71% of DIFC employees confident of getting gratuity
LONDON and DUBAI, 2 hours, 12 minutes ago About 71% of employees responding to a survey said they were highly confident of receiving their gratuity payment when leaving their current employer in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a report said. The survey on end-of-services benefits (EoSB) in the UAE was commissioned by Zurich, Equiom and Mercer to Insight Discovery to gauge the perceptions of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Employee Workplace Savings (DEWS) scheme. The confidence in the DEWS scheme is particularly notable when comparing the responses of employees in the DIFC with the responses of employees across the rest of the UAE, where only 40% of UAE respondents outside the DIFC said they were aware of how their gratuity works and what it means for them. Two-thirds were also confident that they knew how their gratuity worked, as well as what it meant for them financially.
Dubai: DIFC’s ‘Employee Workplace Savings’ plan has assets under management of $127 million a year into its launch.
The DEWS plan was launched as a major upgrade on existing end-of-service benefit payment plans and how those funds are collected and deployed. It thus provides an alternative from a defined benefits plan. (As of now, this is only available to DIFC registered companies and its workforce.)
Since the February 1, 2020 rollout, 19,182 members of DIFC – Dubai International Finance Centre - workforce from 1,187 of the free zone’s licensed firms have been enrolled in the plan. A “substantial number” also chose to make additional voluntary contributions from their salaries into the plan, which allows employees to prepare for their lifetime needs.