The K2 Dubai Team spent Tuesday morning volunteering at K9 Friends, a local dog shelter.
A volunteer-run organisation, K9 Friends rescue and rehome stray and abandoned dogs, providing shelter, kennelling and veterinary care. When a dog comes into the shelter, it is health–assessed, vaccinated and microchipped – if it is over six months old, then it is also neutered. In addition to providing practical support, K9 Friends also work to educate the public on dog ownership and care, striving to develop a more responsible dog-owning population in the UAE.
The K2 Dubai Team’s time at K9 Friends saw them shadowing shelter volunteers, socialising puppies and meeting some of the longer-term canine residents. They learned that the shelter’s residents are a mix of rescued dogs and dogs that have been surrendered by their owners. Many of the shelter’s dogs are surrendered because their owners relocate and are either not willing or not able to cover the cost of relocating their pet. Through a programme of events, talks and tours focused on educating people about the reality of dog ownership, K9 Friends hope to reduce the number of dogs that end up being surrendered.
For the K2 Dubai Team, in addition to being a wholesome and educational experience, the time spent at K9 Friends drove home for them the importance of giving back to their local community. K2 Dubai – like all K2 offices – is proud to be part of its local community, and they choose to be an active and responsible member of it by engaging with as many local organisations and businesses as possible. That engagement takes many different forms: from volunteering with non-profits like K9 Friends to partnering with organisations like Companies for Good, who arrange corporate CSR events; from taking part in Clean UAE’s clean-up days to sponsoring the education of disadvantaged children through the K2 Foundation.
Giving back is a big part of the K2 culture, one that operates internally as well as externally: just as K2’s offices give back to their local communities, K2 as a business gives back to its employees. Rewarding and investing in our employees – for example through the Kinetic Benefit profit-share incentive scheme and through tailored training programmes delivered via ELOOMI, our inhouse online training platform – plays a huge role both in giving us our extremely low employee turnover rate of c. 4%, and in making us a Great Place To Work®. As one employee commented in our most recent Great Place To Work® survey, “K2 really values and rewards its employees, not only financially, but also by recognising individual skills, talent and personal achievements”. More simply put by another employee, “K2 are REAL investors in people”.
