Amadeus, with roots in Spain, France and Germany, is as much generationally diverse as it is geographically diverse.
According to Patricia de la Fuente, the company’s global head of HR Technology, “Our key focus is to ensure we can attract and retain the best talent to serve our customers. To do so, we have two very different generations working together. First, there is the more traditional population, who are used to a collaborative and sometimes time-consuming approach to agreeing actions. And we have members of the latest generation, who need immediate challenges and short-term goals.”
Leveraging the power of generational diversity
For de la Fuente, this is a powerful formula that the organisation wants to retain. “It’s essential that we retain the diversity we currently have. So for us, transformation wasn’t about technological change: it was about driving new ways of working, improving collaboration between the different markets and sites where we work so we can all talk the same language.”
And that was an ability that de la Fuente and team recognised in the openness and transparency that Workday provided.
We’re giving employees the flexibility to decide what is best for them – that means the freedom to work anywhere.
Patricia de la Fuente, Global Head of HR Technology
Supporting collaborative remote working
de la Fuente and team quickly identified flexible working as an important means of enabling close collaboration across Amadeus.
“We are focused on the hybrid model,” de la Fuente says. “We’re giving employees the flexibility to decide what is best for them – and that doesn’t mean a straight choice between the office and home: it also means the freedom to work anywhere.”
Before the Workday deployment, the company did not have the visibility and capabilities to enable remote workers to make decisions based on facts and data.
“Now this is available to them, with clear differentiation between the elements that are open to workers and managers,” de la Fuente says. “And we are going to further expand this capability and give them more visibility into the opportunities we can deliver to help them work on the move.”
Identifying the most powerful drivers of positive change
Improving retention of its people is a key priority for Amadeus. As de la Fuente puts it, “Retention actions covering all areas must be digitalised and made available to all employees. But maybe we shouldn’t call this digitalisation any more: it’s about changing ways of working, changing the mindset and the relationships people have with their peers to bring everything together into a single ecosystem.”
As de la Fuente says, “We primarily targeted the people we thought would be against a change mindset. And we embraced them from the very beginning, making them part of the change. We also identified those who are natural change-makers. They’re usually inspirational, with strong communication skills and capable of creating long-lasting relationships.”
With Workday as the central vehicle enabling this dual approach, Amadeus is progressing quickly on its change journey while taking with it the people at the heart of its success.
It’s about changing ways of working, changing the mindset and the relationships people have to bring everything together into a single ecosystem.
Patricia de la Fuente, Global Head of HR Technology
Collaborating as part of the Workday ecosystem
Following the Workday deployment, de la Fuente and team are happy to still be in contact with the central Workday team that worked so closely with them.
As de la Fuente says, “It’s not just Workday managers and employees we are close with, but other customers too. We’ve become friends with many of them, sharing our experiences and helping one another to answer any questions or issues we may have that relate to Workday. We are truly part of the Workday ecosystem.”