Ride-hailing platform Careem is calling back its UAE workforce - for one day a week at office

Dubai: The ride-hailing company Careem is making a shift from its work remotely strategy – going forward, employees in the UAE will return to the office for one day each week.

“We've always believed that in-person interactions are an integral part of our culture and a powerful lever for collaboration,” said Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of Careem. “This is reflected in our remote-first approach, which included plans for a ‘weekly office-day’ from the start.” (It was in September last Careem launched its remote-first policy.)

The return for a day-a-week will be run as a pilot programme in the UAE operations. The company operates 36 offices across its network. The UAE was chosen for the pilot following its successful progress in its vaccination program, with over 12 million vaccine shots administered.

The pilot run will play out over two months and will end with extensive feedback to decide the next steps. “The idea is for us to test assumptions about what work is best done together in-person, and further develop our tools and approaches for successfully involving distributed colleagues in other locations in this work," he added. "We'll gather learnings from this pilot and iterate on our remote-first ways of working to drive productivity, effective collaboration and strengthen the Careem culture.”