Flexible work and remote work:the rules and how hours are counted

What flexible work means in law

Under the Executive Regulations to the Labor Law, flexible work is paid by the hour. The worker's hours with one employer must be less than half of that employer's working hours. Wages are paid monthly or as the two sides agree, and the worker is registered with GOSI and counts towards Saudization under the Nitaqat rules.

It is a separate arrangement with its own procedural guide. Its rules do not apply to an employee on an ordinary contract whose hours have been rearranged. The Regulations set a penalty for engaging someone under flexible work without an attested contract.

Its rules and caps

The ministry's procedural guide to flexible work and the decision that governs it set out further rules, including the figures:

1. 01Pay is calculated by the hour. The two sides can agree that it matches the basic hourly wage stated in the employment contract.
2. 02A worker cannot be engaged for more than one hundred and sixty hours a month with one employer. Hours beyond ninety-five in a month count as overtime.
3. 03Under the procedural guide, flexible work contracts are only for Saudi nationals. There is no probation period. The contract is attested online through the ministry's platform, and the worker is registered with GOSI automatically.
4. 04A contract with one employer cannot run for more than one year, continuous or not. After that, the employer can extend or renew it with the worker's consent, or offer a contract under the full Labor Law. For Nitaqat, the employer gets one full point for every one hundred and sixty flexible-work hours completed by one worker or a group of workers, with Saudization rates as set by the ministry.

A flexible schedule inside an ordinary contract

This is what most employers mean by «flexible hours»: an ordinary employment contract on a monthly wage, where the shift sets a number of hours per day or week and the employee chooses when to start.

The calculation is completely different. On a fixed shift, lateness is measured from the set start time. On a flexible shift there is no such thing as lateness, and what you measure is any shortfall against the required hours. There is another difference that is often missed. The hourly wage for flexible work already includes paid leave and end-of-service gratuity, so neither is paid separately. An employee on an ordinary contract with a flexible schedule gets both in full.

An attendance system that applies fixed-shift rules to a flexible shift records violations every day that never happened. This is one of the main reasons people stop trusting attendance reports.

Remote work

Remote work does not change the type of contract or the employee's rights. They are a full employee for wages, leave, GOSI, and end-of-service gratuity.

The contract must state that the work is done remotely, where the duties are carried out, the job description, the start and end times and number of hours, and the wage, allowances, and all other rights.

Without those details, a disagreement over an hour or a task has nothing to settle it, because you cannot rely on what was never written down.

Tracking attendance in remote work

Tracking remote attendance does not mean watching the employee's screen. The employee records when they start and finish work, and this is compared with the hours agreed in the contract.

Phone check-in by location suits people working from approved places. Face verification suits people working from anywhere. Both confirm that the person checking in is the employee.

The method matters less than making the expected hours clear. An employee who knows how many hours are expected can check themselves against that. One who does not is judged on their manager's impression.

Recurring errors

1. 01Calling a schedule without fixed hours «flexible work» and applying the flexible work rules to it, which wrongly denies the employee leave and end-of-service gratuity.
2. 02Using a flexible work contract for a non-Saudi, when these contracts are only for Saudi nationals.
3. 03Going over the monthly cap of one hundred and sixty hours with one employer.
4. 04Counting lateness on a flexible shift as if it were a fixed shift, which creates violations that should not exist.
5. 05A remote work contract that states neither the working hours nor where the work is done.