Manchester Airports Group selects ServiceNow

Manchester Airports Group (MAG), one of the largest UK airport operators, is using the ServiceNow Platform to reduce the complexity and time to onboard new employees. This includes employees who are office-based and those who work in frontline operational roles. MAG owns and operates three airports in the UK: East Midlands Airport, Manchester Airport and London Stansted Airport. 

As the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic ease, MAG, like others in the aviation sector, has seen passenger numbers increase significantly since March. To meet the increase in demand, MAG has hired more than 1,500 new colleagues since January 2022. However, the significant uplift in hiring highlighted how manually intensive onboarding processes were for new joiners, hiring managers and HR colleagues alike. 

Ryan Cant, Chief Digital Officer at MAG said:  

“When restrictions eased in February, like many others in the travel sector, our teams worked hard to recruit and onboard colleagues to allow as many passengers as possible to get away on their well-deserved holiday. However, our hiring, screening and onboarding processes were so manual that it meant our HR teams had to work almost 24/7 to get enough colleagues into the business in time for the summer season to start. It was clear to us that by investing in automation, we could improve the experience for our new joiners, our existing colleagues and, in turn, our passengers.  

Our partnership with ServiceNow will enable us to deliver an automated onboarding experience for our new employees, allowing us to reduce complexity and manual handoffs. Crucially, we anticipate that it will improve the time it takes between a colleague accepting an offer, to them being fully onboarded and ready to help our customers start their journeys.  

In addition, by implementing the HR Workflow module, we will create a seamless process not just for onboarding but across the complete employee experience. The colleague service portal, will automate requests such as updating colleague details, decreasing the number of manual touch points.  

The Now platform will be a key part of our digital architecture and one that underpins the whole employee experience. It will help to connect our key strategic enterprise systems into a seamless set of processes to ensure the maximum business value from our technology investments. We are very excited by our strategic partnership with ServiceNow, and our future vision is that ServiceNow will be used within the wider organisation as the workflow and orchestration tool of choice.”  

Jordi Ferrer, VP and General Manager of ServiceNow UK and Ireland said: 

“Through our digital workflow solutions, on average, we’ve been able to help our customers reduce the time it takes to onboard new employees by 41 percent. For any business with a complex and siloed structure, its HR function needs to run smoothly. It’s about a complete journey, from hire-to-retire, onboarding and offboarding. We’ve welcomed the opportunity to rejuvenate MAG’s people systems to ensure not only their employees have a better experience, but that passengers do, as well.” 

MAG is also currently working in partnership with ServiceNow to migrate from the ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) product to the ITSM Pro version. This will further support the onboarding of new colleagues by helping to ensure all hardware, software and access is provisioned as part of the onboarding process.