Readers of my other blog will end up thinking that I own shares in Air France because I praise them so much, but that’s not the customer talking, it’s an observer of their practices. At least those of their Mexican subsidiary.
Air France Mexico has in fact launched an idea management system, an initiative I haven’t gone into in detail yet, but I’ll come back to it after an initial assessment showing more than positive results (and thanks to the innovation blog for having followed the matter over time).
Given the objectives announced by the management, the project seemed to me to be highly relevant from the outset.
a. Economic objective :
– Improve the performance of the business
– Encourage innovation
b. Social objective :
– Encourage listening
– Recognising know-how
– Valuing our employees
These are themes that are close to my heart because I believe they are essential to the success of a business. The point of Air France’s approach is to break down certain barriers by giving everyone a role in making proposals, by involving them and making them active in the development of the business. This is a win-win situation: the business wins because it benefits from a hitherto untapped reservoir of ideas and innovation, and the employee wins in terms of recognition, with the obvious impact on motivation and personal investment (while hoping not to rekindle what I consider to be an old-fashioned debate on so-called management by ego). Moreover, the implementation of a change is all the more obvious when the subjects of said change have been at the origin of it or have been able to be associated with it upstream in one way or another. The innovative approach thus coupled with a social corollary becomes a strong management act on the part of management.
A process has been put in place (which I’ll let you read about in the relevant article), initially a 100% human process, which will be (or already is) formalised on the intranet with ad hoc tools. I can’t help thinking that this is a typical example of the use of an intranet labelled ‘2.0’ in a business, where everyone can express themselves, put forward ideas and comment on each other, and a natural process of filtering, valuing and co-construction can be put in place, which would be highly relevant.
Another comment: to achieve results, we need to free up employees’ creativity, encourage it (possibly through financial levers?) and therefore accept discussions that call into question the current situation, not in a spirit of criticism (in the negative sense of the term) but with a view to improvement. Many people recognise the merits of such practices, which are still sometimes at odds with the reality of the business… but few have the courage to take action, and in this respect the example of Air France is noteworthy.
For those who are more fearful and more reluctant to adopt a management style that unleashes the potential of growth represented by their employees’ pool of ideas, I will simply cite the results recorded at Air France: a participation rate of between 22% and 40% and ideas that have already been transformed into projects, some of which will result in savings of the order of $200,000 for this regional delegation of the airline. For those who feel there is a lack of employee engagement in their businesses, I should also mention that according to an internal survey that preceded this project, 80% of employees thought that it was essential to take their ideas into account.
Similar initiatives have been launched at Air France Cargo and Air France Industries.
The icing on the cake is that Air France Mexico even has a blog. They really seem to want to be one step ahead of everything else…
