International airline streamlines cabin crew operations, reduces costs with mobile employee-engagement app

Streamlined scheduling, better security

Domingo estimates that employees previously spent an average of five hours, including travel time, to request a single shift exchange. Because cabin crew spend their working hours in the air or abroad, they had to submit schedule requests on their days off, when they would rather recover from jet lag. 

To address the issue, Philippine Airlines created a custom action card in Kaizala. In this card, employees can offer up shifts they wish to exchange. This information goes to a Microsoft SharePoint site accessible to all cabin crew members. At a glance, they can see available shifts and suggest trades. Once a shift exchange is completed and approved by management, both employees receive notifications that reflect their new schedules. Employees who adopted the solution saw an increase in available hours on their days off, and they expressed a sharp reduction in anxiety thanks to the reliability they now had in their upcoming work schedules. 

Not only does this save employees much of their free time, it also eases working conditions and congestion at the head office in Manila. Once implemented, the solution proved so efficient that Kaizala began to eliminate an unmanaged IT solution in use at the airline. 

“Employees had started an online chat group to initiate their own shift exchanges,” says Domingo. “Philippine Airlines had no visibility into the group and no control over its membership.” This presented a security concern for the airline, as previous employees could remain in the group and gain privileged scheduling information. Thanks to the efficiency gains introduced through Kaizala, employees have shunned this solution, choosing to work within the company-managed app environment instead. The switch to Kaizala also assures that Philippine Airlines maintains full ownership of its data. Microsoft has no claim on the data the airline houses in Kaizala. The same could not be said for the unmanaged group. 

With action cards and notifications covering both ends of cabin crew scheduling assignments, use of Kaizala grew quickly. The app was launched for cabin crew members in March of 2018. Within months, usage grew to 50 percent, without any mandate from the airline. Once the schedule exchange action card became available, usage spiked again—this time to nearly 100 percent of cabin crew employees, all in under a year. 

“Once we saw usage climbing, we developed Kaizala as a one-stop app for our cabin crews,” says Domingo. “We added a scheduling suggestion box and a Microsoft 365 action card for broader functionality. We are also currently exploring an employee training action card and an ‘appreciation card’ that will highlight positive employee-customer interactions.” 

Reduced costs, increasing employee satisfaction

The success of Kaizala with cabin crew employees did not go unnoticed at Philippine Airlines. The app’s notification features are already driving similar success among the company’s pilots and catering employees. The Security department has begun exploring how it can make use of the solution for its own workers. 

As use of Kaizala expands, so will the savings. By moving the crew schedule exchange system to Kaizala, the airline has seen a reduction of 400 sheets of paperwork a day. The streamlined process has also eliminated a layer of approval by an administrative officer, freeing up extra working hours at the administrative office. Phasing out the courier system, still in use due to current union regulation, could generate a monthly savings of USD6,700. Domingo also sees a connection between the airline’s recently acquired four-star rating and the use of Kaizala. “A large part of the SKYTRAX rating is our customers’ experience,” says Domingo. “And when you’ve got a happier, more rested crew, you’ve got happier customers. Through Kaizala, we’ve achieved just that.”

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