Saudi Resignation Rules: What Happens If Your Employer Doesn't Accept?

Understand Saudi resignation rules, including what happens if your employer doesn't accept your resignation and the 30-day acceptance rule.

If you submit your resignation in Saudi Arabia, can your employer simply refuse to accept it and prevent you from leaving?

Under the Saudi Labor Law, an employer cannot keep a resignation request pending indefinitely. The law sets specific timelines for accepting, postponing, and processing an employee’s resignation.

Here is what employees should know about the current resignation rules in Saudi Arabia.

What Is Considered a Resignation?

The Saudi Labor Law defines resignation as a worker’s written declaration of their desire, without coercion, to terminate a fixed-term employment contract.

Resignation is also specifically listed under Article 74 as one of the cases in which an employment contract may terminate.

What If Your Employer Doesn’t Respond to Your Resignation?

This is one of the most important provisions under Article 79 bis.

If you submit a resignation request and your employer does not respond, the resignation is considered accepted after 30 days from the date of submission.

In other words, the employer does not necessarily have to explicitly approve your resignation for it to eventually take effect.

If 30 days pass without a response, the resignation is deemed accepted under the Labor Law.

Can an Employer Postpone Your Resignation?

Yes, but only under certain conditions.

The employer may postpone accepting a resignation for up to 60 days if the interests of the work require it.

However, the employer must:

Provide the employee with a written explanation for the postponement.
Do so before the initial 30-day period expires.
Limit the postponement to a maximum of 60 days.

The postponement period is calculated from the date the written explanation is provided to the employee.

This means an employer cannot simply verbally tell an employee that the resignation has been rejected or leave the request pending indefinitely.

Also read: 7 Cases Where You Can Leave Your Job Without Notice in Saudi Arabia

When Does the Employment Contract Actually End?

Submitting a resignation does not immediately terminate the employment relationship.

Under Article 79 bis, the employment contract ends in any of these situations:

1. The employer accepts the resignation

The contract ends upon acceptance of the resignation.

2. The employer does not respond within 30 days

The resignation is considered accepted once the 30-day period has passed.

3. The employer validly postpones acceptance

If the employer postpones acceptance in accordance with the law, the employment contract ends when that postponement period expires.

Until then, the employment contract remains in force.

Do You Have to Continue Working While the Resignation Is Pending?

Yes.

The Saudi Labor Law states that the employment contract remains valid during the resignation request period.

Both the employer and employee must continue fulfilling their contractual obligations during this period.

Employees therefore should not assume that submitting a resignation means they can immediately stop reporting to work.

Can You Withdraw Your Resignation?

Yes, but there is a short window.

An employee may withdraw a resignation request within seven days from the date it was submitted, provided the employer has not already accepted the resignation.

Once the employer accepts it, the employee can no longer rely on this seven-day withdrawal provision.

Can You Put a Future Resignation Date in the Request?

Article 79 bis states that a deferred date of resignation shall not be specified in the resignation request.

The effective termination of the employment relationship is instead determined according to the resignation procedures and timelines established by the Labor Law.

What About Indefinite-Term Contracts?

There is an important distinction between resignation and the rules governing termination of an indefinite-term contract.

Under Article 75, when an employee who is paid monthly terminates an indefinite-term contract for a legitimate reason, the employee must provide the employer with at least 30 days’ written notice.

For an employer terminating such a monthly-paid employee’s indefinite-term contract, the required notice is at least 60 days.

For indefinite-term contracts where wages are not paid monthly, either party must generally provide at least 30 days’ written notice.

If the required notice period is not observed, Article 76 provides for compensation equivalent to the worker’s pay for the unobserved notice period, unless the parties have agreed on greater compensation.

What Happens to Your End-of-Service Benefits After Resignation?

An employee whose contract ends through resignation remains entitled to the rights provided under the Saudi Labor Law.

However, the amount of the end-of-service award (EOSB) can depend on the employee’s length of service.

Under Article 85:

Less than 2 years: No resignation-based EOSB entitlement is specified under Article 85.
2 to 5 years: One-third of the end-of-service award.
More than 5 but less than 10 years: Two-thirds of the award.
10 years or more: Full end-of-service award.

Other provisions may provide full entitlement in particular circumstances.

Also see: End of Service Benefits Calculator 2026

When Must the Employer Pay Your Final Dues?

If the employee ends the employment contract, Article 88 requires the employer to settle the employee’s entitlements within no more than two weeks.

The employer may deduct legitimate work-related debts owed by the employee from those entitlements.

Can You Leave Immediately Without Waiting?

Saudi Labor Law also provides specific circumstances where a worker may leave employment without notice while retaining statutory rights.

Under Article 81, these include situations such as when the employer fails to meet essential contractual or statutory obligations, commits fraud regarding working conditions, assigns fundamentally different work contrary to the law, subjects the worker to certain forms of abuse or mistreatment, or fails to address a serious workplace safety hazard.

These situations are different from an ordinary resignation and should not be treated as the standard resignation procedure.

Key Takeaway

An employer in Saudi Arabia cannot leave your resignation pending forever.

If the employer does not respond, your resignation is considered accepted after 30 days. The employer may postpone acceptance for up to 60 additional days when work interests require it, but the postponement must be properly communicated in writing before the original 30-day period expires.

During the resignation process, the employment contract remains active, and both sides must continue meeting their obligations until the contract legally ends.

Employees should keep a record of the resignation request and its submission date, particularly because the statutory timelines are calculated from when the request is submitted or when a written postponement is communicated.

Saudi Resignation Rules: What Happens If Your Employer Doesn&#039;t Accept?