How Is Air-Asia Providing A Comforting Journey To Its Women Employees?
1. Briefly explain as to what according to you has been the status of women on the CXO level in the aviation industry.
I think recently, the airlines were in light when we had a woman CEO come in; Harpreet A De Singh. Now, other than that, at CXO level, I am not much aware of, however, one level down there, there's a lot of scope for more women to be there, especially when I speak about our organisation, we do have women that people report to. The Head of our Cabin Crew is a lady, our Head of Customer Happiness is also a lady, and we have several women here across sectors, there are a good number of women all around in the aviation industry.
2. Aviation as an industry, and a career choice is dynamic, and riddled with opportunities as well as challenges.What would your advice be to potentials who would like to join the field?
You know, the answer depends on many different things round. In the aviation industry, for women, you can see them as pilots, or the crew, ground crew, engineers. Plus, we are there in the non-flying teams as well. It is a dynamic space, and it changes everyday. If you are to get into this space, then you have to love the space. So literally, you know that if you are okay with being energised all the time, this is the place for you. Every day is exciting, there's a new challenge which comes your way. So whatever level you are at, this space is very, very fluid. So you have to be somebody who loves the change every single day.
3. How welcoming is the aviation industry when it comes to women?
Things are very different now. You know, we are very proud of the fact that we do have a good diversity ratio. So I'm always looking to add on more to it. And I think where we need to be concerned, we need to do that. Across all functions, so to speak, there is a whole drive to create equal opportunity for all, and get in more diversity, as much as we can. So I think lot of forerunners in the beginning have to really fight for their space. From this century onwards, it's been much much better. Even with pilots, I think we do have the highest diversity ratio in the industry and the country. The highest number of women pilots in our organization.
4. How is the Aviaiton working upon the policies for those women who wish to rejoin after a break or sabbatical?
That is one challenge which remains everywhere. I think for the most part, more companies are more open and accommodating of the fact that women will have more responsibilities at home. For us also, we are mindful of the fact we there have been instances where our PR head just had twins and a year ago, and we are mindful of how much flexibility can we afford to her and how much more easy we can make it for her to work. Right. And anyway, last year was work from home, so it adds on to that. And additionally, I think there have been cases where we have extended maternity leaves as well. So, as far as possible, not to say that we've done a great job, there's always hope to do more and more, but the aim is to make it very easy. And when you HR is a lady herself, so I think there's more thought which goes into it. And I clearly remember one team wherein we were getting trainers on, this lady who has just delivered three days ago, she wanted to be part of this training programme. And she kept insisting and she told me, “Look Tanu, it is okay, I'm at home, my mother-in-law says, she will look after the baby.” And my boss said, “No way, just step out and step away, spend time with your babies, spend time with yourself, nothing goes away. Come back six months later, you still want to do the training thing with us, do it.” So, I think, you know, having women at that place, somehow, you know, the funny part was the men were like “We really love the fact that she’s up for a challenge” but it takes a lady to understand that those six months, you will need to give to your home, to your baby and to yourself. It's great that you're up for the challenge, but give yourself that time because later on, you will realise that you needed it. So I think we make every possible effort to make sure that you know, mothers’ working, great, they need the break. When they come back, they're ready and refreshed to go. So whatever we can do we try our best to do it.
5. What according to you are the few things that leaders in L&D sphere need to know, when it comes to a woman leading it? I'm going to keep the emphasis as woman because at a certain level, we see that, you know, yes, the companies are welcoming them in at different levels. But when it comes to CXO levels, they aren't still that welcoming.
I am a little bit in disagreement there. And I think this is a question of competency. If there are not enough people, and if there are not enough women in that role, maybe it is a question about skills. Women who have it are there. The case in point is what I talked about at the beginning of the sentence. So it's just a question of competence., and skilling. And, and for women who are in the L&D space, especially where we are, I think our aim is to drive L&D strategies in a way wherein we take into account diversity, we try and create learning strategies, which will work for each and every one so that you're constantly skilling, upskilling yourself, in line with what the business requires. So I wouldn’t differentiate too much there, as to what am I planning for the men or what am I planning for women? It's a job that requires skill and they need to have it. I think all L&D strategy doesn't look at it that way. We just look at what are mandatory skills? What are the developmental skills that you need to look at? And also how can I make your learning more sustainable, that you're able to continuously devote time to yourself. So what we do keep in mind for us, as a very young organisation, a lot of learning is learning on the go. We have lot of young crew who are around, and we try and make sure that learning comes to you in the form of an app, you can do it in your own time at your own pace. Like that is what we can keep in mind, which I don't think we have thought it from a gender perspective.
6. The importance of skilling was realized during the pandemic. What are the initiatives and policies that AirAsia renders to its employees to upskill and reskill themselves?
This is a topic that is very close to my heart, so allow me some time to elaborate. So, almost a year right, March, when the lockdown happened. And our 1700 frontliners were suddenly disrupted. For us, rostering for training is something which can be very challenging when people are in operations. And everybody has a mobile, and everyone is on their mobile, we do not see them on their laptop. And one of the best things which our CEO did, was when he said “You know what, this is a good time. This is a good time for learning to scale up.” He used to often use this Winston Churchill quote, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Let’s just use this time. So within a day, we turned all our learning programs digital. We got in existing trainers, and customer centricity was a big thing for us, so we went all out. What would have taken us nine months to cover, in a month, 1700 frontliners were trained in customer centricity, whether it was all our crew, all our ground ops. So that was one thing, which was a huge thing that we were able to pull off. We were locked in. So it worked very, very well to our advantage, and this was also a time when we could add more learning in terms of communication and the customer training which they needed. Plus our own mandatory learning on the Tata Code of Conduct, and POSH. We could do this across the organisation, we did it for just about everyone because this where we could really push learning right through and we measured it. That was the best part, we had dashboards to record how many people were taking or not, and you'd be surprised to know, we logged in something like 2.42 lakhs training hours in the months of April and May. And we recorded that. And other than that what's happened also was, it was a time to look at all our SOPs and taking it down to every level. Because when you start flying in May again, you know the world has changed. So even for crew, when to get out there, and you're wearing a mask and you’re realising that, what you're saying, you could be saying a little louder than usual, and you can be perceived as rude. How do I change that? So the training and everything changed in that context. Your eyes have to do the talking because you are wearing a mask, and wearing a shield, and how do you still be customer focused in spite of all of that. Because they can just see your eyes. And so you know, everything changed in that, and this time really gave us the time to prepare for, what would you call it, the new normal, so to speak. We did that even for our pilots, and Air Asia was the first airline to get the approval from the DGCA to conduct online recurrent training. Something like this has never been done before all, all pur pilots were trained virtually. This was a time which was used for skilling, re skinning, revisiting SOPs, and generally just moving on, after learning new things, so to speak. And the other thing that we also did was a new concept which we introduced, which came from one of the large groups which we adopted, we had our own crew with ground ops and security, people who are experts in what they do. We trained them to train others. This was one way of creating a culture of continuous learning. We call them certified. And this is a concept which is taken out very well. And by the end of the month, we have about 90 odd internal training. And this all came about because of the lockdown, because you know, it got us thinking in many different ways as to how do we skill, reskill and take it away and create a sustainable living.
7. In acareer spanning decades,what have been your greatest takeaways from the industry and from individuals that you have closely worked with?
One thing, of course, was the fact that you had to do it all yourself. We usually have so much help around the house.
And then when you're at home and your family is at home, and everybody is getting into Zoom calls, and you want to be free by 10 o'clock, there's a lot of stuff that you have to learn to do it yourself. And I think this was a learning for me, because it's like, you know, there's no choice, you’ve got to do it yourself. Like DIY thing was like a big learning for me, and I want something, there's no one coming to help.So you just have to manage your time and put out time to do it. And that's one thing which I learnt, which is the challenge which I initially faced, but I learned to do it. And then the other thing which I saw, interestingly was, you know, when the lockdown started to open up, there was a lot of negativity and a lot of fights regarding this on the society groups, which would come up somehow. And some are scared when we get house helps in and will be exposing ourselves to danger.
So there were a lot of confusion happening. And yet at the same time this migrant crisis is happening, migrants are going back. We are very close to the Yelahanka police station. And surprisingly, I think the whole society got together overnight, for like a whole week. So we were all still finding time to cook together and know somebody who's organising it, and putting it into disposable bags, and we were waiting there with the bags to give food because there was a time when we realised how much more people are suffering. You know, and the whole society which has
decided to come together. So that was a wonderful turnaround. You know, there are things which hold us together, eventually the small little things don't really matter. That is one good thing.
So we do have a little little, what do you call it most talks in the in the groups, but when big issues come up, societies just run together.
8. And when it comes to giving a piece of advice to young candidates who are approaching to be a part of this industry, then what would that be? Is there something new, which you're looking for in a candidate when you're hiring them. Is it something that you're looking at one point that should be constant across all levels?
I look for attitude. We look for somebody who is excited about learning excited about the kind of space we are in, who wants to keep trying out new things. They're very open to having people you don't get any, you know, getting to a certain role but also willing to explore to get into another function. So we look for attitude here. And that is the key thing. You know, your skills may be great, your qualifications may be fabulous. But if you don't have the right attitude, you know, everything else falls flat. So literally it is all about the kind of attitude you bring to work or your kind of attitude you go to interview when you're looking for a job. So I don't even need to look at that when we are looking to get into the space, which is very fluid. If you're looking for a very regimented, very strict timelines and things like that. You have a chance to deal with it and grow. If people are not able to do that they should not consider it.
9. What are the kind of new age and existing skill sets individuals innovations need to equip themselves?
Okay, so new a skill that humans digitalization, I think that even those who are not tech savvy, had to get into the in the in the becoming to digitalization, it's not really for us. In terms of existence, I guess focus for us remains primary. And we can always always build on that because services are important. The other thing I feel is innovative.
Okay, okay, the years has taught you that in one way doesn't work, you go into the other and you can fly enough number of passengers and start flying cargo. So you have to keep thinking on your feet, how to, you know, make sure that your business is all about planning. And so I'm innovating my services.
And everything, even in learning how to innovate, remain completely a giant, so to speak, right? We just don't even into a digital world without being prepared for it.
Any10. case studies that you would want to share as an example of Air Asia’s programmes and initiatives taken for employees from lesser privileged backgrounds and their significant achievements?
So like I was sharing we do have a lot of scenarios where people who have dared to dream have been able to live. Grabbing somebody and showing them, there's a lady who joined in as a certain role, we have enough people who joined in different departments a marketing something that they wanted to be pilot, and they have got offices now you're not an account, but you have a dream and you have we want to make it easy for you. And we have done that. And other than that we are also part of the Tata Group. So there's a lot of changes that we do there, you know, work towards the underprivileged, also. So I think there was a lot of voluntary work that goes towards uplifting ideas that we've been avoiding that is very possible. And the organisation as a whole is also pitched in towards these kind of voluntary and I think one of them coming to my mind is the 1000 stories within all of us, recording stories for funding, which we had done, that's coming to my mind.
I mean, you'll get anywhere on natural people to say something else that you would want to add to what I've just caused, I mean, what's existing already.
