RIYADH: The Royal Commission for Riyadh City, in partnership with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, began implementing a flexible working hours initiative across six work zones in Riyadh on June 2.
The initiative is part of efforts “to enhance mobility efficiency in the capital, support traffic flow, and improve quality of life,” according to a joint statement from the two bodies.
Two experts who spoke to Arab News agreed that extending the flexible window to four hours enhanced mental efficiency and productivity, stressing that its success required a fundamental shift toward results-based evaluation, along with leadership training and the designation of core working hours to ensure continued collaboration.
The initiative covers more than 50 entities across six work zones (KAFD, Digital City, Diplomatic Quarter, Laysen Valley, Granada Business and ROSHN Front) by extending the flexible hours window to four hours, allowing staggered arrival and departure times, and reducing traffic concentration during peak hours.
According to the statement, the initiative is expected to provide employees with greater flexibility in choosing their arrival times, which will positively reflect on the work experience, enhance mobility efficiency, and support efforts to develop a more efficient and sustainable urban environment.
The initiative applies to administrative positions with fixed schedules, while exempting sectors that require continuous operation and service delivery, such as healthcare, public education, field and operational jobs.
Ali Aljumhour, co-founder of Value Executive Consulting, said that extending the flexible hours window to four hours in Riyadh, the capital, would enhance employees’ mental efficiency compared to the traditional fixed system.
“Increasing the flexible window will shift the employee into a state of deep focus, as it allows them to align with their biological and family rhythms, thereby raising performance quality and peak productivity during working hours,” he told Arab News.
To ensure that this flexibility translates into greater discipline and increased productivity, the HR expert recommended that executive management reshape its institutional culture and evaluation systems.
“The fundamental requirement here is a radical shift from an evaluation culture based on physical presence and hours logged to performance management based on results and smart outputs (OKRs/KPIs).
“Productivity will be enhanced when an employee is measured by their impact and accomplishments, not by the hours they clock in. This also requires high digital transparency and the designation of shared core hours to ensure continued collaboration and communication among work teams,” Aljumhour said.
Dhafer Al-Qarni, a member of The KPI Institute, said that expanding the initiative’s flexibility window to four hours gave entities a practical tool that positively impacted employees’ mental and physical readiness, and transformed flexibility from an individual privilege for some entities into an institutional policy for a larger segment of work environments.
“This time window allows for scheduling workshops and training programs outside peak hours, which may contribute to increasing attendance rates and reducing disruption to task performance,” he said.
Al-Qarni, a former member of the Saudi Management Association, added that “the initiative requires training leaders and developing their skills in managing flexible teams and results-based performance measurement mechanisms, in addition to raising employee awareness and training them to utilize the initiative in ways that positively reflect on productivity, discipline and sustainable professional development.”
