Key takeaways
- Record technology investment doesn't guarantee results. What decides the payoff is whether the processes behind the technology are in place and whether an implementation strategy has been defined.
- Systems succeed when you show people how it benefits them, not when you ask them to blindly adopt new processes.
- A connected view of workforce data drives retention and recruitment efficiency more directly than any single new tool.
According to SITA's 2025 Air Transport IT Insights report, the air transport industry invested a record US$50.8 billion in technology last year, with airports lifting IT spend to 7.3% of revenue, up from 6.4% the year before.
But the report's real finding had less to do with the dollar figure and more to do with what's slowing it down: 83% of airlines and 89% of airports now call data-driven decision-making a strategic priority, yet most still can't get their systems to share information with each other. That gap is what decides whether the investment actually pays off.
We sat down with Klayo’s CEO Eddie Ragauskas to talk about what that same pattern looks like on the workforce side of an airport.
Do you think that technology can help how airports manage their workforce?
Yes, without question. The right technology means training records, compliance data, and career information all live in one place and, more importantly, are seamlessly kept up to date and are available whenever someone needs them, rather than scattered across systems, files, and departments.
However, technology is only a tool and can only be truly effective if the right processes are in place across the organization. I've seen airports invest in genuinely good systems and get very little out of them, because nobody had agreed on what the goal of the implementation truly was or how they would drive adoption and usage. The technology is the easy part. The discipline behind it is what actually determines whether it works.
When you look at an airport that's made a new system stick, versus one where it never quite gets adopted, what's the actual difference between them?
Houston Airport System is a good example of this. They rolled Klayo out to 1,354 employees, and adoption held: over 60% of staff were actively using the platform within months, on track for full rollout. That numbers reflects real strategic implementation.
What made the difference is that employees weren't just being asked to feed more information into the platform but instead, they were shown how the system would benefit their own progression.
People adopt a system when they can see themselves in it, not when they're just asked to feed it more data.
The airports where new systems stall are usually the ones where the system was brought in to satisfy the needs of a very small number of individuals without taking into consideration what it would mean for the people whose usage was critical to the success of the platform.
A lot of the digital transformation conversation has so far been centred around passenger-facing improvements. Do you see airports applying the same principles to their workforce?
Not as much as I'd like, though that's starting to change. For years, the digital investment conversation in this industry has been about the passenger: biometric boarding, faster bag drop, smarter queues. All worthwhile off course, but excluding workforce from these processes is forgetting that the passenger’s experience is heavily dependent on the people operating an airport.
Now that they are faced with real talent acquisition and retention challenges however, I'm seeing more airports consider how digital transformation and new technology can be brought in to also improve the employee experience. Because you can't excel on the passenger side without a workforce that can actually deliver it.
How important do you think it is for airports to adopt a shared approach to workforce management?
It might be the most important shift this industry needs to make on the workforce side. A shared approach means HR, training, and operations are all looking at the same picture of who's qualified for what, instead of three different versions of the truth.
We saw this clearly in our own research into retention. Airports with a connected view of their workforce get more efficient recruitment and onboarding, because they're not starting from zero every time someone's hired, and they get more out of their training budget, because it's spent on the gaps that actually matter.
Houston's separate work on career pathing, mapping clear routes between roles and showing employees exactly how close they are to qualifying for the next one, was built for the same reason: to reduce turnover by making the path forward visible. A shared view isn't a nice-to-have, it’s what turns workforce data into a real strategic advantage.
Looking ahead, where do you see AI making the biggest difference to how airports manage their workforce?
I think we’re only at the beginning of how AI can be used to support workforce planning and professional development. However, AI is only just another tool and, like any technology, it will only make a real difference if the foundation is right.
AI for the sake of AI isn’t useful. I care less about how impressive the AI is, and more whether it helps the industry operate more safely and efficiently and whether it brings genuine improvement to the individuals using our platform. That's the version of AI I'm actually excited about.