March 4, 2009

Go to page: 1 2 3  

Printer Friendly Version

In the airline industry, where change is the only constant, effective internal communication is vital. In late 2007, after realizing its existing intranet was creating a communication bottleneck, Qantas Group airline, Jetstar, implemented Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) with the aim of passing ownership of the intranet from the IT department into the hands of the broader business.

Launched in mid 2008, the project has been a resounding success, with the intranet widely regarded as the "source of truth" by those whose opinions matter most -- Jetstar's employees. Adoption and usage of the intranet is close to 100 percent of Jetstar's almost 3,000 employees and contract staff, in just the fourth month of go-live.

Client profile

Jetstar is a value-based, low-fares airline whose mission is to give more people the opportunity to fly more often by offering consistently lower fares. A fully owned subsidiary of Qantas Airways, Jetstar has tripled in size since its launch in May 2004 and has ambitions to grow ten-fold by 2011. It plans to operate a fleet of more than 100 aircraft inside the next decade.

As both a domestic and international carrier, Jetstar's 3,000-strong direct and indirect workforce including pilots, cabin crew, airport staff, engineers, and head office personnel are geographically dispersed across the Asia Pacific region. With two thirds of the company's workforce not office based and continuously on the move, effective communication is both a priority and a challenge for Jetstar -- in particular within a rapidly growing business within an ever changing commercial and economic dynamic.

Communication challenge

In late 2007, Jetstar recognized it needed a more flexible and robust intranet solution that would allow for free-flowing communication and position it for growth. Jeff Martin, IT Project Manager for Jetstar, recalls: "We had simply grown up as a business and were starting to experience limitations in being able to communicate what we wanted when we wanted."

This communication bottleneck was a result of Jetstar's original intranet being designed using open source software which made it heavily dependent on IT's involvement at every juncture. "Even the weekly e-newsletter needed IT's involvement, which made such simple tasks both time consuming and expensive," Martin explained.

Jetstar wanted an intranet solution that was non IT centric, easy to use and that would always be accessible to its highly mobile workforce. It also desired an Intranet with a useable interface for its workforce to better present key corporate and operational information in a more interesting, user friendly way through to providing working tools and information that made day to day working life easier for its multiple users.

The specific goals for the new intranet were to:

Make life easier for pilots, cabin crew, and airport staff to build a more efficient workplace;

Move from paper based forms into the online world to save costs and improve efficiency;

Make it easy to find employee contact details across a geographically dispersed workforce;

Promptly update staff with important corporate and staff communications; and

Take IT out of the loop for publishing content and move the function to the carrier's Corporate Communications Department.

The business case

Martin conducted extensive research into intranet best practice and with the support of the Project Sponsor, Simon Westaway -- General Manager of Corporate Relations -- developed a business case centred on achieving efficient communications that meant staff would have ready access to accurate information at all times.

Go to page: 1 2 3  

Printer Friendly Version