The Dubai Employee Wellbeing Conference 2025 was, as expected, focused squarely on employee wellbeing. Much of the discussion explored programs, benefits, and initiatives designed to support employees under increasing pressure at work.
Those conversations are necessary and valuable.
Our contribution, however, deliberately explored a complementary lens. Rather than asking what more organizations can add for employees, we focused on how leadership behavior shapes the conditions in which employee wellbeing either improves or deteriorates.
This perspective connected many of the issues being discussed. Challenges such as stress, disengagement, burnout, and retention are not influenced only by the presence of support services. They are also shaped by everyday management behavior: how work is prioritized, how pressure is communicated, and how safe people feel raising concerns early.
This leadership lens is well supported by large-scale workplace evidence. Manager behavior consistently emerges as a primary driver of engagement, wellbeing, and performance. Employee wellbeing does not sit separately from leadership. It is experienced through it.
The implication is not that employee wellbeing initiatives are insufficient. Rather, they are strengthened when leadership capability is developed alongside them. Without that foundation, even well-designed programs can struggle to achieve lasting impact.
What the conference reinforced is that improving employee wellbeing is not only about what organizations provide, but also about how leaders lead.