Executive Summary
This paper is a description of the HR theories which are used to make the HR strategies for the organisations. The organisations then tend to make policies from the plan, which help the companies to create a productive workplace. This paper discusses the Australian Airline company; Qantas Airways. The document includes the introduction about the company and background of the company. In detail, there is a discussion about the HR strategies which are used by the organisation and the HR policies derived from those strategies. Furthermore, the engagement of employees in the organisation is discussed, that what makes it more useful and why employee engagement should be considered essential for the companies. The planning process of employee engagement is summarised regarding Qantas Airways, and a detailed recommendation about the policies to be used by the company, are addressed at the end.
HRM
Introduction
For this research assignment, I will be going through the Human Resource activities which are held by the company and the HR strategies which are acquired by companies. Companies make a plan for their HR policies and employees engaged in their workplace. These policies help the company to identify the critical areas of HR, where they need improvement and increase their productivity regarding Human Resource. The fundamental aim of this study is to determine an organisation and study its HR strategy. There is a lot of concern about the employee engagement in a company, and what plans are taken forward to improve the engagement of employees in the firm. This study will focus on the activities which are beneficial for the companies to acquire to improve their employee engagement in the workplace. After the HR strategy is obtained, appropriate HR practices are going to be examined. For this purpose, Qantas Airways, which is the leading Australian Airline is selected.
Qantas Airways is the flagship airline company of Australia, which is also the largest airline company regarding fleet size, international destinations, and international flights(“Our Company | Qantas,” n.d.). Being found in 1920, Qantas Airways is considered as the third oldest airline in the world, after Avianca and KLM. QANTAS is an acronym of Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, which is nicknamed as “Flying Kangaroo”(“Our Company | Qantas,” n.d.). Qantas is also a founding partner of the Oneworld Airline Alliance. The headquarters of Qantas Airways is based in Sydney with the main hub of Sydney Airport. According to March 2014, Qantas carried 14.9% passengers in and out of Australia and had a 65% share of the Australian domestic market(“Our Company | Qantas,” n.d.). Qantas Airways also has a subsidiary named Jetconnect which provides service between New Zealand and Australia.
Jetstar Airways is also owned by Qantas, which is a low-cost airline operating international and domestic services from Australia and New Zealand. “The spirit of Australia” is the company’s slogan, which identifies that customers love the airline and is of first options for some people. Leigh Clifford is the CEO of the company, who is serving from 2007 and has proven to be a great leader. According to 2015 annual reports, Qantas had almost 30,000 employees, and its total revenue was termed at A$15.8 billion. The mission statement of Qantas Airways is “We are Australia’s leading premium airline, and we are dedicated to being the best”(“Our Company | Qantas,” n.d.). They have focused on being the best in business, by setting the goal of being the leaders in the business. “To be a great airline which supports the purpose of Spirit of Austalia, with low fare offering for the customers” is the vision of Qantas Airways(“Our Company | Qantas,” n.d.).
Human Resource Strategy
HR strategy is a development of behaviours, skills, and attitudes among the staff that helps the organisation to reach its goals. Human Resource strategies consist of the principles, which help to manage the workforce of the firm by acquiring HR policies and practices. These strategies include the performance management, recruitment of employees, compensation of employees, rewards, recognition, training, and retention of employees(Chelladurai and Kerwin, 2017). Companies acquire these practices which are their strategies to make useful HRM in the business and workforce. In developing HR strategies, companies align their industry, competitive advantage of the industry and the essential characteristics/people associated with the plan (Chelladurai and Kerwin, 2017). These strategies are closely linked with the skills, responsibilities, and knowledge of the people and the organisations. Based on the information and characteristics, companies acquire certain plan to maintain their culture, processes, and structures.
Qantas Airways have focused mainly on the recruitment of employees, compensation, and training. These HR strategies are widely used in the company, which are their strategies to make Human Resource department more effective(“Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers,” n.d.). HR recruitment is based on the firm’s mission and workplace culture. For the more effective recruitment processes, Qantas has acquired the development of certain programs which can be essential in the hiring for the company(“Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers,” n.d.). The company focuses on pre-selection skill development, that before they hire a person, he/she should have prior knowledge of the company and its workforces.
Training is one of the key factors included in the HR strategy of Qantas Airways. Training and development are the functions that include job skills training, leadership training, professional skill development, and new employee guideline development.Qantas focuses on these strategies to improve their employees in acquiring job skills and to help them in obtaining expertise in cross-functional work(“Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers,” n.d.). Qantas follows the strategy of improving the value in their workplace. Qantas highly believes that having an appropriate set of skills gained by effective training can help the employees become future leaders for the company in quite a short time(“Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers,” n.d.). Adequate training and development increases the chances of employee promotion and supports the employee’s work goals.
Compensation refers to the view that how the company is rewarding their employees, regarding monetary or intrinsic benefits. By looking at the compensation policy of a company, it identifies the way employers treat their employees relating to the extra benefits for the employees. Qantas has focused on the compensation policies for a long time, and 70% of their employees are liable to get compensation benefits apart from their salaries(“Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers,” n.d.).
HR Practices
Qantas Airways has been working in the HR practices and its development for the past three to four years, with rapid speed. To ensure the employee engagement, HR policies and practices are widely diverse and flexible (“How did Qantas improve its human resources management?” 2016). Qantas as established a one-day training program, which involves every employee across the cabin crew, ground operation teams, and airport teams. The company has focused on the integrated approach which changes every aspect of the employee training. In the next step, CEO of Qantas Airways planned to bring back the lessons learned from the training and implement them in the workplace, using the technology in the day to day operations(“How did Qantas improve its human resources management?” 2016). For the past three years, Qantas has focused on using IPads, as the means of communicating effectively with the staff and the customers. This process ranges from every person on the airport including the customer service managers and front-line managers. Qantas took this step to keep engaging with the front line staff and improve their productivity(“How did Qantas improve its human resources management?” 2016). Other than that, Qantas airways gives certain tasks to their cabin crew members, and based on the key performance indicators they are rewarded with a two day leadership program, which helps the non-managerial employees to get appropriate training for a becoming a future leader(“How did Qantas improve its human resources management?,” 2016).
Employee engagement
Employee engagement is the concept of understanding the relationship between an organisation and its employees(Albrecht et al., 2015). An engaged employee is the one who fully absorbed in work and takes positive actions to increase the firm’s interests and reputations. An engaged employee will always have positive feedback about the organisation and its values(Albrecht et al., 2015). Companies tend to expect high results as well from the highly engaged employees. However, engagement is not natural; it comes from the strategies which organisations acquire to improve employee’s engagement in the company(Jackson, Schuler and Jiang, 2014).
Qantas has introduced a family plan for their employees, where the employee can cover his/her partner’s health cost in the insurance plan. The employees who get benefits, as well as their partners, aremore likely to engage in the company’s activities(Jackson, Schuler and Jiang, 2014). Qantas also focuses on preparing monthly meetings with the employees, where every employee to free to comment on any negative/positive thing in the organisation, or give any feedback relating the company or employees.
Employee Engagement recommendations
In contrast to the engagement activities which are used by Qantas, the company can also look into the following employee engagement activities:
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Involving employees in the planning process
Qantas Airways can present the most critical issues in the organisation, and then prior actions should be taken to solve those issues. In every quarter, they can do this task with involving the concerned team in the planning of the mission to overcome the problem (Jiang et al., 2017). Involving the low-level employees can help the company in making appropriate leaders for the future, as the phase of involvement planning can groom the skills of the employees.
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Create your company magazine
Qantas Airways, being the leader of Australian Airline services, should introduce a magazine on 6 months or quarterly basis, where they can present the employee of the month, dude of the month, and employee of the year. Based on the performance in the workplace, dress code, communications, queries, feedbacks, and turnover of an employee these ranks can be allotted to the cabin crew, airport staff, and the ground staff individually(Paillé et al., 2014). By following this pattern, it will increase the motivation of an employee more towards his/her work.
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Sharing the financial statements
Most of the organisations do not share their financial terms and reports with the internal employees. It makes the employees more demotivated towards work. It also does not support the emotional concern of the employee. Qantas Airways can use the financial statement as a means to gain trust in a workplace. By showing the financial statements to the employees, it will create confidence in the employees and overall work system will be increased(Eisenberger, Malone and Presson, 2016). It will also increase the employee engagement because, sharing the means from where the company is earning and selling to the employees, will make them more committed to work than ever.
Conclusion
It is essential for organisations to have certain HR policies in place, which help in achieving a high customer turnover and satisfaction of employees. Acquiring appropriate HR practices are necessary for the companies, as it makes them more effective in establishing a sound workplace environment. However, in line with the HR policies, there are employee engagement strategies which a company makes for their employees to be more engaged in their work and feel motivated towards the work.
References
Albrecht, S.L., Bakker, A.B., Gruman, J.A., Macey, W.H. and Saks, A.M., 2015. Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage: An integrated approach. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 2(1), pp.7-35.
Cascio, W., 2018. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education.
Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., 2017. Human resource management in sport and recreation. Human Kinetics.
Eisenberger, R., Malone, G.P. and Presson, W.D., 2016. Optimizing perceived organizational support to enhance employee engagement. Society for Human Resource Management and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
How did Qantas improve its human resources management? [WWW Document], 2016. . HRM Online. URL http://www.hrmonline.com.au/section/strategic-hr/qantas-improve-human-resources-management/
Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K., 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.
Jiang, K., Hu, J., Liu, S. and Lepak, D.P., 2017. Understanding employees’ perceptions of human resource practices: Effects of demographic dissimilarity to managers and coworkers. Human Resource Management, 56(1), pp.69-91.
Our Company | Qantas [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/company/global/en
Paillé, P., Chen, Y., Boiral, O. and Jin, J., 2014. The impact of human resource management on environmental performance: An employee-level study. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(3), pp.451-466.
Recruitment Programs | Qantas Careers [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.qantas.com/au/en/about-us/qantas-careers/programs.html (accessed 4.4.18).
