As AirAsia rapidly expanded from a regional to an international enterprise, while launching several new businesses and planning more, its workforce of employee “All Stars” had to become more mobile. In fact, more than half of its All Stars are on the go, whether maintenance crews on the ground or air crews flying above the clouds at 40,000 feet.
The company’s growth outpaced the capabilities of its on-premises HR system, which was disconnected from other systems. In addition, many processes were paper-based. As a result, it was difficult to access basic HR data and scale HR systems globally, across multiple nations and languages.
From an organisational side, I felt that the culture of Workday, the management, and what I had seen of the way Workday works as a company were aligned with us from a values perspective.
Chief People & Culture Officer
Scalable global cloud solution, automated upgrades and similar cultures.
AirAsia found Workday Human Capital Management could provide a single, global cloud solution that scales for growth and diverse business extensions to its core travel business. Regular Workday updates were attractive too.
Another factor in AirAsia’s selection of Workday was the alignment of both companies’ cultures. “AirAsia decided to partner with Workday because both companies are disruptors in their industries. In a way, there are synergies and similarities between both these companies”, says Ananda Ramachandran, AirAsia Head of People Technology.
Team of All Stars embrace a new system.
AirAsia deployed Workday Human Capital Management across 23 nations to nearly all of its organisation of more than 20,000 All Stars, on time and on budget. The immediate reaction of the company’s All Stars to Workday Human Capital Management was, and continues to be, extremely positive.
When we look back and see how the transformation has been within AirAsia after we have launched Workday, we see that our people engagement has increased. Its easy accessibility from just about anywhere has also put the power of data in the hands of our people.
Head of People Technology
Accelerate HR transformation.
By deploying the global Workday Human Capital Management cloud platform, AirAsia gained the capabilities needed to accelerate its HR transformation journey. This transformation is key to enabling a bigger vision called AirAsia 3.0 – the expansion of AirAsia into a travel-tech enterprise supporting many diverse businesses across its international operating footprint. Results included:
- More informed decisions lead to better decisions
- Mobile workforce stays connected, boosting efficiency and morale
- AirAsia is well poised for the future and better able to fulfil the AirAsia 3.0 vision
Providing management decision support
With Workday Human Capital Management, AirAsia’s management and HR teams have gained much more organisational visibility and transparency, so they can make more informed decisions – and better ones as a result.
This visibility and transparency are critical to management’s realisation of its vision of AirAsia 3.0. Disconnected workflows and paper-based processes don’t scale to allow such ambitions. It eliminates manual handoffs which used to lead to errors in time, money, and, ultimately, customer dissatisfaction.
Organisational visibility and transparency have enabled management’s decision-making on people moves and interdepartmental issues to be much more informed by data instead of anecdote.
Chief People and Culture Officer
Connecting All Stars and improving efficiency and productivity.
With Workday Human Capital Management, employees can securely access their own information as well as relevant company information for which they have role-based privileges. Examples:
- Standardised data improves efficiency of workflows and processes
- Employees and managers save time, boosting productivity
With more than half of AirAsia’s 20,000-plus All Stars in mobile roles, they have access via different devices at any time and from wherever they have a network connection – even air crews flying at 40,000 feet. “With the mobility and agility of the Workday Human Capital Management cloud platform, everyone on the go across AirAsia can still contribute to our business processes”, says Manson Chan, ICT Product Manager, AirAsia.
Ready for the future.
Already a disruptor in the airline industry, the company plans to extend its wings into many other travel-related businesses as part of its AirAsia 3.0 vision. At the same time, it must ensure its core airline enterprise remains both a value and a delightful experience for customers.
A scalable, global cloud platform, Workday Human Capital Management can grow as AirAsia grows. Upgrades, security, and maintenance are all taken care of. IT can focus on more strategic projects to drive more success. Plus, AirAsia is now connected to the Workday Community, a global user group, for additional support.
Workday provides updates twice a year, which is as good as a fresh implementation in terms of time, cost and effort. This is one of the big things that made Workday stand out.
Head of People Technology
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