Star Aviation

To achieve this mission, the company prioritises its people and upholds five core values: Safety, teamwork, accountability, innovation, and customer service.

And the results speak for themselves. Star Aviation now operates in every major city in Australia and had the honour of seeing its General Manager, Peter Georgiou, named Executive of the Year at the Australian Aviation Awards last year.

Star now employs 650 people across nine airports. The business has an adept team of HR and talent professionals ensuring their people operations run smoothly, which includes specialists in Talent Acquisition, Training, Workplace Relations, and a trio of HR Coordinators.

Hiring, onboarding, and training all staff fall under their responsibility, as well as initiatives designed to develop their team and foster a safe, inclusive, and rewarding work environment.

However, managing a range of roles and locations, a predominantly shift-based workforce, and fluctuating demand is no simple task and it means their HR needs are complex.

Plus, safety is a top priority for Star’s HR team. In an industry with prescribed training requirements and safety checks, there is a paramount need to ensure all employees remain safe while at work.

Mark Lulham, Star’s People and Culture Manager, said they were facing a number of different challenges before choosing to implement ELMO’s end-to-end solution.

“One of the main challenges was having payroll through a third-party provider. Not having direct access meant we always had to reach out to someone we didn’t know and wait for a response,” he says.

“Our payroll was quite a clunky process and so if we had someone who had an issue that needed to be solved right away, we simply couldn’t do it.”

Having the payroll information sitting separate from other people-related data meant there was no single source of truth for the team to rely on. If there was an issue with payroll caused by an error in a timesheet, the team would need to scour multiple sources of information to rectify the problem.

The other big pain point was hiring talent. At one point, they were using an Excel spreadsheet to hire over 1,000 people over the course of a year. Without an Applicant Tracking System, the process was messy and lacked visibility for the stakeholders involved.