HR Shared Services Success for Air France

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SSON: What were the main challenges experienced by Air France Human Resources? 

Guillaume Laurent: The principal challenges affecting Air France Human Resources were most evident in the last couple of years:

1. Transitioning from a state-owned business to a company of common law (new statute regulations to conform to, in addition to other regulatory compliance measure
2. Establishing a Shared Services Center with 130 agents that manage 32,000 employees
3. Developing Self Service in the following sectors: time management, administrative management, and HR training

SSON: What stage is Air France at in creating a Global SSC?

GL: The HR SSC was created about 2 years ago, in 2007, to manage 32,000 employees. After 18 difficult months, we have now reached a stable point in its formation. As a result, we have been able to achieve productivity gains between 15 and 20%. Self Service has been a tremendous time-saver and a well-managed component of our SSC. We have been able to re-route basic human resource requests to various agent teams for greater time efficiencies. The employee can now feel more connected to our HR department, with confidence about treatment of his requests. Employee inquiries are treated with greater quality control, and time-management among agents has improved considerably.

SSON: What requirements did you have when looking to standardize services/processes in your SSC?

GL: The principal objectives we wanted to achieve in standardizing processes within our SSC were to:

1. Achieve productivity gains in simplifying processes and automating administrative, time-consuming HR agent tasks
2. Facilitate employer-employee communication through a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) system
3. Guarantee better case treatment (quality and accuracy of response within specified service-level agreements)
4. Improve salary management measures by instituting new methods unique to Air France

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SSON: What technology did you find necessary to enable your SSC processes?

GL: For Air France, it was imperative to have a technology solution to manage all employer-employee communications in our HR SSC. Before establishing a shared services environment, we had a much more manual process in place that was time-consuming and unable to scale according to need. Essentially, each HR agent had his respective group of employee files to manage, in which he had to be well-versed in all aspects of human resources. We realized that a call center and back office system would allow us to create specialized teams that could treat requests specific to respective areas of expertise. As it was difficult to develop a tool in-house, we began to search for a case management solution. This type of technology is now an integral part of the overall success of our HR SSC.

SSON: Why did Air France ultimately decide to select Neocase as the On-Demand solution provider?

GL: Neocase was a clear choice for Air France because the solution was offered in an On-Demand (SaaS) model, and was seamlessly adapted to a Human Resource Shared Services Center environment. We saw the immediate gains that could be possible with this type of tool in just a few demos, and realized little customization would be required. The quick time to implement, user-friendly interface and breadth/depth of features within the SaaS offering made Neocase our top choice.

SSON: What was involved in the Neocase customization and integration process within the department?

GL: Air France was able to deploy in a few months and agent training lasted just one day. We experienced a few process challenges along the way, due to multiple parties having to be involved to ensure Air France regulations were being met (consultants, information security team, HR agents etc). Regarding the tool, itself, everything went according to plan because the solution is already configured for a HR SSC environment (workflows, queue management, SLA management etc).

SSON: Finally, what tangible gains has Air France seen in the HR department with Neocase HR On-Demand?

GL: Neocase is essential to the overall success of our Shared Services in HR. It is very comprehensive and allows us to adapt quickly to ever-changing environmental and employee needs. We are now operating at maximum efficiency within our HR SSC.

The system also allows us to follow clear processes and to uphold the highest standards of employer-employee relations in the following ways:

1. SLA time tracking and quality control based on individual and collective performance
2. Robust reporting for us to be more proactive about commonly asked questions and standardized responses
3. Agents are better able to manage their workload due to queue management, SLA standards and self service
4. Employees realize more efficient and comprehensive responses to their requests