Helping Careers Take Flight for Greater Employee Engagement

Business Case

CAG’s people have always been at the core of its business since it was corporatised in 2009. Fair and progressive employment practices allow CAG to attract, develop and retain top talent to make Changi Airport the best in the world. In particular, CAG has worked to ensure clear communication across the organisation and develop its talent to be resilient.

Featured Fair and Progressive Employment Practices

• Holistic developmental programmes, spanning across leadership, data literacy, digital skills, etc
• Growth Mindset Workshops – inculcating a growth mindset in every employee
• Regular town halls and In.Touch – communicating information across the organisation
• Upskilling and transformation of our people such as the Airside Professional Shift Team programme, Integrated Facilities Management, etc
• Regular employee engagement surveys, to obtain views from colleagues to improve the work environment

Implementation

Providing opportunities for employees to develop is an important part of CAG’s commitment to fair and progressive employment practices, which are enabled by its middle managers. CAG has also worked to ensure important information reaches every one of its employees.

Facilitating Career Development through Upskilling and a Growth Mindset

Recognising talent development as a business priority, CAG offers a diverse array of growth and development opportunities to all its employees to equip them with the right capabilities.

Beyond functional training programmes undertaken by the various departments, CAG regularly curates developmental offerings to prepare employees for the digital future of work through courses on topics relating to data literacy/analytics, low code programming, etc.

CAG has also implemented the Airside Professional Shift Team transformation programme, which involves redesigning job scopes and enhancing the skillsets of airside officers through upskilling and multiskilling. Through a six-month training programme, airside officers undergo training covering topics such as airport regulations and safety, contingency as well as emergency management. This broadens their responsibilities from being narrowly skilled and task-based, to being empowered with technical and analytical know-how to take charge of the entire airside and backend operations of the airport. So far, 98 per cent of incumbent workers have completed the programme.

Besides equipping employees with the right skills, CAG recognises the value of inculcating a growth mindset. Every employee goes through a growth mindset workshop to learn how to identify and change fixed mindsets to help them grow and innovate. 

Equipping People Managers as Enablers

While senior management sets the tone for a fair and progressive workplace, middle managers are roped in to help enable the relevant practices. Employees go through leadership development programmes whenever they take on new people-managing responsibilities. Various customised programmes are also put in place to align CAG leaders with the company’s people-first culture and to equip them with the know-how to handle people-related issues.

People managers are trained to manage performance and career-related matters to ensure they are able to take performance and career conversations well. CAG also adopts the “many eyes” approach for performance assessment, where a panel of leaders, rather than one supervisor, endorses an employee’s performance to ensure objective standards across the board.

Building Two-way Communication Channels

For CAG, clear and timely communication is a top priority. It holds regular town halls – one at the start of the year and another in the middle – to share organisation plans and take questions from employees. CAG also has its own social media platform, In.Touch, where employees can post about their lives and work. Airport-wide happenings and company notifications are regularly relayed through the platform too.

CAG is also committed to active listening – through the annual Employee Engagement Survey and adhoc pulse surveys, staff feedback is reviewed by senior leaders, who are expected to set concrete action plans. Such action plans are incorporated into departmental workplans, to be worked on by line leaders.

Communication became a challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic when most employees started working remotely. In response, CAG quickly pivoted online. Virtual town halls, EDMs and In.Touch became key lines of communication, ensuring that employees still heard from and were heard by senior management

Outcomes

The implementation of fair and progressive employment practices has enabled CAG to reap benefits such as maintaining an overall attrition level at a low single-digit percentage since corporatisation and improving its employee engagement from around 70 per cent in 2020 to 80+ per cent in 2023. Changi Airport has consistently been among the top airports in the world, earning more than 670 awards to date – a testament to how a fair and progressive workplace can contribute to company excellence.