Carnival Cruise Line: Successfully navigating a centralized approach for contingent workforce management
Explore Carnival Cruise Line’s journey with SAP
When Carnival Cruise Line explored new ways to manage its contingent workforce, it found SAP Fieldglass solutions provided the best fit for its immediate requirements. The portfolio allows the company to optimize workforce visibility by capturing a clear line of sight into contractor headcounts and enabling quick access to the right temporary talent.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Travel and transportation | Miami, Florida | >120,000 employees |
to run ad hoc reports, compared to 1–2 hours previously.
of contingent workforce managed using one solution.
Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Carnival Cruise Line
Exploring new ways to manage the contingent worker experience
Part of Carnival Corporation & plc, Carnival Cruise Line is one of the most recognizable brands in the cruise industry. A leader in contemporary cruising, it operates 23 ships designed to provide fun and memorable vacation experiences at a great value. With a mission to provide guests with quality cruise vacations that exceed their expectations, Carnival Cruise Line has broad consumer appeal, attracting families, couples, singles, and seniors.
The company is the leading provider of year-round cruises in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and Mexico and also operates seasonal cruises in Alaska, Bermuda, Canada, Europe, Hawaii, and New England. In addition, Carnival Cruise Line sails year-round in Australia.
In its operations, Carnival Cruise Line manages a large contingent labor workforce, bringing in specialized skills to provide additional expertise when it’s needed to fill workforce gaps. The company’s external workers include IT, marketing, and finance professionals who support multiple business units throughout the organization. With each business unit managing contingent workforce labor requirements in different systems, Carnival Cruise Line’s talent team lacked a clear line of sight into contractors across the organization.
Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Carnival Cruise Line
Taking a standardized approach to managing contingent labor
In recognition of the important role external labor plays in meeting its needs, Carnival Cruise Line developed a strategic HR initiative to centralize contingent workforce management in one solution. Consolidating data would improve visibility into this critical talent pool and allow the company to quickly access the right resources and competencies to respond to changing business needs.
Isabel Espinosa, senior talent acquisition manager at Carnival Cruise Line, comments, “We had limited visibility into our external talent, as the information was siloed in the business units that employed the talent. By bringing our external workforce data into one system, we could gain comprehensive visibility into specialist talent that we otherwise would not have had access to.”
To find the right solution, Carnival Cruise Line carried out an extensive request-for-proposal process, determining SAP Fieldglass solutions provided the best fit for its immediate requirements. The portfolio includes the SAP Fieldglass Contingent Workforce Management, SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement, and SAP Fieldglass Worker Profile Management applications.
As a first step, Carnival Cruise Line enabled manager requests for contingent labor to be immediately accessible for approved vendors so they could see what position needed to be filled. The company also standardized the onboarding process for its external workers with automated task lists based on role, engagement type, and location.
Carnival Cruise Line also systemized the workflow for time sheets, enabling workers to complete their time sheets and supervisors to approve them in SAP Fieldglass, triggering supplier invoicing per agreed terms.
Espinosa comments, “Onboarding in the past was a very manual process using e-mails and third-party systems to capture the information we needed. Now, the information is in one place and can be accessed easily by the supplier and the contractor themselves.”
Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Carnival Cruise Line
Simplifying access to critical skills
Using SAP Fieldglass allows Carnival Cruise Line to track its contingent workforce and know precisely which line of business they’re supporting. The solution also triggers the deployment of relevant training – a task that was handled manually in the past.
In terms of onboarding contractors, Carnival Cruise Line now manages a streamlined process. Espinosa explains, “With SAP Fieldglass, we have streamlined the process, expediting contractor onboarding. We can even onboard a contractor on a same-day basis if we need to.”
When it comes to reporting, using SAP Fieldglass has created significant efficiencies for Carnival Cruise Line, and it can run ad hoc reports on its external workforce as required. Espinosa comments, “Before adopting SAP Fieldglass, we’d use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for our reports, with pivot tables, sorting, and manual data handling that exposed us to the risk of human error. Whereas now, reports from SAP Fieldglass are accurate and simple to generate. And we can create on-the-spot reports for specific insights, such as the total number of contractors and their associated costs by specific business units. We can also look at tenure, which is something that we didn’t have visibility into previously.”
Carnival Cruise Line is looking forward to expanding its use of SAP Fieldglass to increase efficiencies and support business needs.
Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Carnival Cruise Line