“We want to be world class in aviation industry people policies.”

Q) For the consecutive 9 years you have been on the list of best places to work for. What has been the strategy?

We call our employees -- our internal customers.  

Like we think highly of our customer, our priority is to attract customer, we also have priority of serving the people who work with us. 

The story began, eight years back with 2000 employees. Now we have 15,000 employees. We have grown phenomenally and we are still able to get this award year after year. The credit goes to the strategy of the employee engagement, creating satisfaction among employees and creating happiness quotient among employees.

Q) A few years back, aviation job was one of the most insecure job. Are there any disruptive HR policy that you have made to retain and attract the best talent?

The company has to be very receptive for new ideas from people, so the policies that we come out with are also lot comes from people themselves. The goal is not about just being the best in the aviation but being the best across the industries. We want to be world class in aviation industry people policies.

Q) Which are the disruptive HR policies that you have coined in the recent past?

Flexi-flying is a unique example of you know what we brought in as a practice at IndiGo Flexi-flying option allows pilots and cabin crew to opt for reward patterns they like the best and choose between more monetary compensation and more time-off. No other company in India has brought it. Infact, globally also, not many companies have been able to bring it.

Q) What triggered the introduction of that policy?

So we thought that, when we talk about work life balance, how can we bring that work life balance in crew, cockpit crew and cabin crew and when we interacted with the crew members during some pilot dinners, we got an idea that they are looking for different leave patterns, different work hours which can help them balance their personal goals with the flying job that they have. So IndiGo introduced flying patterns, leave patterns for cockpit crew as well as the leads in the cabin crew.

Q) You boast of high participation of women at Indigo. Which are the unique policies to assist them?

Under the latest maternity benefit schemes, corporates have to add crèche at workplaces. IndiGo was the first one to bring in crèche not only at this offices but also at training centers, at head office, at corporate office in Gurgaon but also at the airport. No other airline has ever thought about bringing the crèche at airport .So before this came as a law, we opened our first crèche at the airport.

Q) With the increasing competition in the industry with coming of new airlines there must have been a lot of poaching attempts in the past?

That’s a very short sighted way of looking at things.  The idea is, people should stay with you when they have options. You cannot fence in people. In us they find that here is an  employer who has stuck through and delivered all the promises its ever made through the toughest of times in industry, in Indian economy. We never delayed salaries, we never retrenched employees. The first time we got the recognition of best company to work for, we were 1100 employees. Today we are close to 15000 employees and we still get the same recognition. So the complexity changes, the number of people has swelled by 15 times. Yet we continue to be the best company to do work for, in India. In brief, strategy is that we are a young company, attracting a lot of young talent. We understand, it is about giving your people a chance to fulfill their personal dreams too despite of being in a hectic profession.