A New Week for a New Year
The UAE kicked off 2022 on a Monday!
By Xische Editorial, January 9, 2022
Source: sukmaraga/Envato
Happy new year! After a well-deserved break, we are all back in the office and eager to mark the opening of an exciting new chapter in the UAE’s economic growth. Last year, the country decided to shift the workweek from Sunday to Thursday to Monday to Friday. The shift might sound small for those living in the West, but it is nothing short of remarkable for the Gulf and Middle East regions.
The shift to a Saturday-Sunday weekend will align the UAE with much of the rest of the world and boost the country’s status as a global business hub. Every country in the Middle East, including Israel, operates on a Friday-Saturday weekend model because the region's religions consider Friday and Saturday to be holy days instead of Sunday, which is prevalent in the Christian world. When the news broke, Bloomberg reported that the UAE “has set its sights on deeper ties with the fast-growing economies of Asia and Africa, aiming to draw in $150 billion in foreign investment from mainly older partners such as South Korea, Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Turkey.”
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, the UAE leadership has been using the historic rupture in global business to usher in a basket of reforms. From new visas targeting remote workers to massive overhauls of how the criminal justice system operates for foreigners, the UAE is making itself more attractive to foreign businesses. This is incredibly important for the long-term strength of the Emirati economy.
While hydrocarbon profits continue to drive growth in the country, the world is turning to renewable energy quickly. Much faster than we think, hydrocarbon usage will be a thing of the past, and the oil-rich countries of the Gulf will need to be exporting different materials to continue growth. The shift to a knowledge economy began in the UAE more than two decades ago and has continued at a remarkable pace. This has taken place with strategic investments in knowledge institutions based in the country and investments in companies around the world.
Consider the exciting new developments happening inside the Middle East as one example of the trend. Through new partnerships with Israel, thanks to a recent normalization agreement, the UAE is entrenching its position as one of the most attractive destinations for foreign direct investment in the Middle East. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co., which manages $250 billion in assets, invested up to $20 million in six Israeli-based or focused venture capital firms, including Mangrove Capital Partners, Entrée Capital, Aleph Capital, Viola Ventures, Pitango, and MizMaa.” That’s quite a big deal for the future of the regional knowledge economy.
The shift to a western workweek is a small but critical part of this shift. Considered alone, the shift to a new week is impressive. But understood as part of a basket of critical reforms designed to change how the UAE does business fundamentally, the new workweek is pivotal. The next exciting change will be experiments with shorter workweeks to enhance productivity. The four day workweek model has been used in Japan with great results and now Sharjah is looking to try its own model. Starting at the beginning of this year, public employees in Sharjah will operate on a four-day workweek model. If successful, this model could spread to other emirates and perhaps across the region.
The world is still trying to find a balance between remote and office work as the pandemic rolls on. With additional Covid-19 variants on the horizon, we can only assume that the indecision about returning to the office will continue for the near future. Given the uncertainty, the UAE approach of making changes to the workweek while attracting remote workers is a sensible one. As we begin 2022, we are excited to see how the week change will continue the progress of the UAE.
