The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has decided to extend the weekend along with adopting new official working hours on weekdays, with the directives coming into effect from 1 January 2022.
According to details, all federal government entities of the UAE will observe a four-and-a-half-day working week and the extended weekend will consist of Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday.
The official timings on Mondays to Thursdays will be 7.30 am to 3.30 pm while the working hours for Fridays will be 7.30 am to 12 pm, with the employees having an option to work from home on Fridays.
Moreover, Friday sermons and prayers all over the UAE will be held after 1.15 pm, giving government employees enough time to ensure their participation in the weekly congregational prayer.
With this, the UAE has become the first country in the world to officially adopt a four-and-a-half-day working week and two-and-a-half-day weekend as compared to the global five-day working week and two-day weekend.
In an official statement, the UAE government said that the extended weekend is a part of its efforts to boost work-life balance and enhance social wellbeing while increasing performance to advance the country’s economic competitiveness.
The new working week will also ensure smooth financial, trade, and economic transactions with countries that follow a two-day weekend, facilitating stronger international business links and opportunities for thousands of UAE-based and multinational companies, the statement added.
The development comes after the UAE’s Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAGHR) proposed the new workweek after conducting a number of feasibility studies to determine its potential impacts on the economy, social, and overall wellbeing of the government employees.