share on
CAG's People Team (HR) shares more on how brand reputation improved, with growing applications for full-time careers and early career programmes emerging from the pandemic.
Post-COVID, the swift return of travel demand meant that Changi Airport Group (CAG) had to quickly ramp up hiring. The first order of the day was to reactivate employer brand recall to attract jobseekers.
The team thus doubled down on its pursuit of innovation both throughout the airport and within the organisation. Other key objectives also included protecting the health & wellbeing of employees. Complementing its hybrid work arrangement, CAG took the gumption to create and set aside space for employees to innovate by implementing a ‘four-day-work-and-one-day-innovation’ work model.
The group's efforts paid off; along with improved brand reputation, applications for full-time careers and early career programmes grew tremendously emerging from the pandemic. To match, the group walked away with a line-up of awards at the Human Resources Excellence Awards 2023 in Singapore:
- Gold for Excellence in Employer Branding
- Silver for Excellence in HR Innovation
- Gold for Excellence in Recovery & Rebound Strategy"
CAG’s People Team (HR) shares more on its journey to become the most innovative company in Singapore.
Q Congratulations on your top performance at the HR Excellence Awards! How has your HR and people strategy contributed to your success this year?
As airports around the world rebound from COVID-19 with heightened competition, we at CAG are doubling down on our pursuit of innovation both throughout the airport and within the organisation. We strive to build a future-ready organisation and in our quest to become the ‘Most Innovative Company in Singapore’, we see each employee as a key enabler in this pursuit, collectively building the culture of innovation. In pursuit of this objective, a ‘Digital Kitchen’ was set up and effectively operated, with its primary aim: to accelerate innovations across all levels of CAG, establishing platforms to increase productivity and create capacity for employees to drive innovations independently.
Other key objectives include protecting the health & wellbeing of our employees. Through CAG’s implementation of hybrid work arrangement (that also supports innovation), this allows for exploration of utilising smart technologies to enable our employees to adapt and appreciate work life differently in a post-COVID world. The swift return of travel demand meant that we had to quickly ramp up hiring and the first order of the day was to reactivate employer brand recall to attract jobseekers into (or back) to CAG.
Q Looking back at your achievements, what aspect of your HR initiatives are you most proud of and why?
CAG took the gumption to create and set aside time and space for employees to innovate by implementing a ‘four-day-work-and-one-day-innovation’ work model (4D+i). This is a new company-wide arrangement where work is re-organised or re-modelled such that Fridays are solely dedicated to innovation. The 'i' in the 4D+i work model refers to 'Innovation Fridays' or 'i-Fridays', a decisive move to streamline ‘business-as-usual’ or core work to four days (‘4D’). This encourages employees who may not have started on their innovative journeys to be inspired and slowly work towards CAG’s shared goal as we set aside time and space for our people to innovate at speed and scale on Fridays.
The new norm of hybrid work arrangement also presents the opportunity for companies to re-organise work arrangements to support larger organisation-wide goals.
Rather than restricting this to a small group of ‘experts’, our strategy is to actively create an environment to equip all our employees with the right skillsets to ensure Changi Airport stays ahead of the game.
This includes bringing employees together in casual and informal sessions to introduce CAG’s innovation framework as well as brown bag talks on diverse topics, including the use of digital automation and low-code tools.
Q During your HR journey, what were some significant obstacles you faced, and how did you overcome them to achieve excellence?
Even though we have implemented ‘4D+i’ work model within the organisation, we are still working towards having more employees come onboard this enterprise-wide change journey as it takes time and continuous reinforcement. While receiving positive and encouraging results to date, we want to enable more employees to be engaged in CAG’s shared goal, to have customer-obsessed mindsets and explore new possibilities to make a real and lasting impact on our airport business. We believe that ‘4D+i’ is an enabler in our innovation journey towards creating the airport of the future.
As part of the implementation of ‘4D+i’, it includes the decision to continue with hybrid work arrangement as we recognise the value of flexible working arrangement and yet also, social capital and in-person interactions. As we move and adjust to a hybrid work arrangement, we had to identify ways to keep our employees informed and engaged. CAG initiated many activities in the workplace to help create opportunities for social cohesion and connections when employees are back in the office.
Furthermore, as part of our ongoing commitment to empower our employees to drive innovation in their roles, we aim to introduce them to emerging technologies and innovative concepts. This will help them progress towards becoming future-ready, enhancing their personal development, and increasing their contributions to the organisation.
Q How does your organisation measure the success and impact of your HR initiatives?
The first would be the growth in recruitment numbers. As CAG emerged from the pandemic, applications for full-time careers and early career programmes began to grow tremendously. In 2022 alone, our talent acquisition team saw an increase in the number of new hires year-on-year, which also demonstrated an overall increase compared to volumes before the pandemic.
The second would be improved brand reputation, perceived financial standing and employer attractiveness. Changi Airport continues to be ranked amongst the Top 10 Brands in Singapore according to YouGov’s Global Best Brand Rankings 2022. Our follower base on LinkedIn has jumped significantly from 35,000 followers in 2015 to more than 168,000 in 2023 and our first foray into TikTok in 2022 yielded 100,000 followers in May 2023. And more recently, CAG is delighted to once again, regain the title of the World’s Best Airport by Skytrax for the 12th time and saw our revenue doubled to S$1.9bn for the financial year ended March 2023.
CAG is also honoured to have clinched various external awards, including our wins for Excellence in Employer Branding (Gold), Excellence in Recovery and Rebound Strategy (Gold) and Excellence in HR Innovation (Silver) at HREA 2023.
Q In what direction do you see the HR/people function evolving in the future, considering the emerging trends?
In today's dynamic economic landscape, organisations face ongoing challenges to stay adaptable and competitive. We believe in managing our organisational health as rigorously as our airport operations. To us, organisational health is closely intertwined with employee wellbeing and employee engagement. As we embark on this continuous journey of staying nimble and adaptive, we are resolute in our commitment to provide dynamic employee experiences for our employees.
CAG is dedicated to upholding the hybrid working model (HWM) as it sustains employee engagement and nurtures connections. In addition, we hope to also leverage this model to support CAG’s broader organisation goals – in becoming the most innovative company in Singapore. We also aim to harness technology to enhance employees' jobs while concurrently enhancing their technical skill sets through upskilling. By exposing our employees to new technologies and innovation to chart their growth towards being future-ready, we also add value to their personal development and contribution to the organisation. This results in empowering them to effect meaningful and productive changes in their work.
As CAG continues to build an engaged workforce that is adaptable and future-ready, this will ultimately benefit our partners and passengers as we continue to deliver unrivalled service as a world-class airport.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!
Lead image / provided
share on
