Inspectors knocked on a lot of doors in June. The ones who left satisfied all had the same three things ready — and none of them were printed org charts. Here is what the midyear sweep is actually checking, and a calmer way to write your leave policy.
Regulation, decoded — the inspection wave
June’s mainland inspection round focused on three artefacts: wage records matching registered contracts, valid labour cards for every person on site, and Emiratisation evidence for skilled roles. Companies were given days, not weeks, to produce them. A shared drive of scanned PDFs passed; a filing cabinet did not.
Separately, MOHRE clarified that the WPS 15-day window counts calendar days, not working days — a detail several payroll teams learned the expensive way after Eid.
The deadline radar — next 90 days
- Aug 1WPS window opens for July payroll
- Aug 20Renewal season: Q3 visa expiries peak — check your 90-day alerts
- Sep 1New school year — expect leave requests to cluster; approve early
- Sep 30Q3 Emiratisation self-review
Deep dive — leave policies people can actually read
The best leave policies we see share one property: an employee can answer "how many days do I have and when can I take them" without asking HR. That means accrual stated per month not per year, carry-over rules in one sentence, and public holidays listed rather than referenced.
The worst share one property too: exceptions written as prose. Every exception should be a rule with a name — probation accrual, unpaid-leave pausing, encashment at exit — because unnamed exceptions become negotiations.
Product notes
Shipped in June: leave balances now show the accrual math on hover, the audit log filters by actor, and bulk CSV import validates IBANs against WPS bank codes before saving.