Why American Airlines Won’t Let Good Get In The Way Of Being Great
Setting business priorities for any company is no easy task. And if you’re American Airlines, whose employee base grew to 130,000 after its merger with U.S. Airways about five years ago, the importance of earning trust, with an eye toward becoming the best in the business, becomes particularly acute.
According to Mark Mitchell, managing director, HR shared services for American Airlines, the company spent a lot of time bringing the two entities together in an effort to strengthen customer relations. The company’s Single AAdvantage program, for example, created a single operations mode to help create the synergies and efficiencies they were looking for. Once this program became an established success, it allowed Mitchell to shift to a top-of-agenda strategy around creating a people-centric culture.
“Until you get the right mindset around what is important and how you get there, you can’t achieve the objectives of being the greatest airline in the world,” Mitchell said to thousands of HR professionals convened at SuccessConnect event in Las Vegas last week. “That’s where we are right now, establishing that people-centric culture and our CEO has it at the top of his agenda.”
Two examples of how American Airlines enables a people-centric culture :
Demonstrate caring in everything they do and rebuilding trust with employees. Airline mergers bring different cultures together and by putting caring, trust and employee experience at the forefront, a people driven culture emerges. “It connects to every business outcome that we need,” said Mitchell. “When you have the right employee experience it brings to life the customer experience you want to deliver, which creates positive operational and financial results.”
Build a people-driven culture using the SAP SuccessFactors suite of products. “We have 130,000 team members around the globe in 60 countries and every day we touch 600 of them to answer their questions,” said Mitchell. “So the system needs to be easy to use to help them get the answers they need at American Airlines.”
American Airlines rolled out its SuccessFactors suite in March of this year, the culmination of a two-year journey that brings together seven modules of SuccessFactors. At the same time, the company implemented Private Cloud Payroll and expanded use of Fieldglass to help manage its large, contingent workforce.
“Combined with the caring and trust attributes of our leadership, it’s putting the foundation in place to build that people driven culture,” said Mitchell. “We knew that in order to have the American Airlines of the future, we need to have the right skill sets, the right people, and have a way to bring them into the American Airlines family.”
Both American Airlines and U.S. Airways had been through mergers in the past and not surprisingly, employee data was in a bit of disarray. Thanks in part to its implementation of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, American Airlines can now gain a single version of the truth.
“When you have accurate employee data feeding the service center, it allows us to demonstrate caring because we know we can serve them better and establish trust,” said Mitchell. “SuccessFactors has been the cornerstone of bringing that to life. We have a fairly large contingent workforce and when you take Fieldglass, which we are a very large user of, and expand it into SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, it’s going to allow our leaders to have a total holistic view of our workforce so that we understand them better.”
Since diving a robust people culture is at the top of the CEO agenda at American Airlines, it’s an investment that’s allowed all leaders at American Airlines to be better positioned to care for the team.
“It’s a system that allows our 130,000 team members to interact with us differently each and every day and drive that experience forward,” said Mitchell. “So we didn’t have a quantifiable ROI. But we certainly understand why we need to measure it going forward.”
As a result, American Airlines introduced its first employee surveys last year and now have a measurable way to gauge how the team is engaging with the company and how they feel about the company going forward.
“We’re always looking to improve,” said Mitchell. “Don’t let good, get in the way of being great. American Airlines aspires to not be the largest airline in the world or the youngest fleet, but to be the greatest airline in the world. It’s aspirational but goes back to the mindset of changing how you think about the business.”
