Pros
1. Health insurance is comprehensive (includes Dental and optical), which is quite rare in UAE. 2. The firm sponsors Visa for dependents. 3. The office is in prime location, right next to the Dubai mall. 4. There are some great minds in the Bank, who are an expert in what they do.
Cons
The cons start right with the mindset of the Management. The staff don’t feel motivated to work as the environment is not conducive or motivating. The vision of the Bank is to go digital in an attempt to reduce operational inefficiencies in physical presence and just focus on the results. However, the HR policy is exactly south of it, which focuses on physical presence of the staff rather than the results they bring to the table. WHAT AN IRONY! The culture makes you feel nostalgic as it takes you back to your school days, where you have to mark in attendance on roll call and have to prove that you were really really sick by fainting / coughing. Here, just replace roll call with facial recognition and fainting / coughing with signed sick leave certificate, which is required even for ONE day of sick leave (tell the world yes, we exist). The senior management takes no effort to elucidate the vision and mission of the Bank to the staff, however, they want their staff to hop on and be engaged on to the mission. A leader has to inspire and lead the clan. I mean do you take efforts to organise events or town halls to speak out to the staff to inspire or motivate them??? A startup becomes a unicorn not just because of the idea, but the personality of the leadership and the way they lead and take care of their people. The yearly appraisal is the biggest joke. The appraisal form was submitted on the system before end of December 2024, however, we are several months into 2025 and there’s no update post then. For a strength of 150-180, even if the rating is finalised through face to face with 2 staff per day, it would have been completed within 3 months. How worse can it become?