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Be Fit or Be Out of Favor at Etisalat

(case is fictitious: not based on reality, purely for training purposes)

Recently, employees at Etisalat have an incentive to get healthy. If they join in the companywide weight-loss contest and succeed in reaching their goals, they could win cash prizes or a luxury vacation. Inspiration for the contest came from the new corporate leader Rashed AlNuaimi, who himself lost more than 10 kilo’s a few years ago. “He really put it on the radar,” says Fatima AlShamsi, chief operating office at Etisalat, “in the contest’s first year, some employees lost up to 30 kilo’s”.

Etisalat was also one of the first UAE companies to take a hard line on smoking. Mohammed Mansouri, director of the Center for Human Resources, was asked to comment on the antismoking campaign. He said that “It has become socially acceptable to attack smoking and smokers. Will we see the same thing concerning obesity? The time is probably ripe for that.”

In 2015, director AlNuaimi announced that all Etisalat employees would have one year to quit smoking completely or else face termination. The company offered smoking cessation classes, nicotine patches, and other support, according to Mohammed Mansouri, who said director AlNuaimi decided on the policy after a close friend died of lung cancer—and after he learned that UAE state law does not protect smokers. Another concern was the fact that smokers drive up health care premiums.

“If someone wants to smoke, that is their choice, but when their choices impact their employer and fellow employees, then, frankly, we’re not going to accept it,” says Mansouri.

AlNuaimi found himself at the center of controversy when he told on Al Jazeera that Etisalat would take every legal step to insist on healthy employees. “If you are an alcoholic, and we have the right to fire you, we will do that, too,” he said. Bloggers and online commentators attacked AlNuaimi for discriminating unfairly against overweight people and stepping too far into employees’ private lives. A pregnant woman said, “Last time I was pregnant, I gained 20 kilos. In how much time would I have to lose that weight before getting fired?”

According to AlNuaimi, however, it does not go that far: “Weight [he means being overweight] is complicated—it can be caused by disease—so before we go down the path of penalizing employees who are overweight, we need to understand and build a consensus around it.” He says the company does not currently penalize overweight or obese workers.

Questions

1. What sources of power does Rashed AlNuaimi have, based on what you know from the case?

2. Which influence tactics does Rashed AlNuaimi appear to be using in his attempt to combat employee smoking and obesity?

3. What suggestions might you offer director AlNuaimi to help him be more successful in his attempts at influencing employee weight control?

4. What is your evaluation of the ethics of a corporate leader attempting to influence employees to avoid obesity? (do you think it’s OK or not, and why)