From wellness events to well-being governance: an exploratory qualitative study of workplace well-being communication in selected UAE organizations

In 2024, The National reported that UAE residents were experiencing high stress and burnout symptoms at the workplace. This situation brought workplace well-being into public discourse and raised a deeper organizational question: whether employees experience meaningful, accessible, and embedded well-being support in their everyday work. It is also particularly complex as in the UAE, workplace well-being is shaped by a highly diverse workforce with hierarchal organizational cultures, and culturally sensitive attitudes about mental health. While policies and wellness initiatives may exist, how employees in UAE organizational settings communicate about, understand, and access such support remains understudied. Within this context, this paper uses an exploratory qualitative study to examine how workplace well-being support is communicated, understood, and accessed within selected UAE organizational settings as meaningful support. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with participants from higher education, the public sector, and pharmaceutical organizations, this paper uses thematic analysis to explore awareness of policies, communication channels, implementation practices, support systems, monitoring mechanisms, and perceived barriers. The findings suggest that well-being initiatives in the selected organizations are often event-based, voluntary, and unevenly communicated, especially when policy information is relayed through passive repositories or evaluated through attendance and post-event surveys. It also highlights the need to move beyond episodic wellness activities towards more embedded, accountable, and context-sensitive governance.