Workplace Harassment

What workplace harassment is

Workplace harassment is unwelcome conduct directed at a person in the work environment that offends their dignity, their reputation or their freedom, or that is aimed at drawing or forcing them into an illicit relationship.

The first point to establish is that the Saudi rules dealing with workplace harassment inside the establishment are not found in the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) itself. They sit in the model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد), the model on which every establishment prepares its own work regulation, and they use a wider term: abuse (الإيذاء). Criminal liability for harassment is a separate matter governed outside the Labor Law. The definition of workplace harassment set out below describes the work regulation route and states no criminal penalty and no fine.

Why the rules on workplace harassment speak of abuse

The definition in the model regulation is wider than the picture the word harassment brings to mind. Article 54 of the model work regulation treats the following as abuse:

• Every practice of mistreatment, whether by act or by omission, and every form of exploitation, blackmail, enticement or threat, whether physical, psychological or sexual.
• Conduct running in any of four directions: by the employer against a worker, by a worker against the employer, by one worker against another, or against any person present at the workplace. Workplace harassment is therefore not confined to conduct from a manager towards a subordinate.
• Assisting such conduct, or concealing it. The model regulation places both on the same footing as the abuse itself.
• Conduct through any means of communication: speech, writing, gesture, insinuation, drawing, the telephone or other electronic means, or any other form of behaviour that conveys it.

Before that definition, Article 53 of the model work regulation places a duty on every worker to refrain from any form of abuse or of physical, verbal or suggestive mistreatment, and from any conduct that offends modesty or damages a person’s dignity, reputation or freedom, or that is aimed at drawing or forcing any person into an illicit relationship, even where it is meant as a joke. That final qualification removes a defence that could otherwise be raised in answer to a complaint.

How far the model regulation’s rules on workplace harassment reach

The force of these rules should be settled before any of them is quoted. The model work regulation is not an article of the Labor Law, and its force comes to it by delegation:

• The Ministry’s duty to issue a model. Article 12 of the Labor Law requires the Ministry to issue one or more models of the work regulation, including the provisions on violations and disciplinary penalties.
• The employer’s duty to follow it. Article 13 of the Labor Law requires every employer to prepare a work regulation for its establishment on the model prepared by the Ministry, and allows the employer to add conditions that do not conflict with the law.
• The Implementing Regulation’s adoption of it. Article 3 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) adopts the model in the form annexed to it, and Article 4 of the Implementing Regulation treats any article of an existing establishment regulation that conflicts with the model as void. Under Article 4 of the Implementing Regulation, an establishment with fewer than 50 workers may adopt the model electronically without amendment.

The accurate formulation is that the rules on workplace harassment are provisions that the work regulation of every compliant establishment must carry, not a right that the Labor Law confers directly on every worker. The Labor Law and the model work regulation are both in force, and a citation to one cannot stand in for a citation to the other. How the work regulation is prepared, and what the Labor Law leaves to it, is covered in our guide to the work organisation regulation.

The workplace harassment complaint route and its time limits

Article 55 of the model work regulation sets the route in four parts:

1. The person subjected to the abuse may submit a complaint to the establishment within no more than five working days of the incident. The same paragraph opens by preserving that person’s right to turn to the competent government authorities, so the external route is part of the provision itself, not an exception to it.
2. Anyone who witnessed an incident of abuse, or learned of it, may submit a report to the establishment. Reporting is therefore not limited to the person affected. How a reporting channel can be organised is set out under corporate whistleblowing.
3. Where the abuse came from the owner of the establishment or its highest authority, the complaint goes to the competent government authority, not to the establishment. This is a point a written internal procedure can miss if it is drafted without care.
4. On receiving a complaint or report, the establishment forms a committee by decision of the responsible official. The committee investigates, examines the evidence and recommends the appropriate disciplinary penalty for anyone whose guilt is established, and the provision sets this within five working days of receiving the complaint or report.

What binds the committee in a workplace harassment case

Article 56 of the model work regulation sets the rules the committee works under:

• Confidentiality. It is an express principle. The committee hears all the parties and the witnesses and records the proceedings in minutes, which the parties and witnesses sign against their own statements and the committee members then sign at the foot of every page.
• Summoning. The committee may summon any worker it considers it necessary to question, and the person summoned is obliged to appear.
• Separation during the investigation. The committee may recommend to the establishment’s management that the complainant and the person complained against be kept apart while the investigation runs. It is a protective step taken while the matter is examined, not an outcome of it.
• Where the abuse is proved by any recognised means of proof, the committee recommends by majority that the appropriate disciplinary penalty be imposed on the person responsible. The forms that penalty can take, beginning with a warning, are discussed under verbal warning.
• Where the conduct amounts to a criminal offence, the committee must refer the complaint to the general manager so that the competent government authorities are notified.
• Where the abuse is not proved, the committee recommends a disciplinary penalty against the person who reported it if it finds that the complaint or report was malicious. The condition is in the text, so a complaint that is not proved is not, on that ground alone, malicious.

The model regulation also provides, in Article 71 of the model work regulation, that a worker may raise a grievance against any act, measure or penalty taken against them by the establishment, and that the worker is not to be harmed for raising it. This is a duty the establishment’s regulation must carry, not a guarantee the Labor Law states directly, and the difference between the two lies in the source, not in the merit. Because it reaches any act or measure and not only a disciplinary penalty, it covers steps taken against the person who reported and against the person complained against alike. Where a grievance goes, and what an informal route cannot replace, is examined under ombudsman.

Internal and external routes for workplace harassment run side by side

Three provisions of the model work regulation settle the relationship between the internal route and the external one, and they are examined together:

• A disciplinary penalty imposed by the establishment on the person responsible does not prevent the person affected from turning to the competent government authorities (Article 56 of the model work regulation).
• A penalty imposed on the person responsible under Sharia or under another law does not prevent the establishment from imposing a disciplinary penalty (Article 56 of the model work regulation).
• The complaint to the establishment is itself made without prejudice to the right to turn to the competent authorities (Article 55 of the model work regulation).

So an establishment regulation stating that the internal complaint must come before any external step, or that closing the internal investigation ends the matter, says the opposite of the model on which regulations are prepared.

Workplace harassment and Articles 80 and 81 of the Labor Law

The model regulation is where the procedure sits, but the Labor Law itself carries two provisions connected with such an incident, each concerning a different party:

• The worker responsible. Article 80 of the Labor Law lists, among the cases in which the employer may end the contract without an award, notice or compensation, an assault by the worker on the employer, the responsible manager, a superior or a subordinate during the work or because of it, and also proven bad conduct or an act offending honour or honesty. Article 80 of the Labor Law opens with a prohibition, not a permission, and it requires that the employer give the worker the opportunity to state their objections to the termination. That condition is part of the article, not a note added to it.
• The worker affected. Article 81 of the Labor Law allows the worker to leave the work without notice while keeping all their statutory rights where the employer, a member of the employer’s family or the responsible manager commits a violent assault, or conduct offending public decency, against the worker or a member of the worker’s family, and also where the treatment the worker receives from the employer or the responsible manager is marked by cruelty, injustice or insult.

Neither provision replaces the complaint route in the model regulation, and neither is an outcome of it. Article 80 of the Labor Law is a route open to the employer on its stated conditions. Article 81 of the Labor Law is a route open to the worker that does not wait for an internal investigation to end. Both stand alongside the right to turn to the competent government authorities that the model regulation states expressly. The conditions of both articles are set out in our guide to Articles 80 and 81 of the Labor Law.

Row 22 of the Schedule of Violations and Penalties (Ministerial Decision No. 112377), which concerns discrimination, is not a measure for workplace harassment. Discrimination in conditions of work or in pay is the subject Row 22 covers, and it is not merged with workplace harassment.

Records of a workplace harassment investigation

Investigation minutes and witness statements are personal data. The Personal Data Protection Law (نظام حماية البيانات الشخصية) requires the purpose of collection to be specified, and Article 11 of the Personal Data Protection Law requires the data collected to be limited to the minimum necessary to achieve that purpose. That requirement is consistent with the principle of confidentiality the model regulation itself lays down. Where such records sit among the documents an organisation keeps on each worker is a question for the employee file.

Provisions relied on for workplace harassment

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 12 (the Ministry’s model work regulation), Article 13 (the employer’s duty to prepare a regulation on that model), Article 80 (termination without award, notice or compensation) and Article 81 (the worker leaving without notice with rights preserved). From the Implementing Regulation, issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 of 19/8/1446H: Article 3 (adoption of the model) and Article 4 (the two routes to an approved regulation, and the voiding of conflicting articles). From the model work regulation annexed to it: Articles 53 and 54 (the duty to refrain and the definition of abuse), Article 55 (the complaint and its periods), Article 56 (the committee) and Article 71 (grievance). From the Personal Data Protection Law: Article 11 (data minimisation). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H did not amend Article 80 or Article 81 of the Labor Law.

Before a workplace harassment policy is written

An establishment writing a policy on workplace harassment starts from its own approved regulation, because what binds it is the text of that regulation once approved, and anything in it that conflicts with the model is void and has to be amended. A policy drafted from a circulated template with no reference to the approved model is not a sound basis.

A written policy can then state, in plain terms, who may complain and who may report, where a complaint goes when it concerns the highest authority in the establishment, how the committee is formed and how it keeps its proceedings confidential, and that the internal route does not close the external one.

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

Related terms

• Ombudsman
• Corporate Whistleblowing
• Verbal Warning
• Positive Discipline
• Employee File