Corporate wellness in the GCC works when it is designed around how regional teams really operate: several countries, different weekends and time zones, Ramadan and summer rhythms, and hybrid weeks. Keep it online, live, short and voluntary, build it from a few repeatable routines, and have leaders protect the time.
Whether your people sit in Riyadh, Doha, Muscat or Dubai, the same design principles apply, and everything outside Dubai is delivered online.
I am Dr S Pujah. Teams across the GCC work with me online, and my in-person sessions take place in Dubai. What follows is the design thinking I share with HR and people leaders who are tired of launching initiatives that look good in an announcement and are forgotten within a month.
Why well-meant programmes go unused
When I ask people leaders what happened to their last wellbeing initiative, the answers are remarkably similar.
- It was scheduled for head-office hours, so colleagues in other countries joined late, joined tired or did not join.
- It was a single big event. People enjoyed it, and nothing changed on Monday.
- It lived in an app nobody opened after the second week.
- It felt like an instruction. Attendance was counted, so people attended and did not take part.
- Managers booked meetings over it, which told everyone how much it mattered.
None of these is a failure of goodwill. They are design problems, and design problems can be solved before launch.
What corporate wellness in the GCC has to account for
A regional team is not one office repeated several times. Four realities shape what will work.
Several countries, one team. There is an hour's difference between parts of the region, and the working week does not begin and end on the same days everywhere. A slot that is mid-morning on a normal working day for one group may fall on a weekend for another. Before choosing a time, lay every location's week side by side and look for the hours that are truly shared.
Ramadan. Working hours shorten, energy moves to different parts of the day, and evenings belong to family and community. This is not a month to pause wellbeing; it is a month to reshape it. Shorter sessions, earlier in the working day, with nothing that involves food or drink and a tone that respects the reflective character of the month.
Summer. Many colleagues travel, schools close and teams run thin. Those who remain often carry more. A programme that demands full attendance through the hottest months will quietly collapse. Plan a lighter summer rhythm on purpose instead of watching numbers fall.
Hybrid weeks. On any given day some people are at a desk, some at home, some on a site and some in an airport. If the experience is better for the people in the meeting room, everyone else becomes an audience. I ask every participant to join from their own screen, even when they sit in the same building.
There is also the simple fact of variety. Regional teams bring together many nationalities, languages and beliefs. Plain language and neutral, practical exercises let everyone take part without having to translate themselves.
Six design choices that help a programme get used
- Live, not recorded. People show up for other people. A guide who responds in real time holds attention in a way a video library does not.
- Short and regular. A modest session that returns on a predictable day is easier to keep than a long one that appears occasionally.
- Two time slots. Offer the same session twice, so that no country is always the one making the sacrifice.
- Invitation, not instruction. People reflect honestly only when they have chosen to be there. Invite warmly and let them decide.
- Leaders in the room as participants. When a senior person joins, camera on, and does the exercise like everyone else, permission spreads quickly.
- Privacy by default. What someone notices about their own energy is theirs. I do not report on individuals to their employer, and I suggest you never ask a facilitator to.
A simple three-layer structure
You do not need a large catalogue. I suggest three layers, each doing one job.
- A shared starting point. One live online session that gives everyone the same language for attention and energy. This is where the Energy Clarity workshop fits.
- A weekly rhythm. Two or three tiny routines the team keeps: a minute of steady breathing before meetings begin, one protected focus block a day, a written close at the end of the working day.
- A seasonal review. A short conversation each quarter, and again before Ramadan and summer, asking what to keep, what to drop and what to reshape.
The first layer creates interest. The second is where the programme actually lives. The third stops it from going stale.
Where the Energy Clarity workshop fits
The Energy Clarity workshop is an online session I lead for people who want to understand where their attention and energy go, and how to direct them with more intention. Founders, families and corporate teams all take part.
For a regional team it works as a building block and not as the whole programme. People join from wherever they are, need nothing more than a quiet spot, a screen and a notebook, and leave with routines they can practise the same day. Because the group shares one experience, colleagues afterwards have a common vocabulary: "I need a focus block" or "let us arrive first" becomes a normal thing to say.
I should be clear about its limits. The workshop offers routine, space and guided reflection. It is a wellbeing practice, not medical care, and I make no promises about performance, engagement figures or any other result on behalf of a team. Anyone with a health concern should speak to their doctor.
How to tell whether it is being used
I would steer you away from grand metrics and towards a few honest observations.
- Do people come back to the second and third sessions without being chased?
- Do the small routines appear in ordinary meetings when no facilitator is present?
- Do colleagues outside the head office say the timing works for them?
- Do managers protect the slot, or schedule over it?
- When you ask what to change, do people have opinions? Indifference is the real warning sign.
Ask these questions in a brief, anonymous check-in, and read the answers as design feedback, not as a verdict on your people.
A first month for a people leader
- Week one: listen. Speak to five or six colleagues in different countries and roles. Ask when their week is heaviest and what would make a session worth attending.
- Week two: map the calendar. Mark shared working hours, public holidays, Ramadan and the summer period. Choose two slots.
- Week three: experience it yourself. Attend a session before you offer it to anyone. You will explain it far better, and you will know whether it suits your culture.
- Week four: invite a first group. Start with one willing team instead of the whole organisation. Let them shape the version everyone else receives.
Small, tested and well timed beats large and announced. A programme that one team has made its own is far easier to extend across a region than one designed in a single meeting and rolled out to everybody at once.
Your next step
For teams across the GCC: this work is delivered online throughout the region, and Dr S Pujah's in-person sessions are held in Dubai.
If you are at week three of that plan, the most useful thing you can do is see the starting point for yourself. Have a look at the Energy Clarity workshop and how its online format works, and decide whether it is the right first building block for your people.