British Airways: Employee Relation and Human Resource Planning - Case Study Example

British Airways: Employee relation and Human Resource Planning Name Course Name and Code Instructor’s Name Date Introduction Transportation plays an imperative role in the success of various organizations and business enterprises. Without effective transportation system, supplies and raw materials will not be moved from one place to another. It is clear that man always needs to move from one place to another. There have been a number of innovations that have been made to help in mobility of people; air transport is one of them. However, without effective human resource management in the different airline there is likely to be little or no benefits from such innovations. The citadel intent of this paper is to elucidate a number of human resource management issues that have dogged the British Airways (BA). The paper has been divided in a number of sections that deal in several sections. The first section is about hiring, selection as well as human resource planning at the British Airways. The second section of the paper is about internal communication at the airline. In addition, lastly the paper discuses a number of issues related to employee relations. It also gives advice on what can be done to solve the pressing human resource issues. This section has been subdivided into that talk about psychological influence on performance management and psychological effect on employee relations Company background According to Punzel (2011), British Airways is the biggest airline in the United Kingdom (UK). The airline came about because of fusion of Imperial Airways, Daimler Airways and British Air Marine Navigation in 1924. British Airline has divided its business into two distinct segments. There is the airline business that comprises of its main scheduled passenger, operations of cargoes as well as revenue from ancillary services. The non-airline business includes Airmiles Travel Promotion Ltd, the London Eye Company Ltd as well as BA Holidays. Its international transport network covered up to 550 destinations. However, BA operates predominantly in America and Europe. With its' headquarter located in Harmondsworth, their 42,755 employees, as well as a fleet of 242 aircrafts, the British Airways established a good basis for a fruitful business. For future planning purposes, the British Airways placed an order for an Airbus aircrafts in 2007. Modernization of the BA fleets is significant since the age of their fleet is beyond European average. The average age of British Airways fleet is 11.2 years. On the other hand, Air France fleet has an average age of 9.1 years and Easyjet has 3.0 years. Lufthansa has a fleet age of 12.2 years. Competition in the airline sector is increasing exponentially (Punzel, 2011). For effective performance in the airline industry there ought to be adequate measures that need to be put by the human resource experts in the respective airline industry so that they become competitive. Human resource experts can be helpful in determining whether a company will be productive or not. Good management strategies in an organization are a determining element for the performance excellence in its key business. Culture is a determining element in performance management. There are various factors that determine a company’s level of performance that may be external, for instance, market shares as well as the market environment, which the business is operating. Internal factors also have a direct impact. Some of the factors include the company’s style of management, culture as well as human resource management. The British Airway, BA has had several challenges in the management style owing to the fact that most of the managers were using military strategy to management. It is general knowledge that the military strategy embraces the use of authoritarian approach to manage personnel. In this regard, it is pretty clear that the British Airways human resource were working under fear (Boyd, 2013). Evidently, this is an obstacle to innovation at the work place among personnel and consequently it resulted in killing of creativeness in British Airways. Despite management being considered as a universal practice, environment as well as nature of business that the company is involved in are vigorous and vary from each other. Considering this, managers who should be recruited ought to have experience in managing similar organizations and with similar functions. Consequently, this is a challenge that has affected performance since recruitment managers at the British Airways was not based on experience but solely based on intellectual ability as well as skills. This is a challenge in personnel management at the airline since human resource managers ought to adjust first to the service industry before concentrating on ensuring performance excellence of the firm. British Airways has a great task in performance management since it is performing disastrously and it is a haven of losses. This has been brought about by various issues such as poor organizational culture (military). Losses have been as a result of discontent among personnel as well as dissatisfaction of its customers. One of the fundamental signs of employee dissatisfaction is high employee turnover rates. British Airways experienced mass employee exodus (Katie, 2013). Needlessly, high employee turnover is a result of organizational destabilization and in the end an indicator of immense losses for the company. Hiring, recruitment and HR planning According to Price (2011), the most fundamental resource in a company is its personnel. Precisely, no matter how complicated the processes, systems as well a technology of a company, it is the commitment as well as capabilities of its employees that can guarantee its success. Consequently, is imperative to note that for any organization to meet its objective and make profits, sound hiring, recruitment, as well as human resource planning approaches ought to be implemented. British Airways has poor plans in regards to recruitment and selection since some of the mangers that were recruited did not have adequate experience in the service industry and employed military management style in service delivery. This has resulted in the firm’s disastrous performance, and it is destined to make losses. Staff discontentment is evident in British Airways. In any work place, employees want to be treated as rationally, be valued rightfully, work in a secure environment, given a chance to grow as well as develop as employees and get fair compensation. In the absence of any of these factors, employees are likely to be discontent with their work and it is likely to affect negatively the firm. Therefore, it is imperative that during recruitment, professional methods ought to be applied so that the organization can hire the best staff. There ought to be good human resource management plans that are capable of fulfilling expectations from employees that have been outlined before in this paper. British Airways has experienced interpersonal wrangles between operational managers and the top management. Precisely, British Airline experienced wrangles because top management had instituted authoritarian strategy when dealing with their juniors. In case of such as scenario there ought to be an accommodating relationship among HR experts who possess skills in selection and recruitment method as well as line manager who understand the skills required to fill the vacant posts in their respective departments. This is fundamental since it ensures that the right staffs are recruited. Consequently, this helps in preventing dissatisfaction at the workplace in the later stages. Internal communication Internal communication is one of the most fundamental functions of the in-house team as well as the responsibility of a committed specialist team. Internal communication refers to the communication between an organization’s management and its employees. Poor communication can result in mistrust among the employees. Good communication is very important in any work-related environment. Changing practices in a work environment can result in uncertainty that can result in rumours, speculations as well as unnecessary anxiety. Changes such as mergers, takeover as well as the institution of new working practices will result in change and lead to anxiety since the employees do not know what they expect. This ought to be explained and the issues facing the workforce ought to be addressed promptly. Problems resulting from the credit crunch as well as the economic whirlwind that has swept across all sectors of the economy have resulted in uncertainty in various firms; therefore, in such situations honest and clear communication ought to be done quickly. Employee relationship Initially, British Airways had characteristics of public sector employment relationship more generally. The company was unionized, and at one point, the company recognized 16 different trade unions. The several trade unions had a well-established collective bargaining approach with the British Airways being the main player on the employer’s side of the National Joint Council for Civil Air Transport (NJCCAT), as well as consultative approach at the company level. Collective bargain was intricate, fragmented and sectional. In 1996, the National Joint Council for Civil Air Transport was abolished. However, national level bargaining in the separate National Sector Panels for cabin crews, pilots, support crew, clerical grades as well as management remained, even though it was reinforced and redefined. In 1996 after a confrontation with pilots, British Airways and BALPA strike a new agreement. During this time, employment relations problems did not appear easily. Problems related to staff relationship have surfaced. There has been dispute involving cabin crews, baggage handlers, pilots and engineers. In 2004 there was a strike over pay as well as long-standing issues concerning over staffing levels. In 2005 there was a dispute involving sympathy strike action by British Airways workers for sacking of 670 employees at British Airways catering suppliers. The organization instituted newfangled regulations in 2005 so that it could reduce absence levels. During that time, absence levels were estimated at 22 days per employee in a year. This approach did not lead to a direct strike but it catapulted an already tense work environment. There was a strike threat in 2006 owing to changes in the pension system. The threat was also repeated in 2007 owing to proposed changes to pay, conditions as well as to policies on sick leave (Sloane, Latreille & O’Leary, 2013). The position of unions in British Airways has helped the company to have changes through negotiations. Negotiations have always been protracted however; they have led to various cases of far-reaching adjustment in employment relations practices. For instance, in 1990s there were negotiations in the cabin crew that involved agreement of a two-tier wage structure, pay freeze as well as moves to greater functional flexibility. According to Johansen (2009), British Airways employee relationship has been in jeopardy for a number of times. However, this revolution has not been very effective in improving employee relation in the company this can be illustrated by the numerous strikes that have rocked the company. After a number of workers strikes in the organization, the management used the recommended employee relations approaches that included remuneration schemes, which included profit sharing, as well as share ownership that made the company employees feel part of gigantic airline. Additionally, the staffs were also rewarded for efforts they made and the top management encouraged inputs from staffs by considering their ideas during decision-making. Encouraging inputs from the personnel had more benefits to the company that was losing its lustre. The image of the company improved and it helped in bringing about innovation, therefore helping the organization realize its maximum potential. According to Sloane, Latreille & O’Leary (2013), there have been several reports of cabin crew going on strike and this is not just about to end soon. Even though the company has tried to resolve the matter, it seems it will not end any soon. There are very many angry people who have been harassed or bullied by the management because of their involvement in strikes or boycott. Most of these people are cynical of management and most of them believe that attack is the best method of defence. A number of meetings have been conducted, but there is no agreement yet between British Airways and Unite (Hotten, 2011). Psychological influence on performance management Applied psychology is instrumental ensuring sound work relations. Ideally, applied psychology can be regarded as applications as well as development of ideas, theories as well as techniques from areas of psychology to a particular arena. The applied psychology can be very instrumental in revolutionizing the dilapidated work environment at British Airways. This approach is very instrumental since it helps in improving performance management of employees. There are a number of work place psychologies that can be applied to help bring performance management in any organization. For instance, training the staff on a regular basis, encouraging creativity and innovativeness among employees, this can be accomplished by rewarding for being innovative. Additionally, making the staff to be part of the shareholder can also be instrumental in transforming the organization. Psychological effect on employee relations According to Banyard, Davies & Norman (2010), psychology helps in determining how individuals relate with each other. Nonetheless, personal attitude is the key subset of psychology. Attitude refers to the organization of various beliefs around a particular situation or object. Consequently, attitude is linked to organizational culture and it is influenced by the culture of the individuals in that environment. On the other hand, culture determines how an organization will perform (Vries, 2011). Before British Airways made a revolution in its human resource sector, the attitude of its stakeholders was negative. This was largely prompted by its management culture. However, if there is a turnaround in the management style the attitude can be replaced with a more positive one. Positive attitude will result in better performance of the employees. Human resource experts ought to prioritize change of attitude so that they can improve employee relations at the workplace. There are various things that should be done to improve or change the negative attitude, for instance, training programs can be instituted. Training programs can be instrumental in revolutionizing employee’s attitudes (DeSimone & Werner, 2011). There can also be personal commitment in the senior management team to improve performance of British Airways by ensuring that all stakeholders take part positively. By doing so, the senior management team will ensure that the employees feel motivated, inspired and have a sense of belonging at British Airways. This will improve employee relations and guarantee British Airways a revolutionized revenue output. Such an approach can be very instrumental in changing the myth that British Airways is a haven of losses as well as poor management. Advice British Airways has been experiencing changes in its operating environment, it is imperative that its management should adopt the flexible firm model that was devised by Atkinson. The approach ought to be adopted by the British Airline since it guarantees satisfaction of the needs of the company employer and at the same time fulfilling the employee’s requirements like need of recognition, security, relationships, good remuneration as well as self-actualization. If this model could have been used by BA management it could have helped it avoid the turbulent times has been going through. It is fundamental for British Airways to have a self-prophecy of its future in their management. This plan can be very instrumental to the airline since it will help cushion it from unforeseen challenges that take place in the work environment. The flexibility firm model ought to be the guiding principle for improvement of BA human resource management. Adopting this model can result in improvement of function flexibility that guides the people being recruited by the organization. Having a competent staff is fundamental since BA needs multi-skilled employees and who can perform different functions in the organization. With such mechanisms in place, BA can be guaranteed improved performance. BA ought to initiate a performance measurement that accesses its plans, policies as well as resources. Having a performance measurement will help in contributing to a positive advancement of the company because any plan or policy will be evaluated to establish its impacts on the company and therefore corrective measures will be instituted. Performance of employees as well as reward on performance will inspire employees in their work and hence result in performance effectiveness in the airline in the end. Concisely, sound human resource management practices can be instrumental in revolutionizing British Airways. It would also be prudent if training programs were instituted so that they can help in preparing the airline for eventualities. Another option that can be considered is bringing in a new management team with wide experience in management issues so that they can revolutionize its style of management. References Banyard, P., Davies, M & Norman, C. (2010). Essential psychology: A concise introduction. London: SAGE. Boyd, C. (2013). Human resource management and occupational health and safety. Abingdon: Routledge. DeSimone, R & Werner, J. (2011). Human resource development. Mason: Cengage Learning. Johansen, R. (2009). Leaders make the future: Ten new leadership skills for an uncertain world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Hotten, R. (2011). BA strike: Re-building relations will take time. BBC. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13378786 Katie, J. (2013). Strategic management: British Airways. Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag. Price, A. (2011). Human resource management. Hampshire: Cengage Learning. Punzel, T. (2011). Risks and decision making Using example of British Airways. Norderstedt: GRIN Verlag. Sloane, P., Latreille, P & O’Leary, N. (2013). Modern labour economics. New York: Routledge. Vries, M. (2011). Reflections on group and organizations: On the couch with Manfred Kets de Vries. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Appendix # FACT IDEA/HYPOTHESIS LEARNING ISSUES ACTION PLAN 1 British Airways employees were working under fear (Boyd, 2013). Encourage involvement of employees Innovation can be encouraged by developing a healthy relationship with employees Training and motivation can be helpful in encouraging cordial relationship between workers 2 The most fundamental resource in a company is its personnel (Price, 2011) Companies should ensure that they get the best employees Competent employees are instrumental for success of any organization sound hiring, recruitment, as well as human resource planning approaches ought to be implemented 3 British Airways employee relationship has been in jeopardy for a number of times (Johansen, 2009) Employee relations determines an organization’s success Poor employee relations results in strikes, go-slows and boycotts Training and motivation can be helpful in encouraging cordial relationship between workers Read More