Ryanair's Employee Engagement Levels Soar to New Heights With Workvivo
Helping over 20,000 employees connect like never before – from pilots and cabin crew to engineers and support staff.
90%
Employees registered on Workvivo
13,000
Amount of active weekly users
Six
Weeks from kickoff to platform rollout
Europe’s largest airline
Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline, carrying half a million passengers on 3,000 flights every single day.
But with 24,000 employees distributed across cockpits, cabins, and support offices, and with ambitious plans to hire an additional 10,000 people each year, the company was on the market for a platform that would transform its approach to recruitment, talent management, and internal comms.
That’s why it chose Workvivo.
People
24,000
Industry
Aviation
Location
Europe
Category
Enterprise
Why Workvivo?
At the CIPD Festival of Work 2023, Ryanair’s Director of Talent, Mark Duffy, spoke to Eva Barker, Employee Communications and Engagement Consultant here at Workvivo. Mark told Eva about Ryanair’s journey from its original intranet, Fleet Tweet, to Workvivo.
Fleet Tweet was great, but there was no two-way communication. It was all one-way comms coming from us, so it was a bit boring for the staff, to be honest.
Fleet Tweet didn’t have a metrics or analytics feature either, so Mark and his team couldn’t delve into things like engagement levels and employee sentiment.
And with CEO Eddie Wilson at the helm, the company wanted a “better, clearer line of communication with staff” – one that would allow employees to communicate with leadership too, better reflecting Ryanair’s “unique, open culture”.
“But we don’t spend money quickly at Ryanair,” Mark shared.
We are a low-cost airline, so to invest in something like this was a big deal for us. So we did a lot of due diligence. We wanted to make sure that whoever we brought on board for our internal comms platform, was working with big players out there as well.
We went with Workvivo because it was an out-of-the-box solution for us. All of our crew could download the app onto their devices very, very quickly, and we got it going within about six weeks of that first initial project meeting.
Ryanair
We are a low-cost airline, so to invest in something like this was a big deal for us. So we did a lot of due diligence. We wanted to make sure that whoever we brought on board for our internal comms platform, was working with big players out there as well
Mark Duffy
Director of Talent at Ryanair
Taking flight with Workvivo
Workvivo has sent Ryanair’s internal communications into orbit, and since launching with Workvivo they have seen a massive ROI
90%
Of all staff registered – that’s 21,500 users
13,000
Active users per week
30%
Increase in internal applications for head office roles
250
Questions submitted directly to Eddie Willson (CEO), which he chooses to answer directly
Internal comms and company growth
Ryanair plans to hire an additional 10,000 people each year for the next seven years, including pilots, cabin crew, engineers, and support staff. Workvivo will help the company deliver top-class internal comms as it continues to grow – but how?
The biggest challenge, Mark explained, is that most of Ryanair’s employees aren’t in an office.
The office for our staff is the aircraft. We’ve got 20,000 crew whose only office is that aircraft, which is either five o’clock in the morning or if they’re on the later shift, it’s from two o’clock in the afternoon. So, as a management function, we need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively with our people, whether that’s to do with our rosters, whether it’s to do with any news that’s happening across the network.
We need to be able to communicate with our staff and say, ‘Okay, guys, it’s going to be a bit of a tough day, but we really appreciate what you’re doing’.
Mobile-first for every employee
With employees from the cockpit to customer service desks, Ryanair needed a truly mobile-first solution that people could access at any time from anywhere.
This means that every single colleague at the company has instant access to all the apps they need, such as rosters, payslips, and booking staff travel.
Feature spotlight
Spaces
Ryanair uses Spaces for a variety of reasons, from grouping localities to interest groups.
We have a Space called London Stansted, for example, for all of our employees based in London. A lot of that content might be driven locally. We also then created spaces around personal interests; one of the biggest advantages of working for an airline is that you get staff travel, so we opened up a space about what people do with their weekends.
We’ve also opened up a space about pets. So it’s not all about boring work stuff; the only way this is ever going to work is if it’s engaging content.
There’s also the company’s Ask Eddie Space, where CEO Eddie Wilson has a direct line of communication to Ryanair employees who want to ask him questions. Mark described Ask Eddie as “one of the best Spaces we’ve opened up”.
Surveys
We can put employee satisfaction surveys out to the staff and actually get a sense of what it is that they’re feeling; we’ve got that feedback from a senior management level.
Over the next six months, the way that we’re probably going to use the app, from a talent management perspective and trying to keep attrition at bay, is on surveys. We can send anonymous surveys out on the platform, we can drive it down to a certain location. If I want to feel the sentiment in Birmingham with our pilots, I can go onto the app and I can drive that down. I can send a survey through Workvivo just to the pilots in Birmingham, five or six questions, and then we can get that feedback coming forward. And that’s going to help us from an attrition perspective.
How is Workvivo serving Ryanair's hybrid employees?
Of Ryanair’s 24,000 employees, 90% have registered on Workvivo – that’s 21,500 users. Mark added that at any given time, the platform sees around 13,000 active Ryanair users throughout the week.
Of the 13,000 active users, probably 90% of that is cabin crew. They might post pictures some mornings of them onboard the aircraft or there might be a nice sunrise.
To have 13,000 active users on there on a weekly basis, for us, that’s a good return on investment because we can actually see what’s happening. With Workvivo analytics, I can see whether it’s the London Stansted base that is more actively engaged versus Birmingham, for example, and what stories they’re liking. It’s fantastic.
How is Workvivo serving Ryanair's hybrid employees?
Of Ryanair’s 24,000 employees, 90% have registered on Workvivo – that’s 21,500 users. Mark added that at any given time, the platform sees around 13,000 active Ryanair users throughout the week.
Of the 13,000 active users, probably 90% of that is cabin crew. They might post pictures some mornings of them onboard the aircraft or there might be a nice sunrise.
To have 13,000 active users on there on a weekly basis, for us, that’s a good return on investment because we can actually see what’s happening. With Workvivo analytics, I can see whether it’s the London Stansted base that is more actively engaged versus Birmingham, for example, and what stories they’re liking. It’s fantastic.
