hour each time, and may not remain at the workplace for more than twelve hours in a day. Both limits apply together; they are not alternatives.

Article 98 of the Labor Law is written as a limit on employing the worker. The variations and exceptions set out beside it in the Labor Law are tied to categories of work, to Ministry approval or to defined circumstances: Article 99 for the nine hour and seven hour variations, Article 100 for shift work, Article 106 for four cases in which the employer may disregard Articles 98 and 101 and the first paragraph of Article 104, and Article 108 for the categories outside Articles 98 and 101. None of them turns on who drew up the roster. The hours and rest provisions are set out in our guide to working hours and the weekly rest in the Saudi Labor Law.

So a self managed team that takes over scheduling takes over a tool that can push hours past these limits. A roster checked against the ceilings before it runs is one thing; an attendance record examined after the hours have been worked is another.

A worked calculation: where the ceiling binds a self managed team

Take a self managed team of seven members in an establishment that has adopted the weekly standard, outside Ramadan. Each member can work 48 hours a week, so the team’s capacity within the ceiling is 48 × 7 = 336 hours. The schedule it has to cover takes 300 hours a week, which leaves a margin of 36 hours, less than one member’s share.

• If one member is away for a full week, capacity within the ceiling falls to 48 × 6 = 288 hours against the 300 required, a shortfall of 12 hours.
• Spreading that shortfall across the six who remain gives each of them (288 + 12) ÷ 6, that is 50 hours in the week, two hours above the ceiling in Article 98 of the Labor Law for each member.
• The team can then cut 12 hours from the schedule, bring in cover from outside the team, or work the hours above the ceiling. On the weekly standard, Article 107 of the Labor Law treats hours beyond those adopted for the standard as overtime hours, carrying the overtime pay that Article sets or, with the worker’s consent and on the terms the Implementing Regulation sets, paid compensatory leave in its place. The basis of that pay is covered in our guide to compensatory rest and the basis for computing overtime.

The figures above are assumptions chosen to show the mechanism, not a benchmark. What the calculation shows is that autonomy does not create hours. A self managed team can decide who does what; it cannot decide how much everyone works free of a ceiling it did not set. Giving a team a schedule that its capacity within the ceiling cannot cover hands it a problem with no solution inside the ceiling and calls the problem autonomy.

How a self managed team divides its work

The first thing a self managed team takes on is dividing the work among its members, and the first mistake it can make is to divide it by count. A count of tasks on its own does not measure a workload.

The effect of that mistake can be larger where the team divides the work itself than where a supervisor divides it, for two reasons. First, splitting by count is the easiest thing for members to agree on, because it looks fair and calls for no judgement about how hard each task is. Second, judging how hard a colleague’s task is means a judgement between peers, which carries more social weight than the same judgement from a supervisor.

Five tasks each can mean a crowded week for one member and three days’ work for another, and the difference does not show on the task list, because the list counts and does not weigh. It can show weeks later as delays put down to the person when the cause was the split.

The remedy is not to hand the division back to the supervisor. It is for the team to have a stated unit of measurement other than the count: estimated hours, the size of the output, or another measure agreed before the work is divided rather than after. Where the allocation of shifts or tasks runs on a published rule, as in shift bidding, the rule can be checked after the event. A team with no such measure divides by count because the count is what it has, not because the count is right.

A self managed team and the workers’ committee

Confusing a self managed team with the workers’ committee (اللجنة العمالية) confuses an operating arrangement with a body that has a place in the Labor Law. Article 73 of the Labor Law is the one place in the Law that names the committee. It requires the employer to record every fine imposed on a worker in a special register, stating the worker’s name, the amount of their wage, the amount of the fine, the reason for it and its date. It then restricts how fines are used: they may be disposed of only for what benefits the establishment’s workers, the disposal is made by the workers’ committee in the establishment, and where there is no committee it is made with the Ministry’s approval.

A self managed team is an internal arrangement that an establishment creates for itself, and it does not inherit the effect of Article 73 of the Labor Law. Forming one does not stand in for the committee that the Article names, and it does not take the committee’s place in disposing of fines. Beyond that point, in the Labor Law, its Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) and the model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد), we found no provision attaching any effect to the forming of a self managed team, whether on representation, on responsibility or on the approved work regulation.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 73 (the fines register and the restriction on disposing of fines), Article 98 (the daily and weekly hours ceilings), Articles 99, 100, 106 and 108 (the variations and exceptions to the ceilings), Article 101 (the daily break and the twelve hour presence limit), Article 104 (the weekly rest) and Article 107 (overtime hours on the weekly standard). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, did not amend Articles 73, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 106 or 108 of the Labor Law; it amended Article 107 to add paid compensatory leave in place of overtime pay with the worker’s consent.

How a self managed team differs from decentralized management and from span of control

• Decentralized management. Under decentralization, an organisation moves the right to take particular decisions down to a level or a position under a written, standing rule. In a self managed team the decision sits with the group. That has a practical consequence: under decentralization a decision belongs to a position that one person holds, while a decision taken by a self managed team belongs to the group as a whole. The group therefore needs a written rule stating how it decides and what happens when members disagree, which a single decision maker does not need.
• Span of control. It measures how many people report to each manager. A self managed team does not bring the span down to zero. It changes what the supervisor does inside it, from assigning work each day to following outputs and making resources available. The structure remains, and so does the reporting relationship. How a supervisor varies their style from one task to the next is a separate question, the subject of situational leadership.

What to write down before a self managed team starts

1. What exactly the team decides, and where its decisions stop. An open list turns every decision into a negotiation.
2. How decisions are taken inside the team, and what happens when views are evenly split. Left unwritten, this can make the loudest member the one who actually decides. The GRPI model places this question in its processes layer, below goals and roles.
3. Who checks the team’s roster against the hours and rest limits, and when. A roster drawn up by the team needs someone outside the team to review it against those limits before it runs, not after.
4. What information the team can see. Those who decide need what they decide on, and handing over a decision while withholding the information behind it is a request to guess.

Where one member coordinates the team, the definition of a self managed team sets no payment for that role. Any payment for it rests on the employment contract or the work regulation.

What undermines a self managed team

• The supervisor keeps assigning the work. The arrangement becomes an announcement rather than an arrangement, and members take their cue from the practice, not the announcement.
• Accountability passes without authority. The team answers for a result whose inputs it does not control.
• Performance is judged on individual measures alone. An arrangement whose unit is the group is measured by the group’s output; measuring it on individuals alone recreates what it was set up to change.
• The arrangement is used to cut the number of supervisors before it has been built. The layer is removed before decisions have moved, and decisions are left hanging with nobody to settle them.

The sign that a self managed team is working is not that nobody ever goes back to a supervisor. Going back on matters that stayed outside the team’s remit is the arrangement applied correctly, not a departure from it. The clearer sign is that for every matter it is known where it will be settled before it arises, not after.

What a self managed team distributes is work. The team can rearrange how its work is divided and done, but the hours and rest limits described above are not among the things it rearranges.

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

Related terms

• Decentralized Management
• GRPI Model
• Shift Bidding
• Job Specialization
• Formalization