By Madelaine B. Miraflor
KUALA LUMPUR – The world’s best low-cost airline, AirAsia, is bringing its employees data to cloud and all its local units across the region are on board.
AirAsia recently tapped Workday, a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, to digitize its human resources and talent management operations.
This means that the airline company, which aspires to be a travel tech company, will be moving all of its employees' data — and there are more than 25,000 of them across the region — to Workday’s cloud technology for Human Capital Management (HCM).
The data would include career information, technical skills and training, salary statement, performance review, and other employee records.
Varun Bhatia, chief people and culture officer at AirAsia, said the company is making sure that all countries where AirAsia is operating, including the Philippines, are on board with this region-wide transition.
"There is only one AirAsia," Bhatia said. "We went live with this technology at the same time across the entire group".
AirAsia operates flights to more than 140 destinations spanning 22 markets. At present, the company employs more than 2,000 Filipino employees.
Workday’s appointment as AirAsia’s HCM partner is supposed to follow a global growth strategy to build a stronger presence in Asia, bringing human capital management, financial management and analytical capabilities closer to new markets.
Bhatia said that by deploying the Workday system, it would improve transparency and efficiency among employees. It would also make talent management more professional and faster.
" we could use the Workday app to measure performance appraisals. Before, we did it through excels and the chances of committing errors is high when presented with too many different data," Bhatia said.
"Now, that whole data is already in Workday and available and accessible to each employee. We are more transparent and more empowered," he added.
Bhatia said AirAsia's digital transformation encompasses "our people and culture as much as it does our business model".
"In doing so, we have looked closely at each stage of our Allstars’ career to see how best to leverage technology and use data," Bhatia said. AirAsia refers to its employees as Allstars.
For his part, Rob Wells, president for Asia at Workday, said all the data stored in his company's cloud technology are secured.
"Security is essential," Wells said. "You have people's salary stored there".
Moving forward, he said his company will be working closely with AirAsia in its journey to transform its employee experience and maintain its position as one of Asia’s largest and leading low-cost airlines.
In the Philippines, the local unit of Southeast Asia's largest low-cost airline is now largely handled and owned by F&S Holdings Inc., owned by Lawmaker Michael Romero and his wife Sheila Romero.
It was earlier this month when the Romeros acquired additional shares in AirAsia Philippines, making them the single largest stockholder of Philippines AirAsia.
Rationalizing his investment, the 1-Pacman partylist representative said airlines is now a "booming industry" and that "the company is now becoming more profitable".
With the new ownership, the company finally sees its planned initial public offering (IPO) at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) taking off.
For this year, Philippines AirAsia is targeting to book P30 billion in revenues, which is 50 percent up from last year's revenues of P20.9 billion. It also expects to return to profitability with a net income of about P2 billion from a net loss of P2.9 billion.
To be specific, the Romeros acquired 13 percent shares and 15.8 percent shares of AAI from Ambassador Aldredo Yao and AAI Chairperson Marianne Hontiveros, respectively.
TNR Holdings, owned by Antonio "Tonyboy Cojuangco, still owns 15.7 percent shares of AAI, while the balance of 40 percent is still held by Malaysian billionaires and Air Asia Berhad founders Tony Fernandes and Kamarudin Menardum.