The shift in weekend holidays in the UAE would be setting a new trend in the region’s traditional Friday-Saturday weekend (‘Here is all you need to know about UAE weekend change,” Dec. 9 Gulf Today).

As the shorter work week, perhaps the first in the world itself, is setting a new global trend and the UAE being a commercial hub, it would certainly influence the overall business environment in the region.  The new Saturday-Sunday weekend certainly align with the Europe and American regions weekend break, thus help companies to deal with their counterpart offices without missing any weekdays and perform better in delivering the services.

Notwithstanding, with this new change in weekend the private establishments in the country would be getting lesser time to deal with government offices.  This change in the government sector weekend may also prompt foreign diplomatic missions in the country to shift their weekend in line with government functioning.

Private educational institutions are another biggest sector may consider shifting their weekend to align with government decision and subsequent changes may follow for better educational practices in the country. As there are several areas of realignment is to be considered, the retail market would gather more crowd with this shift in weekend and this would perhaps help prospering business momentum.  Let’s hope the flexible working hours help rewarding better results and more customer-friendly environment throughout the country.  Meanwhile, look forward to seeing how the region would be reacting to this change, especially the GCC countries.

Ramachandran Nair
Muscat