Chaired Second Council’s Meeting and Discussed Wellbeing Status in UAE

Her Excellency Hessa Bint Essa Buhumaid, Minister of Community Development, stressed on the fact that the wellbeing of human beings and society is a solid priority and a sustainable task on the government's agenda based on the attention and support of the leadership of the UAE that foresees wellbeing as the basis for its vision and plans, and the focus of its development trends and initiatives in achieving the goals of the UAE 2071 and the embodiment of development leadership on the basis of strengthening coordination and integration of both federal and local government levels, in order to benefit from the efforts of the members of the wellbeing team to achieve sustainable quality and happiness.

This was announced by Her Excellency after chairing the second meeting of the Happiness and Wellbeing Council held remotely and attended by (22) government officials from (21) federal, local and executive councils nationwide who participated to review the wellbeing life conditions in the UAE; the Council is a platform that strengthens coordination and government integration to achieve the directives of the UAE leadership in this regard.

In its second meeting, the council discussed a report on the wellbeing status and most important aspects affecting wellbeing in the UAE society, as well as the development of a government comprehensive action plan at all wellbeing strategic sectors based on the setup and implementation of policies, projects and initiatives to find solutions for all challenges raised by the wellbeing conditions report.

200 Government Official

As such, more than 200 government officials participated in an integrated government workshop, to present the detailed results of the report for all federal and local government authorities in the UAE and involve them in the future steps to be reflected on ground, based on the survey and in pursuit of all the initiatives that would raise the wellbeing life quality in the UAE. Her Excellency Hessa Bint Essa Buhumaid, praised the Happiness and Wellbeing Council in the UAE as part of the National Program for

Happiness and Wellbeing and all the team for their efforts, in keeping pace with the directives and initiatives of the federal and local government to promote the wellbeing life quality and standards in the UAE, adding that the current action plan focuses on distributing council members to executive teams that facilitate the tasks in various sectors such as education, health, housing and wellbeing life quality in the society, strengthening social ties. Later the action mechanism of each team and its achievements and initiatives will be unified through development efforts.

Diversified and Realistic Initiatives

Her Excellency emphasized on the need to reach out diversified and realistic initiatives under the Happiness and Wellbeing Council and the impact of the society in general on both emiratis and residents, pointing out on the importance of investing the role of the Council in unifying all the efforts achieved in this regard and highlighting initiatives that affect human life.

Her Excellency Hessa Buhumaid also emphasized on the importance of measuring how all different authorities interacted with the results of these initiatives and practices related to happiness and wellbeing mentioned in the survey; the results will be monitored and presented in a report to the Ministerial Development Council later.

Performance and Competitive Indicators

She also mentioned the happiness and wellbeing meter which includes a national survey for happiness and wellbeing in the UAE to include practices, questionnaires and studies at both levels in local and federal authorities aimed at promoting the concept of happiness and wellbeing. She added that we also communicated with the Federal Authority for Competitiveness and Statistics, to link these results to local and global performance indicators in this field, especially that performance indicators related to happiness and wellbeing are permanently followed up by the Prime Minister’s Office, thus linking happiness and wellbeing concepts with integrated federal system achieve government excellence, about 10% of the excellence standards of federal authorities will be measured through happiness and wellbeing; the development of happiness and wellbeing initiatives will improve the quality of services provided to the public.

Her Excellency also pointed out the importance of achieving balance and integration between the UAE Happiness and Wellbeing Council and the Digital Wellbeing Council in order to achieve the development goals aspired by the UAE leadership towards 2017 Centennial.

Happiness and Wellbeing Status Report

The Happiness and Wellbeing Council Meeting reviewed the results of the national survey for happiness and wellbeing covering 15 years old categories and above with a total of 10,000 respondents from all emirates, including young people, students, senior emiratis, people of determination, retirees, unemployed emiratis, housewives and working emirati females, who answered 300 questions during January and February 2020.

The report included national happiness and wellbeing index representing (49.7%) of the developed countries’ indicators such as booming economy, government services, cities and residential communities, environmental sustainability and culture and arts; indicators of a (22%) interconnected society highlighted family, community, work and studying, giving and welfare and digital life, while individual wellbeing quality indicators (28,3%) included: lifestyle, mental health, feelings and self-realization and life skills, all these factors together influence individual wellbeing.

The report focused on the matrix of priorities of developed countries, interconnected society, happiness and wellbeing of individuals in terms of "performance and impact" while the set of challenges showed cost of living, financial culture, rationalization of consumption and waste, housing services, life after retirement, healthy and active life and mental health, under which a set of policies, studies and initiatives are being worked out to make a difference in happiness and wellbeing of individuals in an integrated and holistic manner.

The report stipulated a set of steps that constitute a mechanism for the Happiness nad Wellbeing Council and acts as a road map for all appointed CEO’s for happiness and wellbeing at all federal and local government authorities: sending happiness and wellbeing status reports to all government authorities, studying reports and identifying the most important areas of development to address the challenges, as well as proposing policies and programs that can be worked on.

The proposed initiatives through the results of the national happiness and wellbeing report included a revision of how government authorities review and share their efforts in happiness and wellbeing and how to build a database related to happiness and wellbeing reports and studies, while the happiness and wellbeing meter is one of the main strategic initiatives of the national happiness and wellbeing charter approved by the Cabinet. The meter is an observatory supporting tool for the UAE government efforts in proposing, developing and adopting policies, programs and initiatives aimed at improving the happiness and wellbeing of all community members.

The report was concluded with a set of recommendations and a working mechanism for the happiness and wellbeing executive teams such as: the distribution of executive team members and sub-committee members according to study and examine wellbeing sectors, assigning executive team members and sub-committee members to prepare a wellbeing report and submit supporting plans and initiatives over a specified period, in addition to reviewing the national happiness and wellbeing strategy 2031 following the repercussions of COVID 19 and presenting the results at the next meeting of the Happiness and Wellbeing Council.