The Four Sick Pay Tiers Most Omani Employers Forget

Ask a business owner how sick leave works in Oman and most will say three weeks full pay, then nothing. That answer is wrong twice over. The Labour Law actually pays sick leave over 182 days in four separate steps, and since July 2026 the same insurance now has to cover your expatriate staff too.

the four pay tiers, in one table

Article 82 of Oman's Labour Law (Royal Decree 53/2023) gives every employee, Omani or expatriate, up to 182 days of paid sick leave in a year, as long as they hand in a valid medical certificate, a doctor's note confirming the illness. What most people forget is that the wage percentage does not stay the same for all 182 days. It steps down four times.

The 182-day count is cumulative for the whole year, whether the days are taken in one long stretch or scattered across several short illnesses. A worker who has already used 25 sick days earlier in the year does not restart at day one and full pay the next time they fall ill. The tier simply picks up from where the running total left off.

who actually pays: you or the fund

You still pay the worker directly every time, through the Wage Protection System (WPS), the Ministry of Labour's system that confirms salaries land in employee bank accounts on time. What changes is who ends up carrying the cost. For the first seven days of any sick spell, you absorb the wage yourself, with no reimbursement. From day eight, the Social Protection Fund (SPF), the government body that collects contributions and pays out benefits such as sick leave, old age pensions and maternity leave, pays you back once you submit a claim.

• Employers pay a contribution of 1 percent of each covered worker's insurable wage into this specific insurance branch. Employees do not pay any part of it.
• Since 19 July 2026, this cover became compulsory for expatriate employees too, not only for Omani staff, who have had it since 2019.
• Domestic workers such as housemaids and drivers are not covered by this scheme, because they sit outside the Labour Law altogether.

a worked example: 30 sick days on OMR 300

Example. Noor works at a small beauty salon in Al Khuwair and earns a gross wage of OMR 300.000 a month. In November she is unwell for 30 straight calendar days, backed by a medical certificate. Her manager works out a daily rate of OMR 300.000 divided by 30, which comes to OMR 10.000 a day.

The same gross wage that sets these tiers also anchors other payroll numbers, such as end of service gratuity, which is worth checking whenever a long-serving employee's salary changes.

What this means for you

Stop paying one flat percentage for an entire sick spell. Split the days at 21, 35 and 70, and recalculate the rate at each step, the way the worked example above does. If you employ expatriate staff, confirm with your Social Protection Fund registration that their sickness and extraordinary leave insurance is active, since this only became compulsory for them in July 2026 and some employers have not yet updated their records.

Keep a running log of sick days per employee across the whole year, not per illness, since the tiers do not reset with a new medical certificate. For the wider map of Oman payroll obligations, from WPS filing to Social Protection Fund contributions, our payroll compliance hub is a useful place to check your own setup.

The bottom line

Sick leave in Oman is not one flat number. It is a four-step ladder that runs for up to 182 days a year, split between what you pay directly and what the Social Protection Fund reimburses. Since July 2026, that ladder covers your expatriate employees as well as your Omani staff, so get the day count right, keep the medical certificate on file, and the payslip takes care of itself.