Strategic Human Resource Management

British Airways Case study



British Airways Merger Case Study

Introduction

British Airways is considered to be the leading global airline in UK that offer low fare round the year and travels all around the world. It provides with the facility to take a flight from centrally located airports. Additionally, customer also get the facility to book hotel at reasonable rates, rent a car, online check in facility. Customer can always make the booking through the official website of British Airways. The airline and its affiliated airline companies travel to around 170 destinations present all over the world in 80 different countries. These countries are present in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, North America, South America and London. If we analyze closely British Airways had some problems in the beginning in the management of their human resource capital but they now have a very firm and sound HR policies that deal with the process of hiring and recruitment in a very professional manner of emphasize majorly on the training and development of their employees by offering them opportunities for career advancement and growth which will be beneficial for both the employee and the airline.

Discussion

When we go back in the history changing market condition and competition with the rival companies for maintaining low cost and fares was the main challenge that most of the airlines faced along with British Airways. The major change in the corporate strategy of British Airways took place back in 1987 with the privatization process of the company. It was then when the company came up with a new mission statement “to be the best and most successful company in the airline industry” (Analoui, 2002). This was the first truning point for the company and the second major change came when the company aligned its objective and strategies according to the four important competitive external factors that are namely, economic conditions of the world, dealing with the challenges and competition, demands and expectations of customers and needs and expectations of the employees. BA included all the important factors that were important for designing a balance corporate strategy thoruhg redefining of its goals and objectives in the light of above mentioned factors. The airline company has undertaken resource based model in application of its HR strategies as it has kept the employees in the centre of every HR planning and implementation.

There are four different type of HR strategies that can be applied to British Airways for improvement of its current situation (Pravin, 2010, pp.36).

3.1 Strategies

Commitment Strategy

As the name suggests this strategy is about motivating employees to work hard with commitment by introducing different training and development programs and increase their motivation level. The interest and goals of both the employees and company has to be similar for successful implementation of this strategy and that is only possible by having well defined goals and objectives for the company and employees so that they both work for achieving similar strategic ...