Air Seychelles expects more satisfied customers with the adoption of ISO 9001:2000 project 

Air Seychelles has said it pursued in its efforts to improve the working conditions of all its employees and invested in training as part of measures taken to strengthen its capacity.

In his statement in the annual report for the financial year 2002-2003, the national airline's executive chairman, captain David Savy, said the R14.6 million profit made reflected the synchronised efforts made by all staff at all levels to improve service delivery.

To overcome the current challenges in the aviation industry, captain Savy said there was a need to further "combine our energies in a dual role effort whereby top management will act through modelling and staff at all levels will have to pull up their weight in permeating a culture of low wastage and high productivity, without compromising on safety and service levels."

The company, he said, would "strive to enhance productivity through improved processes and systems while implementing the appropriate measures to create an environment conducive to staff motivation and morale."

Recruitment and training remained the two most important factors in the company's capacity building objective.

Air Seychelles, which has a total workforce of 677, last year employed 38 new staff, reflecting an increase of 6%. In line with this, revenue, calculated in Euros per employee, improved by 4% to reach 161,018 Euros, while the passenger load carried per staff grew by 4.5%.

Flight Operations operate with 212 employees – the highest number compared to other departments – while 197 others work with Ground Services (international and domestic). The third department to employ more staff is engineering with 83.

Last year, the company continued to invest in the training of its workforce through the setting up of additional mechanisms such as a training database for members of management and staff through the acquisition of the Q-Pulse software. This was seen as an important step in the setting up of the Training Board to implement the airline's long-term training strategy. 

When speaking to the press recently, captain Savy said that despite tough times, Air Seychelles would continue to employ more workers, especially now that there was a general improvement in the level of education and qualification amongst post-secondary graduates.

"More and more young people are producing excellent A'Level results and have very good understanding of information technology," captain Savy said.

He added that he had noticed that after being on the job for six months to one year, the productivity level of new recruits, who are good academically, has matched that of employees who have been with the company for 10 years.

He however said that in general there was room for improvement with regards to productivity by each and every employee.

In a move to improve service delivery, the airline is working on the adoption of a more disciplined approach to Quality Management Systems on the commercial side, the ISO 9001:2000 framework.

The standard to be implemented by phase starting with the Freight Operation, will help pave the way for the project to be included in other sections.

According to the report, benefits of this project include improved customer satisfaction and internal efficiency, higher employee involvement and subsequent trimming in costs.

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