Dr B @ AirAsia

Psychologist - Learning & Talent Development & Change Leadership
  • ​Leading 6 schools – Safety, Customer Service, Leadership, Engineering, Ground Services, and Regulatory Compliance – with a 50+ team organizing learning and talent development for 1000+ staff.
  • Recognized by COO and staff for success in 10 key leadership areas: TNA, culture change (including team-building, emotional intelligence, work-life balance, 360-degree leadership feedback), improved inter-school collaboration, internal talent development, clearly identified leadership roles within academy, DEI, online learning restructuring, vendor recruitment and management, positive financial management, and well-maintained working environment.

The Introduction Letter from Head of People

Folks, I am happy to tell you Brendan Gomez, PhD and until recently with the University of Nottingham Malaysia, is joining us next Monday. Brendan has a fantastic academic backgrounds – 1st class in genetics at the UM, masters and PhD froms the US in psychology under Fulbright scholarship, and one of the founders of the psychology faculty at HELP University, one of the largest in the region. He also has extensive experience doing developmental work with young people, and he is very excited about joining the corporate sector!
 
I will work with him to develop a strong talent management framework here at AirAsia.
I think we are one of the very few, if not the only, companies which have a full fledged psychologist on board . I think this will give us more opportunity to design and develop more sophisticated programmes and interventions to train and develop and help people. Best regards
My work ensured all team members stayed true to the spirit of the organization in working hard while having an enjoyable experience that included healthy work-life balance. 

Culture - Celebrating & Nurturing "The All for One & One for All"

In driving change, my success was in having frequent employee engagement, creating higher psychological safety, bringing in creativity in how we ran our meetings and events, and in focusing on learning and development.

I had 6 schools reporting to me with a total of about 50+ staff.

In addition to weekly meets and coaching sessions with school heads that reported to me, I organized large meetings for everyone in AAA every 2 weeks where we changed the meeting from merely discussing administrative issues to including talent and leadership development where in time, all staff looked forward and enjoyed coming for these meetings where they had a voice to openly discuss issues, problem-solve and take action. 

Training Needs Analyses

Typical questions I had our teams think thru for our organization:
  • How does the company define training?
  • What objectives does the company pursue with further training?
  • Are these objectives written down?
  • Is there a connection between training objectives and company objectives?
  • What role does the management play within the field of further training?
  • How does the management support training measures?
  • Who is responsible for training issues?
  • How are further training needs assessed?
  • Is there an institutionalized system of need assessment?
  • Who is responsible for the assessment?
  • How is it checked whether there actually is a further training need or not?
  • How does the company get from the assessed training-needs to the further training offer?
  • Who is responsible for the programme planning?
  • ​Are costs of further training calculated?
  • Is there a budget for further training measures?
  • ​What range of training measures (internal and external projects, on the job-training, coaching, quality circle, self-study material, trainee-pools and programmes, seminars, workshops, etc.) is offered?
  • Who carries out the training measures?
  • Which role do internal part-time trainers play?
  • Which role do external providers play for the internal further training?
  • Who selects external providers and which selection criteria are applied?
  • What attempts are made to support the transfer of learning results onto the job?
  • What attempts are made to determine the results of further training measures?
  • How is it done? Who evaluates? Which instruments are applied?
  • Which target groups are there for further training?
  • Who is trained further and who is not?​
  • Does further training take place during spare time or working hours?
  • Who makes sure that the further training concept is enhanced and revised?

Assessment Tools Developed

Quantitative and qualitative tools were developed with input from heads of schools
Example of Quantitative Tool:
Measuring Leadership (7items), Communication (6), Performance Management (6), Customer Service(8) & Sales(3) for Senior Flight Attendants. Likert scale of 1-5 was used. 
Eg item on leadership: encourages teamwork
Example of Qualitative Tool:
Measuring Responsibilities & Skills, Decision-making & Problem-solving, Challenges, Management & mentoring, 
​Eg item on challenges: Describe difficulties and challenges faced by SFAs in their work. How do these challenges affect productivity?

Dr B's Proposed Training Strategy

Dr B's Proposed Org Chart for Academy Expansion
A Conducive Environment for Training our International Crew and Teams
I also enjoyed the role of overseeing our facilities and training space to ensure it was conducive, safe, comfortable, and well-equipped - meeting international standards for the airlines.  This included a fantastic spread of food daily for the employees. We had great team members who worked with me to ensure all the above.