8 minute read
Calev’s Newsroom
Calev Ben-David, anchor of the nightly news programme, The Rundown, on i24NEWS
Building bridges
The highlight of the relationship between Israel and the UAE is not its economic or political aspects, but rather the human side
Israel’s fi rst prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, famously remarked: “If you don’t believe in miracles, you’re not a realist.’’
Certainly Ben-Gurion’s personal odyssey – from arriving as a Polish-Jewish immigrant in the Middle East backwaters of the Ottoman Empire, to being the founding father of the fi rst Jewish state in 2,000 years – provided plenty of justifi cation for that belief. So was his claim that Israel would one day establish peaceful relations with its Arab neighbours, a vision he never lived to see.
The Camp David Accords, the peace treaty with Jordan, and especially the Abraham Accords that established full relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain (later adding Morocco and Sudan), only provides more evidence to the far-seeing nature of Ben-Gurion’s vision.
But if the Abraham Accords had a touch of the miraculous to them due to the seeming suddenness of their announcement and speed with which they have been fulfi lled, seasoned Middle East observers may view the new ties between Israel and the UAE as a natural, if not pre-ordained, a nity.
Like Israel, the creation and rise of the UAE appears to defy realistic expectations. That seven emirates under British colonial rule could unite politically under the visionary leadership of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE’s founding father, and within decades diversify its economy to become a global trading, tourism and technology powerhouse, is a trajectory well beyond the normative paths of nation-building.
One could draw all sorts of parallels with Israel’s surge of development in recent years; indeed, another famed Ben-Gurion maxim – “If we do not conquer the desert, it will conquer us” – appears to apply equally, if not even more so, to the Emirati experience.
Of course, the establishment and strengthening of ties between Israel and the UAE has been supercharged by several factors, including geo-political shi ts and economic cooperation. In 2021, the fi rst full year a ter the Abraham Accords, trade between Israel and the UAE surged to an astonishing $900m.
With the establishment of a free trade agreement between the countries this year that covers 95 per cent of the products traded between them, that fi gure is expected to more than double by the end of 2022.
As a journalist for i24NEWS, I’ve had the privilege of both covering that unprecedented business story, and being part of it. Moving quickly on the announcement of the Abraham Accords, i24NEWS became the fi rst Israel-based media outlet to sign cooperation agreements with leading companies
in Dubai’s media sector, including Dubai Media Inc (DMI), Dubai Media City, Abu Dhabi Media, Etisalat, DU and Motivate Media Group.
Along with opening an i24NEWS bureau in Dubai, this has enabled our journalists to cover the developing business and fi nancial ties between Israel and the Gulf. In future columns, I look forward to focusing more specifi cally on some of the more fascinating and promising angles of that story.
But the real headline of the fast-developing relationship between Israel and the UAE has not been its primarily economic or political aspects – it is the human side. The eagerness I have found among Israelis and Emiratis to build new bridges of all kind between their societies, has been expressed with an enthusiasm that has caught even this veteran Mideast reporter by surprise.
This is especially so among the younger generation of Israelis and Emiratis, who via social media and now personal contacts, are already outpacing their elders in forging ahead to create new modes of coexistence and cooperation for this region, moving beyond the outmoded paradigms that for so many decades had frozen Israel-Arab ties in a fruitless stasis. This then, is the true promise of the Abraham Accords, beyond its purely economic or diplomatic potentialities.
A new generation of Israelis and Emiratis are forging pathways toward a new Middle East, one that can hopefully help light the way toward the resolution of confl icts that have for too long held back this entire region.
And this time, it won’t take a miracle – just a belief, and acceptance, of a new reality already in the throes of creation.
THE FIRST FULL YEAR AFTER THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS, TRADE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE UAE SURGED TO AN ASTONISHING $900M
Alan’s Corner
Alan O’Neill, author, keynote speaker and owner of Kara, specialists in culture and strategy
Leveraging employee engagement surveys
Surveys are a key tool for feedback and send a positive message to employees that their opinions are valued
Engagement surveys serve a purpose for organisations to gauge the ‘temperature’ or the mood of teams. The core of this concept is that when your people are engaged with your company, they will be more productive, team morale will be higher, sta turnover and absenteeism will be lower and they’ll give better experiences to your customers. Ultimately all of that improves your culture and affects your financial results. With Covid-19 still in our recent memory, now is a good time to check your organisation’s temperature.
HOW TO CONDUCT THESE SURVEYS
There are lots of technology companies o ering this service with all sorts of bells, whistles and coloured charts. The platform for doing the survey is the easy part, so don’t be blinded by that. There are other more fundamental considerations to ponder.
Consider why you are doing a survey. Be clear on your purpose. Are you doing this to simply check the temperature, or do you want to use the results to make real changes? You need to be honest with your team. Don’t embark on this if you don’t plan to act on the results, whatever they might be. Otherwise cynicism will grow in your team and you won’t get buy-in for subsequent resurveys.
Ask the right questions. As tempting as it might be, don’t download a set of generic questions from Google. Your questions should be structured in a psychological flow and be relevant to your company, your culture and what you are trying to achieve. You should also ask for appropriate verbatim comments to help you make sense of the numerical scores. They add meat to the bones. I also favour a mix of emotionalthemed questions (For e.g., “I enjoy coming to work”) and practical questions (For e.g., “Is workload distribution fair”). The feedback on the practical questions in particular help to make improvements later. That gives you “cause and e ect” insights.
Because confidentiality must be assured, make it anonymous. Even if you believe you have an open culture where people speak their minds already, well executed surveys always produce extra nuggets of unknown information. You have to reassure your respondents that their anonymity is guaranteed. That’s almost impossible if you administer it yourself internally.
Communicate well to ensure a high level of participation. To maximise participation rates, communicate clearly how the survey will work, reassure the team on confi dentiality and be clear on the purpose. If the communication is sent by the CEO or other senior person, it will have even more impact.
Allocate time during work hours for participants to complete the survey. This is a work-related matter so you want respondents to reflect carefully on the answers. Doing it on a train or at home risks too many distractions. If you are a company where not everyone has a desk, then allocate a dedicated room for the exercise, with PCs set up and agreed time slots.
Turn data into insights. Creating spreadsheets and coloured charts of the results is easy. Turning that data into bigger picture insights requires an objective and trained eye.
Agree on corrective actions. When the results are in, present highlights to the whole organisation. They deserve to hear the results. Then convene a steering team to guide the corrective actions that are reasonable and fair.
Work with managers to execute the actions. If your team is big enough to slice and dice your results per department, then make the department head accountable for working with her/his team to agree local actions. Inaction will lead to cynicism.
Resurvey in an appropriate timeframe. At the very least, make this an annual occurrence. And whatever the scores are in the fi rst survey, they give you a line in the sand. I’m always interested in the resurvey results to see how the scores have moved. In most cases where actions have been executed, the scores will increase and morale will improve.
THE LAST WORD
Over the years, I’ve had some senior managers pushing back on the notion of doing surveys, as they believe they already know how their people feel. They say they have an open-door policy and therefore believe they are closely in touch with the mood already. But surveys go deeper than anecdotal conversations and day-to-day chatter. In every one of those cases, the managers were surprised with the results.
Others fear that there will be negativity about the results, cringing at the fear of opening a can of worms. But if the worms are there, isn’t it better know about them? If you don’t deal with them, what impact will that have on your business? Remember, your customers are good at judging how engaged your employees are.
