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From fostering purpose-driven work to championing employee wellbeing, the team at Changi Airport Group shares its blueprint for creating exceptional experiences through a thriving workforce.
Changi Airport Group (CAG), a global leader in aviation, attributes its operational success to a singular belief: its people are its most valued asset.
The team recently won two gold awards in two categories at the HR Excellence Awards 2024, Singapore:
- Excellence in Employer Branding, and
- Excellence in CSR Strategy
In this interview with HRO, CAG delves into the innovative strategies behind its acclaimed HR practices, the challenges overcome on its journey to excellence, and the vision driving its award-winning people strategy, all of which are part of the organisation's goal to ensure its employees find purpose, engagement, and growth while delivering magical experiences to travellers worldwide.
Q What was the motivation that sparked your passion & business case for pursuing your outstanding people strategy?
We are motivated by our People, the most valued asset of CAG. They are critical to our success as one of the world’s best airports. For this reason, our People strategy is firmly anchored on Terminal H – the Heartware of our organisation. There are several aspects to this.
First, we foster a vibrant and open workplace culture, where employees find purpose in their work and thrive through continuous learning. We strongly believe that exceptional people create extraordinary experiences. Armed with the right purpose and skillsets, employees can deliver that world-class service emblematic of Changi, making every experience magical for our passengers.
Second, we are committed to ensuring employees feel valued and have a deep sense of belonging to the company. We pour effort into our employee well-being and engagement initiatives to make them meaningful. Through our corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, we create opportunities for employees to bond and give back to society as a team.
As we build CAG into the most innovative airport company, it is our mission to help our employees grow together, as creators of extraordinary experiences. With this in mind, we also invite top talents who embody passion, imagination and creativity in their pursuit of excellence to ‘Come Make MAGIC with Us.
Q Looking back, can you share a challenge that you overcame in your journey of HR excellence? How did you triumph?
Finding one’s ‘Purpose’ at work is central to our employee engagement strategy. Key to supporting that is our CSR programme. In an employee poll, an overwhelming majority (99%) of our CSR volunteers shared that they felt a greater affinity to CAG and its role in the community through our CSR activities. Thus, the importance of CSR in helping our colleagues develop a sense of purpose at work cannot be overstated.
Nonetheless, our CSR journey was not without challenges. One example was how to reduce barriers of entry for volunteering. Work commitments, differing philanthropic interests, lack of know-hows of colleagues were some of the challenges that our team aimed to resolve.
To encourage participation, we implemented a ‘different strokes for different folks’ approach where we curated a suite of volunteer opportunities based on our colleagues’ preferences and competencies. For example, volunteers could choose to volunteer for events-based programmes (e.g., packing food donations), services-based programmes (e.g. mentoring special needs youths), or skills-based programmes (e.g., job upskilling of special needs artists). This ensures that there is ‘something for everyone’ who is willing to take the bold step of volunteering.
"With this strategy, we surpassed our 2023 volunteerism targets by over 50% to achieve 3,767 volunteer hours – our highest since 2010!"
The success highlights the impact we can make when we work with our employees to understand their volunteering aspirations and address their challenges. By lowering the barriers to volunteer, we create a deeper sense of purpose to the work at CAG.
Q Beyond the recognition, what impact do you hope your feature in the HR Excellence Awards would have on the HR community and manpower landscape?
Thriving and engaged employees form the bedrock of a company’s success. We hope that we can create awareness amongst the HR community and other organisations that employee wellbeing and employee engagement are key metrics to how well an organisation performs.
Changi Airport’s success as one of the world’s best airports is a direct result of our relentless pursuit of operational excellence. In this journey to be the best, it is crucial for us to also look after our employees’ wellbeing so that they may be able to perform consistently at a high level to deliver magical experiences for our customers.
Building on the success of our employee wellbeing initiatives, we are also equally committed to pursuing other parallel strategies – such as CSR – to further strengthen our employee engagement. This enables our employees to find a greater sense of purpose and belonging at work.
By sharing our story, we hope to encourage other organisations to foster environments that value meaning and fulfilment at work, ultimately driving a more holistic approach to HR practices.
Q Could you share some advice you would give to others aspiring to follow in your footsteps?
At CAG, we believe that there are three key attributes for a successful HR strategy in an organisation.
- Ability to align passion & purpose: It is important for HR to work with leaders to navigate change and inspire confidence in the organisation's future. Most importantly, we need to define and communicate the company’s unique value proposition for employees to find meaning and purpose in their work. In 2023, we launched our new employer brand, Come Make MAGIC with Us. It aligns with our internal branding, We Make Magic, and the #IMCAG hashtag (an anagram of MAGIC), speaks directly to our employees who are making ‘magic’ happen in every aspect of our business through innovation. The new brand message, widely communicated at organisation-wide events, reinforces our employees’ sense of purpose and instils pride, while attracting like-minded talents. The brand campaign received resounding positive feedback and resulted in 94% of surveyed employees reporting a strong sense of belonging to CAG.
- Ability to engage employees: We place great emphasis on employee engagement. One of which is our CSR strategy, which reflects our commitment to creating social impact with our employees. Through our tailored CSR programmes, cross-departmental volunteer opportunities, and active check-ins with our stakeholders, we help our employees find meaning and purpose in the work they do at CAG and understand how it connects with the wider community that we serve.
- Ability to build a learning organisation: In our dynamic workforce and evolving aviation industry, we see the importance of developing our employees’ growth mindset to enable them to learn, un-learn, and re-learn. Digital upskilling has been a key focus over the past few years, as we prepare our employees to be future-ready. At the same time, to continue delivering exceptional outcomes, we ensure our people are growing and developing as leaders. This is done through our in-house leadership development programmes held at regular intervals throughout the year.
At the end of the day, cultivating a strong purpose, an engaged mind, and a heart to learn are the key ingredients to empowering our workforce. It will enable our people to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape.
Q Let's talk inspiration! Who has been a driving force behind your success?
Our success is driven by our exceptional employees, who innovate and pursue excellence in their respective fields. Pride, passion, and persistence are the defining traits of every CAG employee. They consistently seek improvement and strive to serve our customers better. Their creativity, imagination and resilience enable them to deliver outstanding experiences at Changi Airport and CAG.
We are also backed by a supportive leadership team, who often lead by example. For example, they would never hesitate to go out of their way to help a passenger who may look lost or pick up a piece of litter on our terminal floors. They are also highly accessible through formal and informal platforms. This creates an open culture at CAG where ideas flow freely and innovation is enabled.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
Photo: Provided
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