Recent headlines of several airlines cancelling flights across the country over difficulties in hiring and onboarding staff, while disappointing to those who are a desperate for a trip away after two years of lockdowns, simply shows that airlines and airports are just the latest industry to feel the impact of staff shortages.
While up-to-date digital vetting technologies cannot generate applicants – they can help to reduce the impact of the crisis in other ways:
1.) A More Efficient Hiring Process
One area where digital vetting can be of huge benefit in the aviation sector is in vetting new recruits in the quickest way possible – enabling them to begin work sooner.
With cloud-based systems that save all data entered (meaning personal details only need to be entered once), and state-of-the-art digital ID validation eliminating the need for documents to be seen and verified by the employer in person, it is faster and simpler than ever before to ensure that new hires are fully vetted.
2.) Increased Security
It is not just in terms of speed where digital ID validation excels. The latest technology can also detect errors, discrepancies and other attempts at fraud in ID documents far better than the naked eye. This is a significant benefit for public-facing industries such as aviation – incidents of ID fraud rose by 80% during the pandemic, making it imperative that companies know exactly who they are hiring. The need to hire staff to present mass cancellations (and the loss of revenue and bad publicity that comes with it).
Technology in Other Industries
Digital vetting technologies have proved themselves in other sectors who have felt the force of staff shortages. As an example, one of the UK’s largest councils reduced their time to onboard and fully vet their new hires from 2 weeks with a manual process to just 4 days, saving 10,000 work hours annually.
Final Thoughts
The aviation industry is just one of many industries being stretched by staff shortages. While digital vetting is not the panacea to all the industry’s problems (it can’t encourage people to apply for roles), it can certainly accelerate the hiring and vetting processes. The technology has been used to great effect during the pandemic to the extent the government has introduced a permanent digital ID verification solution at the request of businesses. The technology works – let’s use it.