Dubai Customs receives 43,000 creative ideas from staff since 2000
E-suggestions by employees led to scores of workflow changes and awards for excellence
Dubai: Dubai Customs’ employees had submitted more than 43,000 creative ideas between 2000 and the first half of 2020, leading to 268 innovations adopted by the authority, it announced on Saturday.
The innovations resulting from the submissions to the e-suggest system cover all aspects of work and were developed with the help of more than 75 innovative employees. This led Dubai Customs to receive over 130 local and global awards of excellence.
In 2020 alone, Dubai Customs staff developed 32 disruptive innovations, raising the number of innovations developed between 2010 and 2020 to 237. As a result, Dubai Customs had received over 127 local and global awards of excellence by the end of 2020.
Happiness rating
Dubai Customs’ innovation systems received an 83.9 per cent happiness rate from employees and customers, while the rate of complaints on these systems was less than 1.4 per cent, which is far below Dubai government’s permissible limit of 10 per cent.
The percentage of ideas processed and followed up within 15 working days was 92 per cent, with 55 per cent of these ideas qualified as feasible during the first half of 2021, of which 35 percent have been implemented.
Encouraging employees
Hussain Al Fardan, director of Dubai Customs Innovation Centre, said: “These achievements would not have been attained if it were not for the senior leadership’s belief in the importance of innovation and their encouragement for employees to constantly come up with new ideas and innovations that drive trade and customs business forward.”
Innovation League
In the first half of 2021, Dubai Customs launched the first ‘Innovation League’ between customs departments and centres to create a large competitive environment among them. The Innovation Centre concluded 38 workshops for the Innovation League, including 25 inductions and 13 workshops to look into the challenges and opportunities.
In the next stage, teams participating in the tournament will come together to generate innovative solutions and ideas for these challenges. More than 180 customs officers and staff participated in these stages, which resulted in 335 actual customs challenges in various organisational units.