Working hard to stay fit
dubai — Your health is no more your concern but your employer’s worry as a collective corporate approach is now put in action to ensure employees are staying and living healthy in UAE.
The trend is now catching up so fast that there are now annual awards programmes to identify companies offering for employee’s good health and wellness.
“Companies in the UAE are showing more interest and slowly implementing corporate wellness plans to help employees stay fit and healthy, increasing productivity and reducing absenteeism. This is a move in the right direction, however most plans that are currently implemented are usually too short term or not scheduled often enough to show the true potential these plans can have on employees,” said Tristan Thorvald Francis, manager of Revolution Fitness.
A growing number of companies in the UAE are giving their staff a wellness boost to promote health and wellbeing as well as encourage better employee engagement. A recent MEED survey of 136 companies showed 66 per cent of respondents are now implementing wellness programmes in the office, up from just 45 per cent since 2014. The study was conducted ahead of the 2017 launch of the Daman Corporate Health Awards, which has become an important benchmark of corporate health and wellness across businesses in the UAE.
Companies like Revolution Fitness and Happiness Labs are among the few who have launched their agenda
to boost employee confidence. Revolution even offers training classes including martial arts, zumba, spinning, circuit training and more. Khurram Qureshi, a marketing and digital consultant, launched the startup Happiness Labs, which focuses and help companies create better workplaces through, office design, communication, engagement and wellness.
Corporate wellness programmes are also critical to addressing stress levels at work. According to the survey, majority of companies said their employees have difficulty managing their workload and maintaining a work-life balance. But 52 per cent said they have initiatives in place to combat stress among their employees.
Qureshi said happiness is an area that is focused directly with the bottom-line of companies so educating clients in understanding the importance of employee happiness is my biggest task.
“I am looking at creating digital solutions; everyone of us has a mobile in his/her hands; ‘can it be turned into providing happiness through a solution?’ Companies
With IoT products we all will be more connected to technology and happiness at work Khurram Qureshi,
have yet to fully develop a connection between technology and productivity in the Middle East. There is a lot happening in the US in this area. Now with IoT products we all will be more connected to technology and happiness at work and in general can further be managed so the timing is perfect,” Qureshi said.
“This is a great improvement from just a year ago, an encouraging sign that bodes well for not just the individual welfare of employees,
This is... an encouraging sign that bodes well... also the overall wellbeing of the company Dr Michael Bitzer, CEO of Daman
but also the overall wellbeing of the company,” said Dr Michael Bitzer, CEO at National Health Insurance Company (Daman), headline sponsor of the Daman Corporate Health Awards, organised by Meed that recognises workplace wellness initiatives in the UAE.
Past winners of the annual awards programme have experienced major improvements in employees’ health and wellbeing as well as improved efficiencies and productivity in the workplace. For
Investing in people has become a ‘must have’ rather than the previous ‘nice to have’ Latifa Soobedar, CEO of Corporate Wellness
instance, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, last year’s winner of the Daman Award for Corporate Health and Wellness Initiative, reported a 10 per cent increase in employee health and wellbeing as a result of their wellness initiatives and a reduction in employee absenteeism by 56 per cent.
In addition, 20 per cent of the workforce who participated in Sehati, the in-house wellness programme of the Dubai Chamber, have developed healthy habits that they can now maintain over time.
According to Dr Bitzer, recognising these initiatives helps increase awareness about the growing importance of wellness programmes in the workplace and encourages companies in both the public and private sectors to develop and implement similar programmes.
Latifa Soobedar, CEO of Corporate Wellness, said the landscape of wellness in the workplace has definitely evolved into a more receptive one in the last decade.
As corporate environments have gone through the usual peaks and troughs based on the volatile global economic climate, investing in people has become a “must have” rather than the previous “nice to have”.
Organisations in the UAE are investing heavily in the wellness and wellbeing of their key assets, their people as they recognise that seeing their employees as a “whole” person connected to more than just the workplace, has a definite return on investment for them in terms of enhanced motivation, engagement and safer work practice.
— sandhya@khaleejtimes.com
Founder of Happiness Labs