Dubai Airports has become an interesting example of how employee engagement can be treated as part of business performance rather than simply an HR initiative.

In 2025, Dubai Airports received the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award (GEWA) for its approach to employee engagement and reached the 75th percentile in Gallup's benchmark. In 2026, the organization received the recognition again, with Dubai Airports reporting a 74% employee engagement score and a position in the 77th percentile.

For HR and business leaders in the UAE and GCC, the more useful question is not simply why Dubai Airports won an award. It is what its approach can teach organizations about employee engagement, leadership, recognition, development and wellbeing.

Quick Answer

Dubai Airports' approach shows that strong employee engagement is built through consistent leadership, employee development, recognition, collaboration and attention to wellbeing—not through one-off workplace activities. Its 2025 and 2026 Gallup recognition provides a useful UAE case study for organizations looking to connect people strategy with business performance.

The key lesson for HR leaders is simple: engagement needs to become part of how an organization operates, not something measured only through an annual survey.

What Makes Dubai Airports' Approach Worth Studying?

Dubai Airports operates in an environment where employee performance has a direct connection to customer experience, safety, service quality and operational continuity.

Its 2025 Gallup recognition was based on its approach to employee engagement. Dubai Airports said its focus included wellbeing, growth and collaboration, with Chief People Officer Meshari Al Bannai describing engagement as an important part of helping people perform at their best.

The organization was recognised again in 2026. Dubai Airports reported that its engagement score increased from 71% in 2025 to 74% in 2026, moving from the 75th to the 77th percentile in Gallup's benchmark.

That progression is particularly useful for HR leaders because it suggests that engagement should not be treated as a campaign with a fixed end date.

Instead, organizations need to continuously understand their people, identify areas that need attention and turn those insights into action.

What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement describes the level of psychological connection employees have with their work, team and organization.

An engaged employee is not simply someone who is satisfied with their job. Engagement is more closely connected to whether employees feel involved, supported, motivated and willing to contribute to the success of the organization.

This distinction matters.

A company can offer attractive benefits and still have low engagement if employees:

• Do not understand the organization's direction
• Feel disconnected from leadership
• Lack opportunities to grow
• Do not feel recognised
• Experience excessive workplace pressure
• Do not have the support they need to perform well
• Do not see how their work contributes to a larger purpose

Gallup's latest global research shows why this remains an important leadership issue. Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, with 64% of employees classified as not engaged and 16% actively disengaged. Gallup estimated that low engagement cost the global economy around $10 trillion in lost productivity.

The opportunity for employers is therefore not simply to improve an engagement score. It is to improve the everyday employee experience behind that score.

Lesson 1: Make Employee Engagement a Leadership Priority

One of the clearest lessons from Dubai Airports is the importance of visible leadership support.

When engagement is treated as an HR-only responsibility, it can easily become another program competing for employees' attention.

When senior leaders actively support it, the message changes.

Employees can see that engagement matters to the organization as a whole.

This is especially important in large or operationally complex organizations where employees may work across different departments, locations and shifts.

What can leaders do?

Senior leaders can:

1. Communicate why employee engagement matters.
2. Connect people priorities with business priorities.
3. Give managers responsibility for acting on employee feedback.
4. Recognise teams and individuals for meaningful contributions.
5. Make wellbeing part of regular leadership conversations.
6. Review engagement progress instead of treating it as an annual exercise.

Gallup's research reinforces the importance of managers. Its research indicates that managers account for a substantial share of the variance in team engagement, making manager capability an important part of any engagement strategy.

For HR leaders, this means leadership buy-in should extend beyond approving a budget. Leaders and managers need to model the behaviours the organization expects.

Lesson 2: Connect Wellbeing With Employee Engagement

Employee engagement and employee wellbeing should not be treated as completely separate programs.

An employee who is physically exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, financially stressed or disconnected from colleagues may find it harder to remain engaged at work.

The World Health Organization notes that mental health conditions can affect people's capacity to work productively, attendance and ability to retain or gain employment. WHO estimates that depression and anxiety alone result in 12 billion lost working days each year globally.

This does not mean every wellbeing challenge should be treated as a mental health issue. It means organizations need to understand the different factors influencing how employees experience work.

A stronger workplace wellbeing strategy can consider areas such as:

• Mental and emotional wellbeing
• Physical wellbeing
• Social connection
• Financial wellbeing
• Professional development
• Nutrition and healthy lifestyle behaviours

This is particularly relevant in multicultural and fast-moving GCC workplaces, where employees can have very different needs, backgrounds, schedules and expectations.

A one-size-fits-all wellbeing program may therefore have limited impact.

Lesson 3: Make Recognition Part of Everyday Culture

Recognition is another important part of employee engagement.

People want to know that their contribution is noticed. Recognition can reinforce organizational values, encourage positive behaviours and help employees feel connected to their teams.

Dubai Airports provides a useful example here. Its High Flyer recognition programme has been described as bringing recognition efforts together around organisational values and frontline contributions. According to Awardco's published customer story, the program reported increased recognition participation and a strong relationship between manager recognition and engagement.

For other employers, recognition does not have to mean expensive rewards.

It can include:

• A manager thanking an employee for a specific contribution
• Peer-to-peer recognition
• Recognising teamwork during challenging periods
• Celebrating progress toward wellbeing goals
• Highlighting employees who demonstrate company values
• Sharing success stories in team meetings

The important point is consistency.

Recognition works better when it becomes part of everyday management rather than an annual awards ceremony.

Lesson 4: Invest in Employee Growth and Development

Engagement is also influenced by whether employees believe they have a future within the organization.

Employees may become disengaged when they feel their work has become repetitive, their skills are not developing or career opportunities are unclear.

Dubai Airports has linked its workplace approach with employee development and growth. Its 2026 recognition also highlighted the organization's focus on leadership, development and empowering people as part of its workplace approach.

HR teams can apply this lesson by connecting engagement with professional wellbeing.

Practical actions include:

• Providing relevant learning opportunities
• Creating career development conversations
• Supporting managers with leadership development
• Offering mentoring opportunities
• Giving employees opportunities to use new skills
• Making internal career pathways easier to understand
• Connecting development plans with organizational needs

Development also gives employees a stronger reason to remain engaged because they can see how their current role connects with their future.

Lesson 5: Build Engagement Across a Diverse Workforce

Dubai is home to highly multicultural workplaces, and Dubai Airports itself illustrates the scale of this challenge.

A 2025 Gulf News report noted that Dubai Airports directly employed 1,787 people representing more than 61 nationalities, while the wider airport ecosystem involved around 100,000 people across stakeholders.

This creates an important lesson for UAE and GCC employers.

Employee engagement cannot always be approached as if every employee has the same needs.

Different employees may have different:

• Cultural backgrounds
• Languages
• Work patterns
• Family responsibilities
• Career expectations
• Financial priorities
• Communication preferences
• Wellbeing needs

A strong engagement strategy should therefore give employees different ways to participate and access support.

For example, an organization with frontline, office-based and shift-based employees should consider whether the same communication channel or wellbeing activity is equally accessible to everyone.

Personalization becomes increasingly important as organizations become more diverse.

Lesson 6: Measure Engagement — Then Act on It

Measurement is important, but measurement alone does not create engagement.

An organization can run an employee survey every year and still fail to improve the employee experience if nothing happens after the results are collected.

A stronger approach follows a simple cycle:

Listen → Understand → Act → Measure → Improve

Listen

Collect employee feedback through appropriate surveys, conversations, focus groups or other feedback channels.

Understand

Look for patterns across teams, roles, locations and employee groups.

Act

Prioritise the issues that leaders and managers can realistically address.

Measure

Track whether employee experience and engagement are changing.

Improve

Use the findings to refine the next stage of the strategy.

Gallup similarly emphasises that employee surveys work best when they are connected to manager conversations, team goal-setting and leadership accountability.

This is where workforce insights can become useful. Instead of looking only at a single engagement score, organizations can consider multiple signals to understand where support may be needed.

What Does This Mean for UAE and GCC Employers?

Dubai Airports' experience is relevant beyond the aviation sector.

UAE employers across industries can apply the same broader principles without copying another organization's exact program.

The starting point should be the organization's own workforce.

A practical approach for HR teams

1. Understand employee needs

Start with employee feedback rather than assumptions.

2. Identify the biggest engagement barriers

These could include workload, communication, recognition, career development, manager support or wellbeing.

3. Align engagement with business priorities

Show how better employee experience supports the organization's actual goals.

4. Equip managers

Managers need practical guidance and support because they influence employees' day-to-day experience.

5. Make recognition visible

Build simple recognition practices into normal team management.

6. Personalize wellbeing support

Different employee groups may need different forms of support.

7. Track progress

Use engagement and wellbeing insights to understand whether actions are making a difference.

For GCC organizations, this approach is especially useful when teams are multicultural, distributed or operating across different work patterns.

How Should Leaders Connect Employee Engagement With Business Performance?

Employee engagement should not be presented to executives simply as a "people initiative."

It should be connected to outcomes that matter to the organization.

Gallup's meta-analysis has found that highly engaged business units show meaningful differences across several outcomes, including productivity, customer loyalty, absenteeism, turnover and profitability. Its current research reports a 23% median difference in profitability between top- and bottom-quartile engagement business units.

However, HR teams should avoid promising that a particular wellbeing program will automatically produce a specific financial return.

A better business case considers both ROI and broader value on investment (VOI).

This can include:

• Employee engagement
• Retention
• Absenteeism
• Employee experience
• Manager effectiveness
• Culture
• Workforce resilience
• Talent attraction
• Participation in wellbeing programs

This broader approach gives leadership a more realistic view of what an engagement strategy can achieve.

How VIWELL Can Support Employee Engagement

For organizations looking to move from individual wellbeing activities to a more structured employee experience, VIWELL provides a natural next step.

VIWELL's approach is built around personalized wellbeing and workforce wellbeing rather than treating wellbeing as a single activity.

Depending on organizational needs, a workplace strategy can bring together areas such as:

• Mental wellbeing
• Physical wellbeing
• Social wellbeing
• Financial wellbeing
• Nutritional wellbeing
• Professional wellbeing
• Employee engagement
• Wellbeing challenges
• Workforce insights

The benefit of a broader approach is that employees are not all expected to engage with the same wellbeing activity in the same way.

For HR and leadership teams, the objective is to create a more consistent way to support employee wellbeing while understanding participation and workforce needs.

That makes wellbeing part of the wider employee experience rather than a separate HR campaign.

Explore VIWELL's workplace wellbeing solutions

Key Takeaways for HR Leaders

Dubai Airports' recognition provides several practical lessons for organizations across the UAE and GCC:

1. Employee engagement needs leadership ownership.
2. Wellbeing and engagement should be connected rather than managed in isolation.
3. Recognition can strengthen everyday workplace culture.
4. Employee development gives people a stronger connection to their future within the organization.
5. Multicultural workforces need flexible and inclusive engagement approaches.
6. Managers have an important role in translating strategy into everyday employee experience.
7. Measurement only becomes valuable when organizations act on what they learn.
8. Personalized wellbeing support can help organizations move beyond one-size-fits-all programs.

The biggest lesson is that engagement is not created by a single initiative.

It is built through the everyday experience employees have with their leaders, managers, colleagues, work and organization.

Dubai Airports' continued recognition in 2026 shows how engagement can remain an ongoing organizational priority rather than a one-time campaign.

For UAE and GCC employers, the opportunity is to take the underlying principles—leadership, recognition, development, wellbeing, listening and action—and adapt them to their own workforce.

Ready to strengthen employee wellbeing and engagement across your organization?

Explore VIWELL