Dubai Rolls Out ‘Our Flexible Summer’ Again — 24,000 Government Employees, 98% Happiness
June 24, 2026
Not many governments publish an employee happiness score for their own summer policy — Dubai just did, and it came in at 98%. That’s the headline result from the second edition of ‘Our Flexible Summer’, running from 29 June to 10 September 2026 across 49 government entities and more than 24,000 employees.
The programme offers two flexible working models: a seven-hour day from Monday to Thursday with a shortened 4.5-hour Friday, or an eight-hour day Monday to Thursday with Friday off entirely. Individual entities can layer on additional flexibility — remote work, adjusted hours, or other arrangements suited to their operations — without interrupting government services. This is the second consecutive year the Dubai Government Human Resources Department (DGHR) has run the programme, and the 2026 results go beyond the headline happiness score: 97% of participating employees said productivity levels were maintained under the flexible schedule, and 96% confirmed government services continued at the same quality and efficiency as usual.
The initiative sits inside Dubai’s ‘Year of Family’ agenda, aimed squarely at improving work-life balance without trading away productivity. That combination — high satisfaction without any reported drop in service delivery, held steady for a second year running — is what officials are pointing to as evidence the model is a genuine operational success rather than a one-off perk.
For a city that already markets itself heavily on quality of life, formalising flexible summer hours across nearly fifty government entities is a small but concrete signal of how seriously that positioning is being taken — good context for anyone weighing Dubai against other relocation destinations. DKey regularly hears from relocating government and semi-government sector professionals that policies like this are part of what tips their decision toward buying rather than renting in Dubai — a steady source of end-user demand that helps support price growth across the residential market.
The two working models on offer — a shortened Friday versus a full day off — give entities flexibility to match their own operational needs rather than imposing a single template across 49 very different government functions, from front-line service delivery to back-office administration. That design choice is likely part of why productivity and service-quality scores held steady: entities that needed continuous coverage could choose the shortened-Friday model, while those able to compress their week into four full days could opt for Friday off entirely.
Government-led flexible work policies tend to have an outsized effect on private-sector hiring and relocation decisions in Dubai, since multinational employers often benchmark their own benefits packages against what public-sector employers are offering to remain competitive for local and relocating talent. A second consecutive year of strong results on Our Flexible Summer makes it easier for private employers to justify offering similar arrangements, which in turn affects where employees choose to live relative to their workplace.
Running the programme for a second year without a dip in either headline satisfaction or the underlying productivity and service metrics also gives DGHR a data-backed case for making Our Flexible Summer a permanent fixture rather than revisiting it each year as a fresh policy decision. That kind of policy consistency matters to relocating professionals in a way that a one-off benefit announcement does not, since it signals a durable feature of working life in Dubai rather than a temporary perk that could be withdrawn once conditions change.
DKey regularly hears quality-of-life policies like this cited directly by relocating clients as part of what tipped their decision in Dubai’s favour over other regional hubs.
That kind of soft benefit is easy to overlook next to headline salary numbers, but it consistently shows up in exit interviews as a reason people stay.
Source of information: Emirates 24|7
