Accountability, teamwork and continuous improvement define core operating values at DED

The values were introduced through a series of creatively designed workshops.

"The efficiency of a department is significantly dependent on the performance of its employees," said M. Ali Ibrahim, Deputy Director General, DED. "We believe that the continuous development of each individual employee contributes strongly towards the overall development at the Department. Therefore, we are introducing Core Operating Values at DED, which will act as a future foundation to all our employee development activities," he added.

"The introduction of the Core Values for employees comes as a result of several months of review by the Senior Management team at DED. Accountability, Teamwork and Continuous Improvement are the three values, which will define the way all DED employees will operate. Each of the values include several behaviour descriptions to ensure that employees and other stakeholders understand the meaning of each Value," said Mr. Ibrahim.

The employees at DED have been divided into groups to participate in creatively designed workshops, which will help them to understand and internalize the values. Identification of the values through behaviour patterns is done through a set of "Values Mystery" fun workshops.
Fourteen such workshops (13 in Arabic and 1 in English) were organized to target all the employees at DED. The workshops were conducted by Biz-Ability (training company). In addition, bilingual posters highlighting the values were also displayed throughout the DED offices.

Following the workshops, the values will be used as a foundation to set the direction of change over the coming months, including: new employee performance evaluation system, new training needs analysis procedure, new competency profiles, and assessment centres for potential managers.