The 2019 ACI World Human Resource Forum in Hong Kong, China, had as its main theme this year the Digitization of Human Resources: Challenges and opportunities.
The central goal of the Human Resource (HR) Forum is for committee members from the ACI membership to provide guidance information and best practices to address the latest key issues airport HR leaders are facing, such as:
Given the importance and implications of managing people and associated data, in many airports, HR is becoming the central unit that coordinates and orchestrates digital transformation. As a result, the role of the HR professionals is expanded beyond talent acquisition and management, to evolve into a more strategic approach to the employee experience span from information architecture to employee well-being.
During this session, we had a panel discussion that provided regional perspectives and insights on the role of digitization and its impact on current HR trends in the airport industry for North America, Africa, Europe and Asia. These perspectives were moderated by Kevin Caron, Director, Capacity Building Programmes, ACI World, with a very distinguished panel of experts who represented these regions:
At the end of this session, there were many key takeaways from the panel discussion on the use of digitized HR plaforms:
In quoting Justina Tan, in summation, digitalization for airport HR professionals have to make “business sense” and provide real value for the organization. Digitalization should not be undertaken for digitalization sake. It should meet at least three minimum criteria:
In the following session, Ali Al Eisri, Learning & Development Senior Manager, Oman Airports, also delivered an insightful presentation on how their Airport HR professional used an online competency-based framework designed on a digital platform that allows them to directly link each job within Oman Airports to the competencies required for that position.
This very interactive session allowed the audience to see a live version of the online competency framework designed specifically by and for Oman Airports and the interface between the employee and manager to build an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for each employee within the organization.This system provides the organization with data driven metrics that can be used by the manager to make the right decisions to address any identified performance gaps and have a positive impact on performance management, professional development, succession planning and career development.
As per Ali Al Esri, he stated that Oman Airports invested heavily in creating competency profiles as it will assist in employee retention, develop employees for succession plan and create a learning organization through many learning interventions, such as e-learning, coaching and work place projects just to name a few.
Gale LaRoche also provided a presentation on one of the main issues affecting all airports, which is the need to attract and recruit qualified, talented professionals in the digital era. As digitalization permeates all aspects of our lives on a daily basis, airports need to adapt to use new recruiting tools and platforms to aid them in selecting the next generation of airport professionals as well as embrace this new approach that can lead to a whole new world of possibilities for organizational success.
At the end of the session, the audience were invited to participate in a group exercise led by Danielle Michel, Director, Membership Services for ACI Europe. In this exercise, the audience were broken into four different working groups that would each look at the challenges that digitalization may bring for the new recruitment of airport professionals.
Each group at the end of the session delivered a presentation which made for a rich learning experience.
I want to thank all the contributors for making this HR Forum such a great success and provide such great insight and information for our members.