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Airport Associates: Ready for peak season without the paperwork pile-up
We used to manage onboarding, offboarding and changes with Excel checklists and a lot of manual follow-up. With 50skills, we save time and, just as importantly, we’re far less likely to forget key steps.
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INTRODUCING AIRPORT ASSOCIATES
The client
Airport Associates is an independent ground handling service company headquartered at Keflavík Airport, Iceland. Operating from offices in the terminal building and cargo terminal, the company provides 24-hour aircraft handling, ramp, cleaning, security and cargo services. The company employs around 250 people, with workforce numbers increasing significantly during the busy summer season.
Its teams manage everything from passenger check-in, boarding and special assistance, to aircraft turnaround coordination, load control, de-icing, pushback, cleaning, security searches and complex cargo handling including dangerous goods, live animals and perishables. The company also supports executive and military aircraft, where reliability, safety and punctuality are critical.
Its customer list includes British Airways, Cargolux, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Eurowings, easyJet, KLM, Air France, Wizz Air, Air Canada and many more.
BUSINESS GAPS
The challenge
Airport Associates employs around 250 people, with a highly seasonal workforce and many part-time roles. Each year, the business hires, onboards and offboards between150 and 200 employees, with the largest intake taking place over the summer period.
Before 50skills,the people team managed onboarding, offboarding, role and contract percentage changes, and background checks using Excel checklists and manual emails.
That meant:
- At least one hour of admin per new hire
- Manual follow-ups with payroll, department managers and other stakeholders
- A real risk of missed steps such as welcome emails, system access changes or parking permissions
- Extra pressure during peak recruitment periods
As Íris Ósk Guðlaugsdóttir from Airport Associates explained, it involved “a lot of manual work.” She summarised the impact clearly: “The real value of automation isn’t just time saved, it’s reduced chaos and fewer errors when onboarding at scale.” The team wanted to automate the predictable parts of the process without losing control.
50SKILLS
Our solution
With 50skills, Airport Associates built structured employee workflows that automate key steps while keeping visibility and oversight.
They now use 50skills to:
- Run structured onboarding with welcome emails and onboarding forms
- Create employees in H3 (their HRIS and payroll system) and support consistent data capture
- Generate and send employment contracts from approved templates
- Trigger internal system set-up steps
- Track background checks and confirmations, with plans to automate the sending step
- Manage role and contract percentage changes through defined workflows
- Run offboarding processes, including access closure and notifications
- Collect feedback through a short post-onboarding workflow
Workflows are built once and reused. That means when hiring ramps up, the process does not. Instead of scrambling for the latest version of a spreadsheet, the team simply launches the right workflow.
It is less "Where is that checklist?" and more "Cleared for take-off."
BUSINESS IMPACT
The results
Significant time savings
Before 50skills, computer-based onboarding admin alone took at least one hour per hire. With between 150 and 200 hires and leavers each year, that equates to at least 300 hours saved annually across onboarding and offboarding alone.
Offboarding also saves time, with approximately 30 minutes saved per leaver.
Beyond the numbers, the process feels calmer and more controlled, even during busy recruitment waves.
Fewer missed steps and stronger security
Automation has reduced the risk of important actions being forgotten. Welcome emails, system access, parking permissions and access removals are now triggered consistently.
For an airport-based operation, secure and timely access management is not optional. Structured offboarding helps reduce the risk of lingering system access and strengthens overall operational control.
Less manual chasing across teams
Previously, role changes and contract percentage updates meant manual emails to department managers and payroll. Many seasonal employees regularly move between part-time percentages, such as from 50% to 70%, creating additional admin. Now, these cross boarding changes are fully automated through defined workflows that route information automatically to the right people.
That means fewer follow-up emails, less copying and pasting, and more time for work that genuinely requires human judgement.
A more consistent employee experience
A clear onboarding journey ensures new starters receive the right information at the right time, even during peak season.
Airport Associates also introduced a post-onboarding step to gather feedback after the first few days. This helps the team continuously refine the experience.
As one colleague who joined later reflected, it is hard to imagine how the team managed before 50skills. That is usually a good sign.
BUSINESS BENEFITS
A smoother runway for people processes
By moving from Excel checklists to structured workflows in 50skills, Airport Associates has reduced manual admin, improved consistency and strengthened operational security.
The team can now handle seasonal recruitment peaks with confidence, knowing that contracts, forms, background checks and access steps are triggered reliably.
The result is fewer bottlenecks, fewer forgotten tasks and a better experience for both the people team and new starters.
In short, their people processes now land on time, even when the summer schedule is packed.
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