As part of Ashley Kate HR’s ongoing commitment to facilitate the coming together of HR professionals throughout the UK in order to promote shared learning and development within the industry Kim MacNamara Business Development Director of Ashley Kate HR interviewed Julie Armstrong HR Director of Thomas Cook Airlines to discuss engagement and how to successfully drive initiatives across a European agenda.
Thomas Cook Group Airlines is Europe’s 11th largest airline which currently has 95 aircraft, carrying 17 million passengers to destinations all over the world. The company has 8,000 employees based in UK, Germany, Belgium and Scandinavia. In 2015, Thomas Cook Group Airlines won a number of awards in the form of “Europe’s leading charter airline” at the World Travel Awards, “Customer’s Sweetheart” by FocusMoney (biggest survey regarding brand strength in Germany) and “Best Airline” at the Customer Service of the Year Awards – to name but a few. The Group Airlines vision is to be the best leisure sun and beach focused Airline Group.
Julie Armstrong has worked with the Thomas Cook Group Airlines company for nearly 4 years. As Group Airlines HR Director, Julie is responsible for the creation of people strategy, delivery of people agenda, talent and organisation development, delivering cost out and organisation changes across the Group Airlines. Prior to working with Thomas Cook Group Airlines, Julie has over 20 years HR experience of working with companies such as Manchester Airport Group, BAE Systems, Marconi, Barclays and Marks and Spencer.
In this article, Julie talks about the challenges, complexity, successes and lessons learnt from bringing together four different airlines, from various countries, through a programme of initiatives to build a “one airline” operating model and engagement.
Why focus on engagement? As a service business, it is critical that the focus we put on our customers is at the heart of everything that we do. Getting the customer experience right is key and our people, with whom our customers interact with, deliver a major part of this. In order for our people to deliver a great experience, they need to be motivated to do so and ensuring they are engaged with what we do, as a business, is key to building engagement.
What are the benefits of great employee engagement for Thomas Cook Group Airlines and other companies? The bottom line is, if our people are more connected with us as a business and vice versa and as a result deliver a better customer experience then, hopefully, our customers will keep coming back to us and recommend us to others. This will help us continually build a long term sustainable business for the future.
What challenges have you experienced with implementing your engagement agenda? There are many! Having a large and experienced workforce of remote and mobile people that we are proud of presents its own set of challenges, particularly around communications and Line Manager contacts. In order to increase and to get a good level of information to, and engagement of, individuals, this needs individual contact in some form. We have put hard work into organisation structures which enable greater Line Manager contact for our people, designing and implementing systems and processes which facilitate discussions and contact through performance and development discussions. We have also implemented a communications APP for our people so they know what is going on in our business. This is along with the usual processes of briefings and written communication updates that place. However, key to making all of this happen is Leadership and ensuring that we have the right level of people leadership capability in place and, as such, we have developed and implemented a series of leadership development programs / modules, focussed at different levels of leaders, to do this. Of course, there is still a very long way to go and what we have delivered, so far, is within the realms of what we can afford, like any business, and only touches the surface of creating a truly self-learning / innovation lead organisation which goes beyond engagement, for the betterment of our customers but it is a very good start and the leaders in the business are passionate about continuing this journey.
Can you detail some of the successful engagement initiatives that Thomas Cook Group Airlines have implemented across Europe? The APP that we launched was very successful; our people have given us great feedback as this allows instant and easy access to what is going on in the business. Our Navigator program, which is a development program focussed on developing our leadership pipeline across our group airlines, has also had great feedback. This program has been adopted across the whole Thomas Cook Group now and, using a select few partners, it is focussed on developing authentic leadership through coaching and mindfulness, as well as various business skills through live business simulations. We are just about to launch Cohort 4. We are due to launch our new Learning Management System (LMS) later this year, which will give our employees access to a variety of modular, interactive, learning experiences ranging from change management, project management, team communications and leadership to language skills.
How did you drive those initiatives through with your diverse employee population? Implementing new ways of working across a diverse workforce, across different countries, takes understanding, patience, tenacity, resilience and high stakeholder management through constant communication, in a variety of ways, and you must be flexible – where you can! Primarily for anything to be successful in this environment you must understand your audience and take the time to do so. Once you understand how your audience works, their motivations, drivers, restrictions and current ways of working, then you can appropriately adapt your design and implementation plans so what you want to achieve as an outcome is as successful as it can be. So often I hear of people wanting to rush to implement something so they can say “it’s done”. However, sometimes, not taking the time, up front, in the design and planning stages can mean that you may implement something quicker but you totally lost your audience, in which case, they do not use it / see value in it and this, in the end, is a waste of time and money for everyone. This does not mean that you should take forever to deliver something but, in these environments, ‘quick’ is not always ‘best!’
From lessons learned, do you have any advice for other HR professionals who are beginning the journey of rolling out a programme of initiatives in support of employee engagement across Europe? As I said before, take time to know your audience as this is critical. Also, see stakeholder management and communication as a key part of the project, not something that just comes at the end at both senior leadership and all employee levels. Do not be frightened to adapt what you are implementing and be flexible. Sometimes we can get caught up in the drive to get to consistency, to how people do things, as well as what the outcome is. However, in a multi-national / cultural environment, what works in some geographies may not work in others. Sometimes, as long as the outcome of what you deliver is consistent, you may have to be flexible in how it is achieved. When you think you have communicated enough – communicate some more. Make sure you are engaging with your audience so you pitch what you want to do at the right place and pace.
