Annual leaves and ease of international travels

Scheduling leave when you want can be a challenge, and it depends entirely on your supervisor and role. If you are in a role where there are just a few people in your department that need to provide daily support, there will be a limit to how many of you can be out of the office at the same time. And there are certain holiday times when everyone wants to leave the office, so you'll likely need some flexibility. The most challenging times are Christmas and New Years, including the Eids with your repat, and June, July and August where everyone wants to be out of the Kingdom.

I don't know if it's company policy or my department's policy, but we schedule the following years vacations in October. It is not a good time to be out of kingdom and you can come back and feel like you got the short end of the stick picking up crumbs to schedule your leave.

You can leave anytime you want, you have your passport and just need a valid entry exit visa. Taking a few days off for a long weekend to Europe, Dubai or where ever is no big deal and unless your supervisor is a tyrant you should have no issues.

The final thing to know is your entry exit visa is tied to your Iqama and can't extend beyond your Iqama. So effectively say your Igama is renewed February first, you can't have a leave over that date as your entry exit visa will have expired, you need to be in kingdom. Additionally, your families Igamas have the same issue and if they arrive months after you, their travel will effectively have a blackout date. I highly recommend against starting with the company mid summer or having your family arrive mid summer because of the blackout date.

Nothing really to worry about. Iqamas can be renewed 3 months before expiry and there is no requirement for your family to be in kingdom for renewal any more. Gone are the days of your children having to make a flying visit from boarding school for an Iqama and visa renewal!

If you issue a visa for your family thru absher it will always have a "return by" date of 3 months before your Iqama expiry. You can however arrange visas thru Aramco with a return date exactly on the Iqama renewal. Visas can be renewed online if they are abroad but it has to be done within 7 days of expiry. Play the dates wisely and you can cover the whole of summer relatively easily

The whole process is simple these days. You can simply pay your fees at the bank and email a copy of passport and Iqama together with instructions to them - job done.

Literally you usually get an email the same day from MOFA telling you your visa has been renewed.

Question for spouse and kids. Is there a time limit that the spouse and kid needs to stay in SA in order for us to “preserve” our family status? For example, what if kid and wife want to travel for half a year?