Canada’s second largest Airline loops in all employees with a new Corporate Intranet

WestJet

WestJet is Canada's preferred airline, offering scheduled service throughout its 69-city North American and Caribbean network. Inducted into the Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures Hall of Fame and named one of Canada's best employers, WestJet pioneered low-cost flying in Canada.

Challenge

WestJet has a very strong brand in the Canadian Aviation industry, partly due to their commitment to corporate culture. They were looking for a way to keep this dedication to culture in the forefront for every employee via a corporate intranet. WestJet’s challenge is that they employ over 7000 people, many of whom are all over the ground and skies – not always in front of a computer. In order to reach out to all WestJetters, WestJet required a tool that was simple to use, collaborative and fun.

Solution

Ideaca took over this project from another organization as it was running four months over time and budget. Ideaca worked with WestJet on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007-based Corporate Intranet solution, which was delivered on time and on budget within the Ideaca-WestJet statement of work. The portal called Westnet, supports WestJet’s entire corporate structure, which provides access to regulatory information, corporate news, departments and team sites, people search and a number of collaborative areas such as a carpooling tool, buy and sell, and employee standby tool. Westnet has made use of many of SharePoint’s functions – such as blogs, surveys, and various web parts. Westnet currently has over 500 subsites, the most successful area being the Classified section which is updated close to 30 times per day, with upwards of 100 hits daily. The site allows all WestJetters to post for sale or wanted classified ads that they can filter, sort and auto delete. The implementation of Westnet, has allowed WestJet to move forward with their mission of being more interactive with their entire employee base.

Benefits

Westnet has allowed for greater communication to occur cross-enterprise, helping to reinforce the ‘WestJet culture.’ The interactivity that SharePoint allows has turned their former ‘run of the mill’ intranet into one that is organized, intuitive. aesthetically pleasing and used by WestJetters on a daily basis. Additional benefits include:

  • Ability to distribute corporate wide communications with mandatory read functionality when required
  • Central repository for all documents regarding WestJet`s operating procedures
  • Allows access to external tools – Westnet is the first stop for everything
  • Highly flexible and adaptable for all areas of WestJet`s business
  • Light weight to allow for slow connection speeds
  • Ability to access Intranet through smart phones