'In HR 10 years ago, people would just go off on these mysterious leaves – and you didn't really know why'
The past few years threw us all for a loop – but for the travel industry it was make or break time. In Canada, you don’t get much more iconic brands than Sunwing, especially where the aviation industry is concerned. And while they’re flying high again now, when the pandemic hit it was chief people officer Kelly Davis’s job to maintain some calm in a sea of employee anxiety. Not an easy feat by any means.
“Our value system revolves around the word EPIC,” says Davis. “Entrepreneurial, passionate, innovative and customer centric. When the pandemic hit, I was really worried – our industry was shattered almost overnight and the majority of our employees had to be terminated or laid off. I mean, how can we be going around saying epic when this doesn't feel very epic at all?
"One interesting point is when we ran an employee survey four years ago, we had that question “would you refer a friend to work here?”. The answer was 57%. We asked that same question last year on the tail end of the pandemic, and we got a 91% response. At first I was thinking people the results must be wrong. How is that possible? It's been horrible. However, we spoke with a lot of our frontline leaders, and they said the general employee sentiment was that they knew this wasn't our fault. It wasn't personal. And they felt we did what we could to support them through the tough times. I was really proud of that.”
Sunwing’s culture has always been incredibly strong – something that the People & Culture team is deservedly proud of. Even through the pandemic, in an industry that was floored by the COVID chaos, Sunwing still retained an incredible focus on employee wellbeing. The way that Davis ensured her people were treated then stuck with them afterwards. Instead of reactionary panic, employees were made to feel like their company had their back – which led to a culture of openness in senior leadership.
“I’m so happy to be able to look at the resources we have and feel like employees, at all levels including our senior leaders, are okay to raise their hand and say, “you know what, I'm not doing very well right now. I need something different. I need the company to work with me.”.
“It's so refreshing because in the past we just didn't know. In HR 10 years ago people would go off on these mysterious leaves, or they would resign abruptly, and you really didn't know what had happened. Now we have a lot more honesty in the workplace, a lot more vulnerability, which is great.”
This top-down approach to mental health has long been known to foster engagement and psychological safety. By showing your own vulnerability as a leader you’re letting your employees know it’s safe to show theirs. This is something Davis is dead set on enhancing at Sunwing, especially in regards to their colleagues in the various destinations the company operates within.
“What I’ve learned being in a global company is that when you’re discussing mental health in Canada or in the US, it’s a very comfortable conversation with staff. Take that conversation to the Caribbean and a wall goes up. It was explained to me that mental health isn’t really talked about there – that in some ways it’s frowned upon. What we want to instill is that a lot of us need help – and that’s it’s absolutely fine to talk about that. I want to help drive that through next year.”
