Cleared for Takeoff: How Strategic Change Management Ensured a Smooth Preferential Bidding System Rollout
Business Challenge
Photo credit: Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
In the dynamic and competitive aviation industry, seamless operations are crucial for success. When a landmark collective bargaining agreement was reached between a major North American airline and the pilot union, the integration of their pilot scheduling systems was essential to ensure efficient and accurate scheduling, which is vital for maintaining operational reliability, optimizing crew utilization, and minimizing delays and disruptions.
Approach
Forum Solutions was engaged to develop and execute a change management strategy for a new, combined pilot preferential bidding system (PBS) designed to enhance scheduling efficiency, pilot autonomy and reliability as well as unifying the two distinct collective bargaining entities from the acquired and acquiring airlines.
As the new bidding process for PBS would be more complex than the previous process, an in-depth change management strategy was needed to enable a successful launch. Additionally, effectively engaging and training pilots, who operate as a 'deskless workforce,' presented an additional challenge. To establish and implement the change strategy, we took the following actions:
99%
Of pilots successfully submitted a bid in the first month of launch.
Collaborated with key leaders within the client and pilot unions to develop, validate, and execute a change management strategy designed to effectively engage the pilot workforce.
Identified key promoters and business communication norms to influence change within the organization such as local on-site leaders across geographical areas, monthly all-pilot calls, and targeted emails ensuring a variety of communication channels were enabled.
Partnered with Pilot SMEs to deploy extensive training curriculum and collateral including; 75 user guides, instructional videos, handouts, posters and FAQs to support training and distributed those at on site PBS information desks, pilot’s offices, and virtually online where appropriate.
Created and launched three mock bidding rounds to increase pilot’s confidence in system usage and ensure high adoption during the go live.
Enabled a support network of pilots to provide on-base support throughout mock bidding rounds and go live.
Outcomes
97% of pilots participated in all 3 optional mock bidding rounds.
Over 4,600 support interactions provided pilots with one-on-one training and troubleshooting throughout the 3 mock bidding rounds and the initial month of real bidding.
Delivery of training and mock bidding exercises increased self-reported confidence of bidding by 52% for all pilots and 84% for pilots with no previous PBS experience.
Over 99% of pilots successfully submitted a bid in the first month of the live launch.
User feedback indicated “The PBS training material provided was superb and the support team was amazing. Thank you for taking me from 0 to 100 in an efficient timeframe.”
“The PBS training material provided was superb and the support team was amazing. Thank you for taking me from 0 to 100 in an efficient timeframe.”
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