The Department of Human Resources launched the Employee Happiness and Wellbeing System Manual as a complete guiding framework to enhance employees’ happiness, wellbeing, and engagement.
The manual aims to enable government entities to design initiatives and programs and develop services that will ensure employee happiness and enhance their workplace wellbeing as part of our efforts to reach the highest levels of excellence in organizational performance and employee engagement. This is achieved by creating a work environment that increases happiness, positivity, wellbeing, and engagement as well as finding a link between happiness and wellbeing on one hand and productivity and innovation on the other hand.
The manual focuses on six (6) key factors: “My Job is Enjoyable” – creating transparent, positive, and motivating work conditions that drive excellent performance and sound talent management, “My Income is Suitable” – providing financial and non-financial incentives to acknowledge and recognize exceptional achievements and efforts and potential for future growth, “I Have Good Relationships” – focusing on the quality of social and professional relationships between employees in the workplace, “My Family is Happy” – creating work-life balance, understanding family circumstances, and caring for employees’ families, “I’m in Good Health” – promoting a culture of healthy lifestyle and protecting employees physical and mental health and work pressure management, and “My World is Sustainable” – an opportunity to serve the community and contribute to its development by volunteering and reacting to social and environmental issues.
It is considered an important step towards the improvement of RAK government employees’ welfare and creating a work environment that drive creativity and excellence.
H.E. Dr. Mohammed Abdullatif Khalifa said, “Workplace happiness and wellbeing is one of the key enablers of human capital management, and this manual is introduced to enable government entities to design initiatives and programs and develop services that will ensure employee happiness and enhance their workplace wellbeing as part of our efforts to reach the highest levels of excellence in organizational performance and employee engagement.”
“The objective of the happiness and wellbeing system is to ensure creating a work environment that provide employees with an exceptional journey and promote their happiness, positivity, wellbeing, and engagements as well as strengthen the link between happiness and well being on one side and productivity and innovation on the other side. It also aims to retain talents and ensure that they continue to work at the government entity and show the entity’s commitment towards its employees.” He added.
The system applies to all RAK government entities and their employees working under all types of employment and contracts as it was designed by analysing the factors that affect employees’ happiness and wellbeing as well as their work experience at the government.

The first factor “My Job is Enjoyable” focuses on creating positive, transparent, and motivational work environment that promotes sound talent management and includes enjoyable work, challenging, exciting, and stimulating tasks that inspire innovation, exceptional digital experience, feedback channels, strategically important and meaningful work, professional development, as well as allowing a level of autonomy and independence in dealing with problems and work issues and building professional relationships. This includes ongoing learning, delegation of authority, brainstorming, and active participation in decision making.
The second factor “My Income is Suitable” focuses on providing financial and non-financial incentives to acknowledge and recognize exceptional achievements and efforts and potential for future growth. This includes honour boards, honouring ceremonies, special offers and discounts, Fazaa and Esaad cards, supervisory career path, etc.
The third factor “I have Good Relationships” focuses on the quality of social and professional relationships between employees in the workplace and creating a sense of collective responsibility, collaboration, and mutual respect among colleagues as well as providing the opportunity for engagement and belonging. This includes organizing recreational trips and social visits, conflicts settlement systems, programs, activities, etc.
The fourth factor “My Family is Happy” focuses on creating work-life balance, understanding family circumstances, and caring for employees’ families. This includes Providing nurseries to take care of the children of female employees, special discounts, participating in employees’ social events, providing various types of leaves including: annual leave, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, etc. and providing various types of work models that help create work-life balance including: full-time employment, part-time employment, job-sharing, remote work, flexible hours, etc.
The fifth factor “I’m in Good Health” focuses on promoting a culture of healthy lifestyle and protecting employees physical and mental health through providing a number of health programs and services to ensure a healthy work environment free from risks and hazards by educating employees through medical guidance and training courses in occupational and mental health and safety, periodic medical examinations, providing discounts for government employees in health clubs, organizing physical activities and workouts for employees and teams, providing mental consultations for employees, health insurance system, introducing new leaves and permissions such as emergency leave and emergency permission, etc.
The sixth factor “My World is Sustainable” focuses on giving employees the opportunity to serve the community and contribute to its development by volunteering and reacting to social and environmental issues and using their talents and expertise to make a difference and add value to others, the community, and humanity including organizing visits to hospitals, nursing homes, and orphanages, motivating employees to volunteer in the activities, creating the integrated jobseekers training program, and connecting with people with determination to facilitate their services in various entities.
He added that there are four tools that help establish happiness and wellbeing including: Leadership: Leaders at all organizational levels follow managerial and supervisory methods and help create a happy work environment, Strategies and Policies: adopting systems that support employees’ happiness and enhance their wellbeing, Programs, Initiatives, and Projects: by implementing initiative and activities to increase employees’ happiness and wellbeing in the workplace in an interactive manner such as knowledge transfer workshops and forums, group discussion sessions, training programs and social activities, etc., and lastly Organizational Culture: by stablishing the values of employee happiness and wellbeing as an integral part of the organizational culture by emphasizing their importance and reflecting them in various work aspects and areas.
He also mentioned the 4 management phases of the system starting with the “planning phase” by building an internal team for executing programs and projects aimed at increasing happiness in light of the happiness and wellbeing system, identifying the required resources for preparing the budget, and executing the programs and happiness plan, followed by the “execution phase” which includes assigning roles and responsibilities, following up the progress of the action plan, solving problems, providing support, tackling any challenges and obstacles, and finding good solutions, and communicating the programs and initiatives to employees to ensure their active participation, followed by the “evaluation phase” which includes measuring the effectiveness of programs and initiatives and how related they are to employees’ happiness and performance as well as their effect on employees’ productivity and engagement and submitting an evaluation report to the top management of the government entity, and finally the “improvement and development phase” which includes studying the evaluation report and recommendations and finding opportunities to affect the required improvements and rectify the identified weaknesses in order to increase employees’ satisfaction, engagement, and happiness levels
The Department of Human Resources will be in charge of the preparation, development, and follow-up of the application of the Workplace Happiness and Wellbeing System across RAK Government, implementing central initiatives and activities, managing the suggestions system, issuing related central systems and policies, providing support and guidance, etc, while internal HR units in government entities will be in charge of ensuring that their activities and policies are aligned with the happiness and wellbeing system, proposing employees happiness policies and initiatives in cooperation with internal teams, providing the required information to support employees, giving training to employees and supervisors on happiness and wellbeing management, and providing the necessary support to internal teams concerned with employees happiness.