Kuwait City HR guide: Law No. 6 of 2010 for small teams

Hiring: contracts, probation and the paper trail

A fixed term contract runs between one and five years under Article 30. If both sides keep working after it ends without a new agreement, Article 31 renews it automatically for the same period on the same terms. That catches small employers who forget a contract end date, so put every end date in a calendar you actually open.

Probation is the tool most small teams want to understand first. Article 32 caps it at 100 working days, requires it to appear in the contract, and allows it once per employer. A second contract with the same person does not start a second probation. If you let someone go during probation, you still owe the indemnity for the period worked, which surprises people who expect a clean exit.

Two administrative duties sit in the law that few guides mention. Article 80 requires a separate labour file for every worker: copy of the work permit, the contract, the civil ID, leave records, overtime hours, work injuries, penalties and the reason the service ended. Article 82 requires you to post, in a visible place at the workplace, the approved rules showing daily hours, the break, the weekly rest day and the official holidays. Article 35 and 36 add that any penalty schedule has to be displayed and approved by the ministry before you apply it, and that no worker may be punished without written notice and a hearing (Article 37).

If you need staff signatures on contracts and policies, HR FLARE has e-signature, and a recruitment module that carries a candidate through to a hire record. Neither replaces the work permit, which stays in PAM's own systems.

Working time, Ramadan and rest days

Article 64 sets 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week, and 36 hours a week during Ramadan. The article gives the weekly figure only. How you spread the 36 hours over the week is your decision, as long as no day passes the daily limit. Article 65 requires a break of at least one hour after five continuous hours of work, and that break is not counted as working time. Banking, financial and investment work is the exception: eight continuous hours.

Overtime needs a written order from the employer and a reason the law accepts, such as preventing a dangerous accident, repairing a breakdown or avoiding a loss. It is capped at two hours a day, 180 hours a year, three days a week and 90 days a year, and pays at least 25% above the ordinary rate for the same period (Article 66). The article also tells you to keep a special overtime record with the date, the hours and the pay. A time tracking record that is written the same day is the easiest way to satisfy that.

Article 67 gives one fully paid rest day of 24 continuous hours after every six worked days. The law does not name the day. You name it in the work rules you post under Article 82, so a team that sells on Saturdays can rest on another day as long as the rule is written. If someone works on their rest day, they get at least 50% on top of their salary and a replacement day.

HR FLARE lets each person plan their own schedule rather than waiting for a manager rota, and timesheets give the weekly total next to the 48 and 36 hour limits. It does not calculate overtime pay for you. Read the figure off the timesheet and apply the 25% in your payroll run.

Public holidays and leave

Article 68 lists the paid holidays: Hijri New Year (one day), Isra and Miraj (one day), Eid al-Fitr (three days), Arafat Day (one day), Eid al-Adha (three days), the Prophet's Birthday (one day), National Day on 25 February, Liberation Day on 26 February and the Gregorian New Year. Because the Islamic dates move by about eleven days each year and are confirmed by announcement, build your holiday calendar after the official notice, not before.

Annual leave is 30 paid days under Article 70. Official holidays and sick days that fall inside the leave are not counted against it. The 2010 text lets a worker take first year leave after nine months of service, and later amendments changed this entitlement, so confirm the current wording. Article 71 requires you to pay the leave salary before the leave starts, which is a payroll timing point, not only an HR one. Article 72 gives the employer the right to set the leave dates, to split leave only with the worker's consent after the first 14 days, and allows leave to accumulate up to two years. Article 73 pays out unused days in cash when the contract ends.

The sick leave scale in Article 69 is built in steps across a year: 15 days at full wage, 10 at three quarters, 10 at half, 10 at a quarter and 30 unpaid, backed by a medical certificate. Other entitlements that small teams meet:

• Maternity: 70 days of paid leave under Article 24, separate from other leave.
• Hajj: 21 paid days after two continuous years of service, once, under Article 76.
• Bereavement: three days for a first or second degree relative, and four months and ten days for a Muslim widow during the waiting period, under Article 77.
• Study leave: optional paid leave for a qualification, which can tie the worker to you for the same period (Article 75).

In HR FLARE a leave request needs a reason, which suits Article 69 style evidence, and managers approve or reject in one place.

Paying salaries on time

Article 56 says monthly paid staff are paid at least once a month, on a working day, in the legal currency, and that pay must not slip past the seventh day after it falls due. Article 57 requires salaries to be deposited into accounts at local financial institutions, with statements copied to the ministry. Deductions are limited: no more than 10% of wage for an employer's debt (Article 59a), no more than 25% in total including court ordered debts (Article 59b), and no more than five days of wage a month as a disciplinary penalty (Article 38).

Two newer systems sit on top of the statute. On 28 September 2026 the Central Bank of Kuwait announced the Kuwait Wage Payment System (KWPS), a national platform for processing and monitoring private sector wage transfers through local banks. The central bank runs it, and PAM monitors employer compliance. Separately, law firm reports say PAM moved salary approvals and working hours data into its Asahal portal from 1 November 2025 under Ministerial Decree No. 15 of 2025. Treat Asahal details as something to confirm in your own PAM account, because we could not open PAM's own page for it.

HR FLARE keeps payroll records and payslips for each month, and you can set the Kuwaiti dinar as the company currency. It does not move money, connect to KWPS or Asahal, or calculate any tax or social security contribution. Use it to hold the numbers you send to your bank.

Ending employment and the indemnity

For an open ended contract Article 44 requires written notice, three months for a monthly paid worker. If a party skips the notice it pays the other side the salary for the notice period. When the employer gives notice, the worker may be absent one day a week, or eight hours across the week, to look for another job and keep full pay for it.

The indemnity in Article 51 for a monthly paid worker is 15 days' wage for each of the first five years and one month's wage for each later year, capped at one and a half years' wage. Part years count in proportion. A worked example: someone who leaves after eight years on an employer's termination earns five years at 15 days, about two and a half months, plus three years at one month, so about five and a half months of pay before Article 67's daily wage rule is applied. Debts the worker owes you can be deducted.

When does the worker get all of it? Article 52 lists it: the employer ends the contract, a fixed term runs out unrenewed, an Article 48, 49 or 50 event happens, or a woman resigns within a year of her marriage. If the worker resigns from an open ended contract, Article 53 pays half after three years, two thirds after five and the full amount after ten. Article 54 requires a service certificate with the dates, the job and the last salary. It must not contain wording that harms the worker's chances elsewhere.

For Kuwaiti nationals the Social Security Law applies alongside Article 51, and the employer pays the net difference between what it contributed to social insurance and the indemnity due. HR FLARE does not calculate social security contributions, so keep that calculation with your accountant or the PIFSS employer portal.

How the city changes the day to day

A routine that works for a small employer: one person owns the monthly salary run, one owns the labour file for each worker, and the calendar holds three dates, the salary day, the contract end date and the 100 day probation end.

The summer is the other local factor. A midday outdoor work ban applies each year from 1 June to 31 August, between 11 am and 4 pm, enforced by PAM, according to law firm commentary from June 2026. If you have couriers, site staff or anyone who works outside, plan shifts so the paid hours still add up to a full day without work in the ban window, and put the cold water and shade duty in the work rules. The legal basis is described differently by different outlets, so we cite no decree number here. Confirm it with the PAM inspection department.

Kuwait City and Sharjah are different jobs

If you also run people in the UAE, do not copy this page across. In Kuwait the probation limit is 100 working days with no notice from either side. Under the UAE federal law that applies to a Sharjah mainland company it is up to six months, with 14 days of written notice from the employer. Kuwait's Ramadan limit is 36 hours a week. The UAE reduces daily hours by two hours. The notice period in Kuwait is three months for monthly paid staff, in the UAE it is a contract term of 30 to 90 days. Read the Sharjah guide for the UAE side, and the Doha guide for Qatar.

What HR FLARE does not do

• No PAM, Asahal or KWPS connection: approvals and transfers happen in the portals and through your bank.
• No tax or PIFSS calculation: contributions for Kuwaiti employees are worked out outside HR FLARE.
• Data location: data is hosted in Europe; in-country hosting is not available.