Attila Emam, Head of Talent, Learning & Culture, AirAsia says, “Skilling is very much part of our strategy.” He shares with us the three key things that are the core strategy for AirAsia during this crisis. These are pivoting, skilling & scaling. 

Pivoting 

We didn’t anticipate the COVID-19 crisis, but we really looked at the idea of pivoting well before in advance( 3 years ago) and we got moving in phases and accelerated last year. The finding says that is adding further impetus to our strategy. AirAsia is sitting on big assets of data and our pivoting in a nutshell implies that we are a digital company also running airlines. 

This captures the intent of where we are headed. The company’s 3.0 vision is in full acceleration, and we are spending arms in purchase, discovery, trip planning, and travel & lifestyle.

We have restructured ourselves in four pillars and hope it will provide right foundation to essentially what we are moving towards as travel and financial platform company.  

Skilling

The talent gaps in the region still remain. Out of the six key challenges that need to be tackled to build a thriving internet economy, talent still figures very much in the region. There is a hefty proportion of the employees that would require reskilling. It is crucial for us, we invested in people and got people on board from various backgrounds.

Emam added, “We have adopted ‘Dare to dream’ as one of our values and investing highly in people. Basically, we are turning rocks into diamonds.” The company’s programs and academies are helping employees to nurture themselves. For example- Dispatch boys and ramp boys are becoming first officers and future data analysts. All of this is happening because the company is providing them the opportunity. 

Scaling 

The company has partnered with Google to build a regional tech talent hub to provide tech leadership and innovation academy. Apart from upskilling and reskilling to build a tech ecosystem, it will help both tech and non-tech learners.

AirAsia is planning to tap 100,000 talent in Malaysia alone. These talents will work in different segments of the group. The graduates from the RedBeat academy which runs under Air Asia are likely to be deployed into different areas. 

The Talent and learning head emphasized on the importance of learning and why upgrading skills on a regular interval will always be important. He stressed that the company is committed to helping employees who want to broaden their horizons and extend their career paths.  

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