Questions Dubai CEOs ask us.

Short answers to the questions that come up most. If yours isn't here, take the readiness scan or contact us directly. We reply personally.

What is the Bravos?

Bravos is the first engagement and excellence benchmark built for Dubai organisations. It measures how companies lead their people, build their cultures, and turn engagement into business performance — across six pillars, compared against peers, ending in a publicly announced top 50.

Is Bravos an award?

The awards are the apex of the programme, not the point of it. Most members find their value in the assessment and peer comparison that come in Stage 3, long before the awards. Fewer than 4% of the cohort are ever recognised publicly. The other 96% get the benchmark — which is what most organisations actually join Bravos for.

How is Bravos different from other engagement tools or awards?

Most engagement tools measure your company against itself. Most awards are won by who writes the best application. Bravos measures every organisation in the cohort against the same six pillars, under the same framework, and compares them to a real peer group — your sector, your size, your emirate. The top 50 isn't who wrote the best case. It's who, on comparable data, is running the stronger organisation.

Where does Bravos come from?

Bravos was founded in Belgium in 2020 by Inge Van Belle and Yves Vekemans and has run every year since. Bravos Dubai is the first edition built outside Belgium, adapted by the same team for how business is done in this emirate. The programme is operated by Herculean Alliance.

Who can join?

Organisations headquartered in the UAE, typically 10 to 500 employees, across any sector. Larger organisations are welcome — we'll flag if there's a sector or size mismatch after the readiness scan.

How do I join?

Start with the readiness scan — six questions, one minute. We read every scan personally and come back to you within two working days. If Bravos is a fit for where your organisation is now, we'll walk you through membership.

What does it cost?

Founding cohort rate is 2,000 AED per year. Standard pricing is 5,000 AED. The founding cohort rate is available until the 2026 cohort is full. The price is flat — no tiered pricing, no upsell through the programme.

What does membership include?

Access to the Bravos Labs (monthly working sessions), the community, ecosystem discounts, the full Q3–Q4 2026 assessment with your Excellence Score and culture maturity classification, and eligibility for the top 500, top 50, and awards pathway.

I don't think we're ready yet.

That's often exactly when Bravos is useful. We're not looking for perfect organisations; we're looking for organisations willing to be measured honestly. The scan will tell us — and you — whether now is the right time.

What are the six pillars Bravos measures?

Leadership Excellence, People & Culture Excellence, Execution Excellence, Stakeholder Excellence, Innovation & Adaptability Excellence, and Performance Governance Excellence. Plus a hybrid dimension — Personal Energy & Wellbeing — that runs through all six. The Concept page explains each in detail.

What is the Excellence Score?

A 0–100 composite score across the six pillars, benchmarked against companies in your sector, size band, and emirate. It's the direct answer to how do I compare to companies like mine? — a number with a real peer group behind it.

How is the assessment done?

24 items for the CEO, 48 items for the team, delivered through the Bravos platform. Results include pillar-level and subdimension-level detail, plus the gap between how leadership sees the company and how employees actually experience it.

How do organisations get to the top 50?

The top 500 is determined by Excellence Score. Those companies are invited to submit a written case. Cases are evaluated systematically against the Bravos framework, reviewed internally, and ranked. The top 50 highest-ranked cases advance to the live pitch, where the Expert Jury and NextGen Jury evaluate each pitch under the same framework. The top 50 is set by that jury evaluation.

Who is on the jury?

The Expert Jury is senior Dubai leaders across sectors. The NextGen Jury is younger jurors who evaluate the same pitches under the same framework. Both juries are listed publicly on the Community page and will sign a confidentiality contract. They can not judge a case where there's a conflict of interest.

Who sees my data?

Only your company sees its own assessment results. The juries see only the top 50 cases, and only as context for the live pitches — they don't review the broader cohort. Rankings below the top 50 are never named publicly. Low scores are never published.

What happens to my employees' answers?

Individual employee responses are never shown to leadership. Not as a policy — as an architectural constraint. Results only surface when at least five employees have responded, and only as aggregates. The system cannot expose individual data.

Where is my data stored?

On UAE infrastructure, under the Bravos data governance framework. Data stays in the country.

Is my case confidential?

Yes. Cases are reviewed under NDA by internal reviewers and, for the top 50, shared with the Expert Jury and NextGen Jury under NDA. They are not published or shared publicly. The live pitches are recorded and the recording is shared only with the organisation that presented. Some will be released for promotion with consent.

What if leadership isn't convinced?

If the board or executive team isn't yet persuaded, two things help. The readiness scan gives an honest external read that's often more useful than an internal pitch. Employee Engagement, What Else? — the book by Inge Van Belle — is the deeper case for why this matters. If after both of those the answer is still no, Bravos isn't the right fit yet.

Can I attend a Lab if I'm not a member?

Yes. First-time attendees can book a Lab for free. Most CEOs who eventually join Bravos attend one Lab first to see what the room is actually like. Details on the Labs page.

How does this connect to Herculean Alliance?

Herculean Alliance is the firm that founded Bravos in Belgium and operates it in Dubai. The same team runs both. Bravos is a programme of Herculean Alliance; Herculean Alliance has other work beyond Bravos.

When is the 2026 cohort closing?

When the founding cohort reaches capacity or on the published deadline, whichever comes first. Founding-rate members carry the 2026 founding-cohort designation in perpetuity — so even when standard pricing activates, 2026 members retain their original status.

Still have a question?

If your question isn't here, the fastest answer comes from the readiness scan — the follow-up email addresses most remaining questions personally. For press, partnership, or enterprise enquiries, contact us directly.