How to Structure a Leave Policy for Your Company in the UAE

The short answer

Step 1: Start with the legal floor

UAE private-sector law sets minimum leave entitlements. Your policy can be more generous, never less. The main types:

• Annual leave — 30 days a year after one year of service, accruing at two days a month between six and twelve months. (Full breakdown.)
• Sick leave — up to 90 days a year on a tiered pay scale (15 days full pay, 30 half pay, 45 unpaid), with entitlement starting once probation is complete. (Full breakdown.)
• Maternity leave — 60 days: 45 on full pay and 15 on half pay, with up to 45 further unpaid days for illness related to pregnancy or birth. Returning mothers are also entitled to nursing breaks of up to an hour a day for six months.
• Parental leave — 5 working days of paid leave for either parent, taken within six months of the child's birth.
• Bereavement leave — 5 days on the death of a spouse; 3 days for a parent, child, sibling, grandparent, or grandchild.
• Study leave — up to 10 working days a year, paid, to sit exams at an accredited UAE institution, after two years of service.
• Hajj leave — unpaid, up to 30 days, once per employment.
• Public holidays and weekly rest — paid, and work on a holiday or rest day has to be compensated. (See attendance and overtime rules.)

Umrah isn't a specific statutory leave type — whether it's deducted from annual leave, unpaid, or granted separately is up to you, so say which.

Step 2: Decide what you'll add on top

Extras — additional annual days, a birthday day, remote-work days, extra compassionate leave, Ramadan flexibility — are one of the cheapest ways to compete for hires. The rule: only add what you'll honour without exception. Generosity by exception is what creates disputes: the person who got an extra week last year, and the one who's refused this year.

Step 3: Write down the mechanics

Each of these needs a written answer:

• Leave year. Calendar year or work anniversary. Either works; pick one and state it.
• Accrual. Whether leave accrues monthly or is granted upfront, and how it's prorated for people who join mid-year.
• Requests and approvals. Who approves, how much notice is needed, how quickly they must respond, and how clashes (two people, same week) are resolved.
• Peak periods. Any dates when leave is restricted for business reasons, stated in advance rather than announced when someone asks.
• Half days and short absences. Whether they're allowed and how they're recorded.
• Carry-over. Whether unused annual leave carries over, how much, and when it expires. Leave is generally meant to be used in the year it's due, with carry-over by agreement — so make the agreement explicit.
• Payout. Unused annual leave is paid out in the final settlement when someone leaves (see our exit guide). Be cautious about paying cash instead of time off at other times.
• Public holidays inside leave. Say explicitly how they're treated. The sensible default is that a public holiday falling within a leave period isn't counted as a leave day.

Step 4: Settle the edge cases

• Probation. How leave accrues and whether it can be taken. Sick leave entitlement, for one, only begins after probation.
• Part-time and contract staff. Whether entitlements are prorated, and how.
• Unpaid leave. Days of unpaid absence aren't counted towards service length for gratuity, so unpaid leave has a real cost to the employee that's worth explaining upfront. (How gratuity is calculated.)
• Leave during notice. Whether annual leave can be taken while someone is serving notice.
• Ramadan. Working hours are reduced during Ramadan; decide how that interacts with leave and attendance rules.

Step 5: Put it in writing and keep one source of truth

Put the policy in the handbook, reference it in contracts, and have employees acknowledge it. Then make sure the balance an employee sees is exactly the balance payroll uses — leave tracked in one place, not a manager's spreadsheet plus HR's own. Review the policy every year; laws and public-holiday calendars change.

Common mistakes

• The policy lives in an old email rather than a document everyone can find.
• Every manager keeps their own leave tracker, and none of them match HR's.
• Approvals happen verbally, so nobody can later prove what was agreed.
• Half days and short absences aren't tracked at all.
• Accrued leave is treated as free. It's a liability that grows quietly until someone leaves.
• The rules are applied differently to different people.

This is a general guide to structuring a leave policy under UAE private-sector labour law, for HR teams doing their own planning — not legal advice. Entitlements are set by law and can change; confirm current figures with MOHRE or the UAE government's official employment pages, and have unusual arrangements reviewed by a UAE labour lawyer.