Does a happy employee increase the bottom
line for an airline?
With greater pressures being placed on the
current aviation market, high fuel prices, privatized airports demanding a
great return for landing slots and passenger handling, as well as the
travelling public wanting to fly for less than the cost of a taxi fare to the
airport, airlines have been cutting costs to the bone in an attempt to make a
profit.
But with this drive to cut costs, is it
necessary to have the employees of the airline squeezed and pressured in the
process?
Low cost airlines work on minimal margins
and high passenger numbers to generate a profit, and with this comes low
numbers of staff trying to cope with the high numbers of passengers, aircraft
and those associated problems. Does morale for the employees actually cost the
company money?
In my humble opinion I don’t believe that
morale needs to be sacrificed in order to reduce costs.
The typical airline employee wants to be
treated fairly, know where they stand with regards to promotional opportunities,
have a sense of security in their job, (not living in fear of being outsourced
to a cheaper which in some cases can result in a reduced output for the
airline), and feel that their contribution in both their physical work output,
but with their suggestions for improvement. Amazingly most of these areas
actually don’t cost a thing.
But with the current thought process in a
large number of publically listed companies, those people at the top seem to
have forgotten about this untapped way to increase profitability of their organization.
Most of these employees wish to stay employed on a long-term basis (which
actually reduces training costs for the company), and most workers actually
want to see the company succeed and be profitable. If the company wins, the aviaiton employees win.
It is hard to work out what changes need to
be made in the current management thought process, but it seems at the moment
that unless the cost of low morale of staff can be placed in a spread sheet and
put on a graph, the move to change the trend showing towards employees may
continue down this disappointing path.
