The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has won today the Award for the Best Federal Entity encouraging its employees to read, during the UAE Pioneers Awards ceremony, held in Dubai in the presence of H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, who has personally handed the Awards to the winners.

This Win comes as result of a series of initiatives and contributions organized by TRA to encourage its employees to read, and to support them to provide relevant ideas and proposals. The initiatives include among others the ‘Reading Award’, ‘Minutes with a Book’, The Book of the Month’, in addition to the ‘Customers Happiness Library’. 

Commenting on this accomplishment, H.E Mohamad Ahmad Al Qamzi, TRA Chairman, said: “Organizing an Award to honor the Pioneers of the UAE in all fields reflects the wise leadership keenness to support excellence and distinguished entities and to motivate them to continue the hard and constructive work to achieve the goals and objectives of UAE vision 2021. The keenness of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid to attend this Award and delivering the awards personally to the winners is a clear message of his interests in supporting and encouraging national competencies as the foundation for achieving comprehensive and sustainable development in the Country.” 

Moreover, H.E Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, Director General of TRA, said: “Winning this award is an addition to the achievements of TRA in supporting its employees and motivating them to widen their horizons of perception and knowledge. This win comes as a result of the series of TRA initiatives organized in line with the ‘Year of Reading’ initiative, launched by H.H Shiekh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, for the aim of supporting the Youth to make the best use of time in a hobby that develops the mind and enhance innovation and creativity.”

H.E Al Mansoori added: “We also believe that TRA has a role at the community level, therefore, we have not limited the borders of our initiatives to promote employees to read, but we have extended them to include the customers and the TRA visitors, through launching ‘the Customers Happiness Library’ placed in the Customers’ Happiness Centers, which contains more than 440 thousands eBooks.

Among the most prominent initiatives launched by TRA is ‘the Reading Award’, which is organized at the TRA level. The participants in the initiatives are divided into teams according to TRA departments. The competition takes place between the departments by reading a book; then the team organizes a discussion session and presentations about the book, connecting it with TRA’s institutional values. The winning team is selected through employees’ voting, and receives the Reading Award by H.E the Director General. The winning team keeps the Award for one year until handing it over to the next winning team in the following year.   

The list of initiatives also included ‘Minutes with a Book’, which provides a brief summary about a book, sent in Arabic and English to all participants employees through ‘WhatsApp’ mobile application. This initiative allows the employees to form an idea about the book content to decide if it fits their interests. A specialized team select the books, and combines subjects of management, science as well as novels. Moreover, ‘Read my answer’ initiative is based on the idea of distributing eBooks on a monthly basis, along with a question to search for its answer in the book. Nevertheless, ‘The Book of the Month’ initiative stipulates including a book in the agenda of the departments’ regular meetings. Under this initiative, 180 books have been read in the different TRA departments. The TRA also launched the initiative ‘Reading with Salem’, where the character ‘Salem’ provides awareness reading sessions for students and participants in the TRA Innovation Camp. Additionally, ‘in the Presence of the Book’’ Initiative is a seminar held on a quarterly basis to discuss a valuable book.

The TRA has adopted a set of channels to promote its initiatives, including the employees’ internal portal, e-surveys, emails, smart apps, interactive workshops, and SMS messages.