UNITED AIRLINES

Human Resource Implications And Issues Concerning The Airline Industry (Relationship Between Flight Attendants And United Airlines)



Human Resource Implications And Issues Concerning The Airline Industry (Relationship Between Flight Attendants And United Airlines)

Introduction

In a world where everything happens at an accelerated pace, we would expect that the greatest challenge for management professionals in their work environment is rapidly changing technology, the need to stay ahead of the competition or raising capital. However, if you asked a manager or a team leader, the answer would be different: the biggest challenge is the management and employee motivation. All other issues, although they are also important, become secondary if you have trouble to inspire your troops. Motivation of employees is an important factor for the success and failure of an organisation. This is because of the fact that employees are the ones that are performing the actual tasks in the organisation. In order to motivate the employees of an organisation, it is important for the organisation to satisfy its employee needs and wants. This paper will focus on the analysis of the motivation factor in United Airlines employees.

Background

United airlines is lowering the pay to flight attendants, increasing working hours, bad scheduling, and fewer amenities for the passengers, lack of union representation, and contract negotiations. United airline is concentrating on the bottom line causing very low company morale.

Major Points

Comparison of United airlines with Southwest airlines

Culture History of United airlines

Throughout its existence, united airlines signify the extremes of an organization working in a global context and capitalist economy. Within less than a year, the firm departed from being a sign of “the most innovative company” model of ethics, social responsibility, and success driven, most focused and benevolent to an indication of greed, mismanagement and deception. It was regarded to represent as one of the best 21st Century organization in terms of economical and ethical.

Deregulation in the power sector permitted united airlines to act as a match maker which eventually brings sellers and buyers at the same platform. United airlines made profits from exchanges, and from the differences in the prices of buyers and sellers. The same deregulation let united airlines be innovative and creative, for the very first time, a firm that was required to work within the limits was allowed to innovate and operate beyond the limits (Charles, Gareth, 2001).

Stephen Wolf, company's former CEO, enthusiastically refined a culture to push limits with his mantra of,” Do it right, do it now and do it better”. He supported and pushed employees to be innovative, independent and assertive. “United airline's Transformation”, case study of Harvard Business Review, employees figured out as saying, “You are supposed to act and deliver to a standard that was continually being raised,” "The only thing that mattered was adding value," and "It was all about an atmosphere of deliberately breaking the rules. Employees were forced to extend and widen the rules more and more, until the boundaries of ethical conduct are overlooked effortlessly in the detection of the subsequent big success (Charles, ...