Organizational needs identify what is necessary to meet the future need of the organization. The needs help to determine the organization’s priorities, make improvements, and ensure the appropriate resources are allocated. The first organization need is to fix the operational challenges at Alaska Airlines. The company cruised through the 1900’s with mediocre performance; however, due to various events over the past two decades, Alaska Airlines has been facing the risk of bankruptcy. Alaska Airlines’ primary hub is located in Seattle and houses various operational units including maintenance, ticket counter, infight, flight operations (Avolio, at el., 2015). The various operational units work independently, however with current operations failing to meet the status quo, Alaska Airlines needs to overhaul the current operations process to ensure all units are aligned and are collaborating for the success of the company. By improving the operational challenges, the company can work on reducing costs and improving the company’s reputation.
The second organizational need is to increase the employee morale. The crash of flight 261 in 2000 began the steady decline of the morale within the workplace. Flight 261 and the 9/11 attack took an economic toll on the company, which it tried to repair in 2003 with The 2010 Plan. The 2010 Plan began impacting employees financially by outsourcing groups, offering voluntary severances to management, and closing several Alaska Airlines stations and offices throughout the west coast. Around the same time union contracts were up for renegotiations, which resulted in mediations, binding arbitrations lowering pay, and terminations of employees (Avolio, at el., 2015). The union negotiations further negatively impacted the employee morale, as employees were fearful that they would be next impacted and were overworked. By having low employee morale, one of Alaska Airlines’ three strategic priorities - customer satisfaction – will continue to be negatively impacted due to the lack of employees’ desire to please the customer since they aren’t happy themselves. As the employees represent the brand of Alaska Airlines, it is important to focus on their morale to help to ensure they are upholding the value of the Alaska Airlines brand.
The third organizational need is effective performance measurements to help measure success. Alaska airline employees work in individual silos along and currently do not have any performance analysis that help measure organizational goals. The lack of understanding current performance targets and current status of performance does not encourage employees to strive to achieve any performance standard. As the company must improve its operational status, it is important for employees to understand where the company is currently operating at and what each employee’s role is to help improve the performance (Blazey, 2009, p.16). The performance analyses can also be used to respond rapidly to changing organizational needs in the future. These analyses can also help to identify weak spots within a certain operational team and help to identify units that need additional resource. In addition, the performance of the airline is something that shareholders hold much value in. Shareholder want to know that the performance of the company is standard with competitors and are helping increase the value of the company.
The problem with Alaska airline first arise when one of their planes crashed on January 31, 2000 due to mechanical problems. MD-80 jet was carrying roughly 88 passengers, and working crew from Puerto Rico Mexico when the plane crashed into rough seas 64 km, approximately 40 miles from Los Angeles. Everyone was shocked at the tragedy that had just happened. Not too long after came the trauma of 9/11. Airlines operations were greatly interrupted worldwide, with the demand for traveling going down. 9/11 was seen and viewed by many to have been a great shock to the nation. However, because the Alaska Airline crash had something to do with mechanical problems, made the crash very personal to all that were directly impacted by the event or not. To them, it was rather neglect on the airlines side that caused such a crash to happen in the first place (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015).
Due to the 9/11 tragedy that had shocked the nation, and caused airlines to see a huge reduction in travelers, many airlines decided to lay off their employees to avoid going bankrupt. Atlanta Airlines and its management felt that it would be best to take the other route and not lay off that workers. In the sense that doing so would maybe restore some, if not, all the trust that their employees once had about the airline after the tragedy crash that had occurred.
The mechanical problem that caused the crash has been affecting the company since it first occurred. “Alaska’s annual passenger traffic dropped 5.6 percent in 2001 compared with the industry wide decline in domestic passenger travel of 19 percent (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015)”. In 2004, the airline decided to contract out their heavy aircraft maintenance. The company has been taking measures of different kind to avoid the maintenance problem crash that caused many people to doubt the airlines ability to protect them, and whether safety was of any importance to them at all.
Alaska Airlines was going through some major changes (rather they had to go through some major changes). ‘Alaska Airlines had recovered from an all-time operational low, where only 60 percent of flights were on time and seven bags per 1,000 passengers were reported as having been mishandled’ (Avolio, B., J., Patterson, C., & Baker, B. 2015). The airline company was able to stay afloat because they had an extremely loyal following of passengers. This loyalty was rapidly decreasing as more and more passengers were experiencing delayed flights and lost bags.
The airline had gone through two major events that negatively impacted the customer loyalty. In one incident, ‘an Alaska Airlines MD-80 jet carrying 88 passengers and crew from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco crashed into rough seas 64km (40 miles) northwest of Los Angeles’ (Avolio, et., al. 2015). Shortly after this incident, 9/11 occurred which severely hindered all airlines. With these two events happening so close together Alaska Airlines was struggling to keep sales. With these two events on top of their poor flight times and bag handling, Alaska Airlines had a long way to go to get their sales back to a ‘below normal’ level. With their current situation being so bad, they needed a full organizational shift to get back where they wanted to be.
Alaska Airlines wanted to get their numbers back to where they used to be and then eventually surpass that and gain their customer loyalty bag. The airline needed to determine what changes to make to the core values and processes of their organization to make their goal a reality. Their process included an entire shift in management in their Seattle hub. This also came with downsizing and changing up lower level managers as well. This was tough decision as employees (along with the customers) can also lose faith and their sense of loyalty to the organization.
Perhaps the biggest change that Alaska Airlines made to get to where they wanted to be as an Airline was outsourcing their ramp vendor. ‘A bold decision was made to replace more than 470 Seattle baggage handlers with contractors’ (Avolio, et., al. 2015). This decision really defined the gap between where they were versus where they wanted to be. Although they had hiccups with the vendor, which initially was not working towards their advantage. ‘Stabilizing the ramp quickly was essential to the long-term success of the “Fix Seattle” imperative” (Avolio, et., al. 2015). Once they got this aspect of the organization corrected their flight delays, bag handling, as well as other employees working operations (especially pilots).
Alaska Airlines gap between their current situation and their goal had been increasing at an alarming rate due to external factors as well as internal factors. The organizational change that they made in their Seattle hub was extremely crucial to minimizing and eventually closing this gap.
Alaska airlines has been through some good times, and they have also experienced some bumpy roads on the way as well. The company first started to see a lack of trust in their employees after one of their planes had crashed due to maintenance issues. This plane was set to be carrying mainly family members, and crews of Alaska airline. Among those that were affected by the crash were also some customers.
Not long after the maintenance issue crash had occurred, 9/11 hit making things ever harder for the company. Airlines were laying off workers because of 9/11 on traveling, but Atlantic airline did not follow in the footsteps of their rivals because they still had to try and regain back the trust of their employees (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015). The following plan needs to be used to create urgency within the organization and convince the shareholders for change-
The first step is to share the risk of getting bankrupt with the shareholders.
Relevant data and information needs to be shared with the stakeholders to make them aware of the reasons of change.
The seriousness of the senior management towards commitment to change needs to be displayed.
The managers need to talk to the employees, customers, contractors, suppliers, shareholders, and other stakeholders to understand their concerns and problems.
Currently, different operational units of Alaska Airlines are working independently. Therefore, while implementing any change, it could not align properly with the desired goals and output throughout the organization. Hence, to implement the stated changes i.e. fixing the operational challenges, boosting employee morale, and developing effective performance measurements to help measure success, the company needs to overhaul the current operational activities. Different units which are earlier working independently needs to be aligned together for better collaboration and coordination.
After haven’t read the case study on Alaska airline, and what I know about how the company started having issues in the first place that led to them potentially facing bankruptcy. I can say that Alaska airline should put emphasis on regaining trust among their employees, so forth. it is also very important on part of the company to motivate their employees. Addressing employee moral issue, reduce costs and better retain its highly skilled workers the airline must allow their agents to work from home, that will help to motivate them and to cultivate the feeling of self-belongingness with the company. By going this route, the airline will be able to improve absenteeism and attrition and hence improve the productivity, performance and work/life balance.
The company can first do the pilot testing on this approach. “Pilot testing is a rehearsal of your research study, allowing you to test your research approach with a small number of test participants before you conduct your main study (Wright, 2017)”. If the results are satisfactory then they can initiate for its implementation. This approach will benefit the company on productivity and revenue aspect. Everyone loves at home service programs and by implementing such reforms, the company will be able to deal with the de motivated staff issue.
Guiding coalition is a strategic tool available to companies to lead the major transformations in their respective countries. “A guiding coalition is a powerful, enthusiastic team of volunteers from across an organization—is a crucial tool for leaders looking to put new strategies into effect and transform their organizations. And deciding who should take part in the guiding coalition is essential (Kotter, 2012)”. This is true for Alaska Airlines as well. In my opinion. The guiding coalition must comprise of the 33% leaders, 33% managers, and 33% informal leaders.
This sort of guiding coalition is better than only including leaders and managers with experience as in there are many informal leaders across the organization who are opinion leaders, are charismatic and they can make the change happen at the ground level. These informal leaders may not have a formal designation or power, but they yield significant influence over the organization and employee behavior. These leaders must be leveraged and make to participate in the Alaska Airlines transformation.
Also, including the leaders and experienced managers will provide the technical know-how and the best practices that can be replicated across the company and change leaders who can implement the same at the ground level so that changes are the concrete and long-term.
On a high priority basis, the commitment of employees towards the company and their work is very important. Without their commitment the airline not even can wonder to bring some positive changes. Along with employees, customer’s loyalty is equally important. But customer loyalty can only be drive from the employee’s commitment.
If they do their work, then the company will manage to come out of the worst situation. This can be done by motivating employees. For that, they can be provided with at home work programs or bonus program. Company must engage its employees in decision making process. Two-way communication systems must be present in the company. Give opportunities to employee to voice their opinions. Create an action plan and track the working of your employees on a regular basis. Re-evaluation of training and development programs should be done on a regular basis.
Using Kotter’s steps three and four, with step three being Decide the change vision and strategy; clarify how the future will be different from the past and how you can make that future a reality, and step four being communicate for understanding and buy in; make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy. An overview of the case involving Alaska Airline is as follow;
The problem with Alaska airline first arise when one of their planes crashed on January 31, 2000 due to mechanical problems. MD-80 jet was carrying roughly 88 passengers, and working crew from Puerto Rico Mexico when the plane crashed into rough seas 64 km, approximately 40 miles from Los Angeles. Everyone was shocked at the tragedy that had just happened. Not too long after came the trauma of 9/11. Airlines operations were greatly interrupted worldwide, with the demand for traveling going down. 9/11 was seen and viewed by many to have been a great shock to the nation. However, because the Alaska Airline crash had something to do with mechanical problems, made the crash very personal to all that were directly impacted by the event or not. To them, it was rather neglect on the airlines side that caused such a crash to happen in the first place (Avolio, Patterson, & Baker, 2015).
In the case regarding Kotter’s steps 3 and 4 of developing a vision and strategy and communicating the change vision, there was an active two-way communication with the stakeholders. Alaska developed a solid multi-channel communication teams and systems, and was ready to quickly respond to questions regarding the changes in the company. The company took into consideration how every decision affects customers and therefore maintained a system of listening to the posts for feedback.
Every program is aligned to some economics but there is need of aligning them to the best interest of the existing customers. The company saw the need of keeping it easy and simple, ensuring that customers will continue getting real utility from points earned, as well as reminding members how much the company values their business. Long-term loyalty concerns the way a company responds if things do not go as planned as well as what the company needs to do to reward frequent customers.
Organizational change effort establishes the transformation in the organizational system, which leads to accidental effects.” Change is intensely personal. For change to occur in any organization, everyone must think, feel, or do something different. Even in large organizations, which depend on thousands of employees understanding company strategies well enough to translate them into appropriate actions, leaders must win their followers one by one (Duck, 1993)”. In Alaskan Airline change effort analysis is important to keep the customer loyalty. and helps the customer to receive the maximum benefit while traveling with them. Also embark new customers should also be privileged with change effort. Thus, it maximizes in revenue and providing the better services vision change effort has become very effective at large in long run.
Alaska Airlines is committed to offering best-in-class program for all the fliers. The company appreciates that some big airlines are moving to revenue-based accrual model and therefore seeks to ensure that its programs remain competitive for its customers and first-class fares, while ensuring that they don’t take anything away from the average flier buying less expensive tickets. This implies maintaining a distance-based earning model, and at the same time expanding mileage bonuses for those purchasing a more flexible and first-class fares. The recent industry uncertainty and changes have cause several long-time members to reconsider their loyalties. This has made the company to create a unique opportunity to enable it to re-engage with the existing members and see to it that they receive maximum value from the program. This is an opportunity for the company to increase the program profile as well as engage new members through customer lifecycle marketing.
Change effort analysis involves establishing the possible effects of a change, or determining what should be modified to accomplish a change. A change to a system has the potential of leading to several accidental effects that are not always easy and obvious to identify. The primary reason for change effort is not just to discover the effect set as far as coding components but also in terms of resources and effort required for executing the change so that examiners could break down the effect of the asked for change based on the budget. The target of change effort analysis is to discover the effect set of the change asked for by client or customer. By utilizing the effect set, there will be appraisal of the relapse test exertion. We outline our outcomes with a contextual investigation. As the aftereffects of this work, we get the effect set having sway component as class names regarding the asked for change, the test suite and the exertion required for relapse testing after the usage of the requested change.
The necessity for change must be communicated to one and all. It should be elaborated further on why is it so imperative now to resurrect, overhaul ourselves in all depts. It should be supported by some key numbers. The change should be communicated with some personal examples, baby steps that the chief executive officers(CXO) have themselves taken to ensure the commitment towards the change.
All these ways to communicate the expected change will make the employees visualize the past and the future of the company in both cases of accepting or not-accepting the change. The mental picture is very important as that would lead one and all to work towards the core values and thus the up-liftment of the company.
“Two-way communication is essentially the interchange of information and ideas from the sender to the receiver or vice versa. The details are transferred from one person to another according to the priority of the message (Reddy, 2017)”. Two-way communication is equally important as if a communication happens only on-way that too from the top downwards then at some level it just fizzles out. Hence an open discussion forum online where people can post either named or anonymously would be a great measure. Also, dashboards at every nook and corner of the employee touch points where anyone can put a sticky with his/her ideas, feedback would also mean that every employee has a say. Moreover, based on these interactions, the management needs to act on all the feedbacks received at all levels.
Direct supervisors are one of the most pivotal point to manage an operations intensive organization. We think all CXOs only should travel and address all direct supervisors at their locations giving them the impression that the top 4-5 people on this mission to save the firm need their efforts. They are here for a reason and want the wellness, prosperity of the bottommost rung of the employees.
Any concerns or anxieties needs to be spotted first, heard first, to be analyzed and then put through enough brainstorming, perhaps asking the person himself what does he sees as possible reasons and thus solutions and then act as per the most viable solution. Open discussion is where it starts and action items with execution and results is where it ends and thus all uncertainties, doubts has been addressed.
As mentioned earlier above, it must start from the CXOs, and it should not take the waterfall model where it flows through multiple pecking levels and reaches the employees. It should be direct bypassing all the levels so that the change starts from the bottom and top in parallel.
“Some of the challenges faced by businesses today are; Integrity, Resource management, Customer loyalty, Uncertainty, Regulation, and Problem solving (Conner, 2013)”. In the case of Alaska airline, operational challenges can only be resolved by people who are performing the operations and not by boardroom deliberations. Employee morale will rise if the employees know what they are doing and how does it affect customers and thus the company’s fortunes. Every employee’s, dept.’s KPIs can be chalked by asking them what do they do every day, how do they think they can be more productive, how they can be happier while doing it. We need to say that the past is part and we all must accept the lessons from there and we look and work towards the future. We still have a lot of customer loyalty and thus we can rise from here.
Organizational change is all about trying to move forward in business, and in the process making things easy for employees and management through a more structured business setting. In order words, “Organizational change is about reviewing and modifying management structures and business processes. There is no need to fear change. Instead, businesses should embrace change to lay the foundations for enduring success (Basu, n.d)”. Employees’ resistance to change is because no organization employees welcome change. There is always a resistance particularly in the Alaska Airlines organization because the employees and the vendor were replaced.
Moreover, Customer’s fear, the loyal customers who preferred other airlines had a fear in them. The customers feared that they might not get good experience with the Alaska Airlines which was lost, and Management’s investment on resources; Since the management decided to invest largely in the change effort, there might be resistance from the stakeholders of the company. The following are continuing reasons to the barriers of change;
The emphasis of immediate success- this was the primary focus by the Alaska Airlines was a great barrier for the change effort. Conflicts was also an issue, because Instead of cooperation within the company, there are conflicts and competition which results in resistance to the change.
Alignment with the company’s values; The proposed changes pose challenges in aligning with the company’s values and visions. The change effort might be sought as a boon by one party however it may be sought as a bane by another party, and the loss of measurement of change; Sometimes management fails to measure the impact of change which results in failure in the implementation of the change effort.
“Resistance to change is the act of opposing or struggling with modifications or transformations that alter the status quo in the workplace. Employees resist change when it is introduced to them poorly, when it affects how they do their work, and when they don't see the need for the changes (Heathfield, 2017)”. In the case of Atlantic Airline, resistance to change cab be recognized in the following way;
Increased absenteeism – which shows that employees are not satisfied, or their morale is low.
Low productivity – the target might not be reached by the employees.
Illnesses – shows that there is pressure on the employees to accept change, and
Lack of motivation – low morale results in low motivation
Resistance to change in the case of Atlantic Airline will be eliminated or mitigated in the following manner;
Identifying the cause of the resistance by asking why the change is not accepted by the employees
Acknowledging the cause and taking steps to improvise or replace the change effort
Always expecting and accepting that there might be emotional impact on every step of the change effort.
Listen to what the employees have to say about the change.
Allow employees to express any negative feelings they might have during meetings.
Celebrate the victory of each step in the change effort which motivates the employees to accept the change, and Help the employees set priorities and set long term and short-term goals.
The five ways that can be used to empower employees to help drive a change effort is by communicating the change vision with them in a manner that drives interest and lays out all the possible outcomes of the change. Next, aligning structure, providing training for the new system so that employees get an idea of what it will be like and are able to express any concerns they might have, handle any anti-change agents, and lastly, Give the team ownership over specific projects (Gleeson, 2017). Allow the employees to share their negative feelings on the change agent, then make that employee be responsible to replace the step in the change agent and monitor that it is implemented well, let employees take responsibility and accountability for what they do, and Make employees lead their teams to drive the change. As a Manager, guide and help the teams to build their teams to achieve the organizational goals.
Short term wins will be generated by doing the following; Motivating employees by praising for their contributions for the successful implementation of the change, creating a sense of urgency in employees by emphasizing on the importance of why the change is initiated, Communicating the change vision and strategy to the employees, Empowering the employees with the action, and Celebrating small wins. These short-term wins can be rewarded through personal motivation, recognition and appreciation. Also, small monetary or non-monetary gifts will go an extra mile.
What can be gained from short term wins is encouragement among employees to do more. Short-term wins are the step for a big success. By short term wins, we can weed out the people who resist change or even make them accept the change. The organization is a conflict of people. Hence, short-term wins will emphasize the importance of the change and leads to the successful implementation of the change. Though short-term wins have huge importance on the success of the organization’s effort for implementing change.
G. Sustain Acceleration; How will you ensure that the momentum driving the change effort continues?
H. Institute Change; What actions need to occur for this change to become part of the organizational culture? Defend each action.
2. What infrastructure mechanisms need to be in place to maintain and sustain the change into the future? Describe the importance of each.