The recent Passenger Terminal Expo (PTE) in Frankfurt shed light on the strides being made to enhance the passenger experience at airports. From digital transformation to architectural advances, the focus remains intensely targeted toward creating smoother and more enjoyable journeys for us, the travelers.
“At last!”, I hear many of the frequent flyers cry. But although it is not before time that the passenger experience gets an overhaul, something struck me after my week in Frankfurt. Where was the same focus on airport workers – the ones who have an instrumental role in the passenger journey?
Parallel flight paths
Back to my role as a frequent traveler for a moment. As someone with a nerdy obsession with airport ecosystems, I can get quite excited about streamlined security processes, the enhanced ambiance in waiting areas, the choice of food and the digital tools being used to make the traveling experience enjoyable. And that’s before all the backstage enhancements in baggage handling and ground operations.
These improvements are aimed not only at making air travel more pleasant but also at increasing efficiency and reducing operational costs. Yet this passenger-centric focus often overlooks the parallel needs of airport employees – the very people required to make these environments function.
In his 2022 paper The Future of Airport Workforce, Sami Abu Hmeidan cited several challenges facing airports, ranging from regaining trust as predictable and stable employers post-Covid to increased environmental scrutiny and changing preferences toward remote/flexible working – a proposition difficult to deliver on for an ecosystem requiring a lot of hands and feet on the ground.
The perception of the current airport work environment as challenging and stressful is often true: irregular and demanding shift work disrupting normal life routines, physically and mentally stressful tasks, exposure to harsh weather conditions and loud noises and more.
Additionally, let’s not forget the frontline and customer service staff managing high-stress interactions with frustrated travelers grappling with situations often beyond their control. As travelers, we know how demanding we can be, and dealing with us requires strong communication skills and emotional resilience. It is not a job for the faint-hearted.
It’s the experience, stupid
So, while passengers are beginning to enjoy a seamless and increasingly comfortable journey through the airport, employees face a different reality. They often contend with outdated systems, insufficient staffing levels and a lack of support that could make their jobs more manageable and their work environment more pleasant. This, of course, is going to have an impact on the passenger experience.
Airports are a special kind of ecosystem. One of the more complex challenges they face in improving employee experience is catering to not only their employees but also to all employees on their premises. Many individuals working within the airport environment, such as restaurant staff, coffee shop baristas and border patrol agents, are not directly employed by the airport but by third-party businesses and government agencies.
Turning the sum of all these parts into an experience pinnacle is a challenge, to say the least, and more often than not airport workers face a fragmented community where policies and benefits are inconsistent.
In addition to being employers, airports need to take on the role of meta-employers, adopting a holistic community-oriented approach that encompasses workers across the ecosystem, regardless of their direct employer, around a north star, a collective vision.
Employee experience (EX) has developed into a field of its own and has the power to unleash untapped potential in every organization, boosting business success and reducing costs at the same time. Rooted deeply in design methodology, EX uses a human-focused method of problem solving that prioritizes the solution instead of the problem.
When done well, it is inclusive and maps out the highs and lows of an employee’s journey with the organization, seeking to redesign the experience to meet the needs of employees and the business.
A great non-airport example is Airbnb. The platform’s 150 million users are encouraged to share their travel stories and reviews and form connections through their shared experiences in various destinations. In many ways, Airbnb’s brand values and experience lie in the hands of its hosts around the world. As such, it has spent considerable resources on building a hub for their hosts to share resources and tools, facilitate local host clubs and share user-generated content. For travelers and hosts, Airbnb works tirelessly “to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere”. So how can airports do the same?
A sense of belonging
As with all good relationships, it starts with being a good listener. It’s important to regularly gather feedback and create a consistent, repeatable process for finding out what challenges workers are facing.
Schedule open discussions to find out what’s on employees’ minds and share insights about what you see ahead. It may hurt a bit in the beginning, but if you genuinely invite honest feedback you will be surprised by the value this mix of quantitative and qualitative insights will give, and the opportunity spaces that open up for improving airport operations and the passenger and employee experience.
Even if not all airport workers are airport employees, the airport is where they commute to and from every day and, unless one is particularly masochistic, most people would prefer to have a workplace they enjoy going to. Enabling tools for airport workers to easily contribute to everyday improvements, from reporting broken fixtures to involving employees in the development and implementation of new technologies, is not only practical and beneficial but also boosts employee engagement and ownership of the process.
You then need a digital platform to enable the creation of this collaborative and engaged community. It is here where you can feed that community with information and resources and enable passionate employees to co-manage the community and point new colleagues to the community to facilitate its growth.
However, you need to make it worth the effort. Although creating a community of airport workers should not be transactional, it is part of human nature to need to belong. Offering exclusive experiences and benefits for airport workers is a surefire way to reward contributors across the ecosystem and creates a sense of belonging and exclusivity – encouraging interaction within the community and with the airport itself.
Investing in employee experience across the airport is not only about improving morale but also about enhancing operational efficiency. With relatively simple tools you can begin to address and, with some training, reveal patterns and anticipate employee needs before they arise.
It’s as simple as fostering a sense of community through joint events, shared resources and common spaces to help bridge the gaps between different employee groups across the airport and encourage a collaborative atmosphere where the focus extends beyond individual company goals to the collective success and well-being of the entire airport community.
As the ripple effects of the Covid-19 pandemic start to wear off, airport operators must clearly see the solid line between passenger satisfaction and employee experience, as one directly influences the other. Airports that recognize and act on this interdependence will not only improve their operational efficiency but continue to win over passengers and employees alike, resulting in increased engagement and well-being throughout the airport ecosystem – and an improved bottom line.
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