Employment & HR
Employment contracts and probation
Unlimited contracts were abolished. Everything is now a fixed term of up to three years, probation is capped at six months, and ending it early has notice rules that run both ways.
The entitlement
What the law gives, regardless of contract.
Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 abolished unlimited-term employment contracts. All contracts are now fixed-term, for a period of up to three years, renewable by agreement — and a contract that is renewed or continued is treated as being on the same terms unless varied. The contract must be in the MOHRE standard form, registered, and consistent with the job offer signed before the work permit. Probation may not exceed six months and cannot be extended beyond that limit.
Probation has notice rules in both directions and they are asymmetric. An employer terminating during probation must give fourteen days' written notice. An employee leaving during probation to join another UAE employer must give one month's notice, and the incoming employer may be liable to compensate the original one for recruitment costs. An employee leaving the country entirely during probation gives fourteen days, and must not return to work in the UAE for a defined period without the former employer's agreement. These provisions surprise people on both sides, and they are frequently ignored until somebody resigns in week eight.
The numbers
- Contract type
- Fixed term only — unlimited contracts abolished in 2021
- Maximum term
- 3 years, renewable
- Probation
- Maximum 6 months, not extendable
- Employer notice in probation
- 14 days, written
- Employee to another UAE employer
- 1 month's notice; new employer may owe compensation
- Employee leaving the country
- 14 days' notice, with re-entry restrictions
What it costs
In practice
How this is actually administered.
- Use the MOHRE standard formBespoke contracts sit alongside it, but the registered contract is what governs in a dispute.
- Make the offer and the contract matchA discrepancy between the signed offer and the registered contract is resolved against the employer.
- Set probation deliberately, up to six monthsIt cannot be extended past the cap, so a three-month probation you would like to extend is a decision you already made.
- Give written notice during probationFourteen days as employer. Verbal termination in probation is still termination without notice.
- Register the contract with MOHREOr the free zone's labour function. An unregistered contract is a compliance failure in its own right.
Related
Questions
No. Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 abolished them. All contracts are fixed term for up to three years, renewable.
A maximum of six months, and it cannot be extended beyond that.
Yes, with one month's notice if joining another UAE employer, or fourteen days if leaving the country — with restrictions on returning.
No. Statutory minimums on notice, leave and gratuity apply regardless of what the contract says.
One question
How many people are on the payroll?
Then the order matters. Establishment card, then quota, then work permit, then entry permit, then medical, Emirates ID and contract registration. Skipping ahead to a signed offer letter before the quota exists is the usual way a start date slips by six weeks.
The first hire, in orderOr just ask usThis is the size where informal arrangements start costing money — salaries paid partly outside WPS, leave that was never tracked, gratuity nobody has accrued for. None of it is hard to fix now and all of it is expensive to fix at a MOHRE hearing.
What you are accruing without knowingOr just ask usThen Emiratisation quotas, WPS timing, ILOE subscriptions and health insurance renewals are running on separate calendars, and the penalty for each is levied per employee. Consolidating those dates is usually worth more than any single piece of advice.
What gets inspectedOr just ask us