Dubai Holding’s Ahmad Bin Byat wins Daman Health Awards’ Wellness Leader of the Year

Dubai, 22 November 2014: Dubai Holding, the investment holding company, announced today that its CEO, Ahmad Bin Byat’s efforts in the health and wellness sphere have been recognised at the Daman Health Awards where he was awarded the Wellness Leader of the Year title. This award acknowledges the outstanding leadership of a senior professional, who has inspired his business, colleagues and peers on corporate wellness initiatives.

Ahmad Bin Byat, CEO of Dubai Holding, commented: “Health and wellness are at the core of how I live my life and how we operate at Dubai Holding. Using the workplace as a platform to cultivate healthy practices has proven essential in integrating changes on the long-term. We also believe in energising both body and mind outside of the office, in an active setting, and want to push people to move out of their comfort zone to find balance in their life. The positive results reaped over the years have encouraged us to extend the impact of our Wellness Programme to our staff’s families and friends, and ultimately the wider community. This is very much in line with the Dubai Government’s efforts of supporting healthier living habits, which coincides with our strong social citizenship dedicated to changing behaviours and supporting fitter and healthier current and future generations.”

Judit Toth from Jumeirah Group’s Talise Fitness received the Corporate Wellness Rising Star of the Year award. Amongst other accomplishments, she developed the DU Executive Wellness programme in 2013, which involves 32 senior executives. The programme runs for 12 months and includes health check-ups, fitness tests, nutrition consultation, personalised exercise plan and team building activities.

Dubai Holding also submitted two other award entries that made it to the final round. The first was for Corporate Health and Wellness Organisation and the second for Communications Campaign of the Year for the ‘Music that Moves You’ campaign that they conducted at the 2013 Dubai Marathon’s 10K race.

Dubai Holding’s Wellness Programme was established in 2007 as the first-of–its-kind programme in the region covering the 22,000 Dubai Holding employees across all companies including Jumeirah Group, TECOM Investments, Dubai Properties Group and Emirates International Telecommunications. It has now shifted to cover the wider community.

The multidisciplinary practical programme relies on education and targeted interventions to help change behaviour by focusing on healthy nutrition, physical activity, stress management and general health. It is managed through the Dubai Holding Wellness Committee, a sub-committee of the Dubai Holding Human Capital Committee, which includes representatives from all companies across the Group and ensures that the Wellness vision is being implemented through organisation-wide policies, initiatives and reporting.

A number of event sponsorships and participation fall within the programme. Dubai Holding has supported the Dubai Marathon for eight consecutive years, fielding the largest corporate team once again in 2014 with 1,965 or 10 percent of total participants. Dubai Holding also created the UAE National prize category in 2010, offering a total of AED 86,000 to the three fastest UAE nationals in the women's and men's 42K Marathon, 10K Road Races and pushchair categories.

In its’ fifth year, the Dubai Holding Women’s Run was first held in 2010 as Dubai’s only race dedicated to women. In June 2014, Dubai Holding extended its partnership with the UAE Athletics Federation though an AED5 million sponsorship agreement which extends over five years. In 2013 the company introduced a new prize category, UAE National Category that recognises the fastest Emirati women running the Dubai Holding Women’s Run, awarding cash prizes to the top three Emirati participants in each of the 5K and 10K races.

Dubai Holding Vertical Marathon, Dubai’s only vertical marathon which celebrated its 12^th anniversary in 2014, has established itself as one of Dubai’s main fund raising events with more than AED 1.3 million raised so far for life-improving charities. The 2014 race saw record participation from Dubai Holding employees.

This support for leading sports events in Dubai is also visible at a company level. For example, Jumeirah Group was the official Hospitality Partner and Arabian Radio Network was the official radio network for Dubai Holding Women’s Run 2014. Investments is supporting the Dubai Kids’ Run taking place in March 2015.

Other activities within the Wellness Programme include the Global Corporate Challenge, the world’s leading corporate health initiative aimed at changing the behaviour and improving the health of employees, which saw 700 employees sign up in 2014, treks, and blood donation drives.

For each of these events, Al Jalila Foundation is the official beneficiary with all employees and participants encouraged to donate to the charity in aid of medical research in the UAE.