A rubber stopper on a warehouse panel door needed replacing. The maintenance team found a replacement locally for AED 20, fitted it themselves and got the door working again. It was a small job, and it could easily have ended there.
A facility maintenance technician shared this as part of Dahbashi Engineering’s employee stories series, which we’ve been working on with the company. His example showed what someone who knows the equipment can spot and resolve in the course of a working day. The same post explains how the Dahbashi team now looks after preventive maintenance for the warehouse’s dock levellers and panel doors in-house.
Our earlier piece on internal influencers looked at how employees can share their experiences with their networks. There’s a step that comes before that. Give people a way to tell you what they’ve noticed, fixed or learnt. They can contribute to the company’s communications without posting on their own accounts.
Ask about the work
Try three questions at your next team or branch meeting. What happened? Why did it matter? What did you learn?
If the answers are slow to come, make the first question more specific. What did a customer keep asking about this month? What did someone fix before it became a bigger problem? What’s one thing your team does differently now because the old way was causing delays?
Invite a short voice note or a five-minute chat. Tell people who’ll hear it, what you might use it for and that taking part is voluntary. A quick conversation also gives you room to ask what changed for the customer or the team.
Ask beyond head office
If your business has teams across the Gulf, try the prompt at a branch meeting or a shift handover. Let colleagues answer in the language they’re most comfortable speaking. A branch manager can make the introduction or help translate, then check the wording with the person who did the work. Their explanation may include the detail that makes the story worth telling.
Edelman’s 2026 global research identifies listening without judgement as a skill that helps build trust across differences. In a small business, that can start with a manager giving someone time to explain what happened in their own words.
Check the story before you share it
Look for a clear outcome for a person, a team or a customer. If a warehouse colleague says a change made dispatch quicker, ask what the team observed and whether there’s a record to check. If nobody timed it, explain what changed in the process and leave the time saving unquantified.
Before publishing, confirm the facts and get each contributor’s consent. Tell them where the story will appear and let them check the draft, including any quotes, photos or translations. Give people credit in the way they agree to. If a customer can be identified by name, location, image or project detail, get their permission too.
Then choose where the story belongs. A better shift handover might be worth sharing with other branches. A fix that helps customers spot an issue sooner could make a useful blog post or customer update.
PR tip for this week
Take five minutes at one team meeting and ask those three questions. Offer a voice note or a chat as a follow-up. Make it easy for people to share what they know in a way that feels natural to them.
