As well as ensuring that people from different groups do not suffer discrimination, recognizing diversity means understanding how people’s differences and similarities can be mobilized for the benefit of the individual, the organisation and society as a whole. It is believed that “multinational organizations should focus to have a diverse workforce so that employees can learn from the experiences of other people” but then having a diverse workforce has its negative sides as more diverse workforce are seen as opportunity, problem or threat and so there is a unique approach to diversity rather than universal (Dass and Parker, 1999). Besides, evidence shows that positive attitudes towards diverse others raises the possibility of successful diversity management (Shore et al., 2009). It is believed that a diverse workforce is necessary for organizations as a diverse team is made up of employees from different cultures have the potential to contribute their different thoughts, ideas and opinions for the good of the organization. The objective of this paper is to discuss the diversity management for Southwest Airlines. The paper would critically discuss the issues, challenges and opportunities of having diversified workforce for Southwest Airlines.
From an operational function, Southwest Airlines will need to collaborate with several departments, including human resources and management. From an operational standpoint, Southwest Airlines will need to continue to separate itself from other airlines by maintaining quick turnaround times (Dion, 2012). A key element is Southwest Airlines strategy is reducing turnaround times to 10 minutes. Although Southwest Airlines is expanding to the New York market, operations will need to make sure to hold as close to the 90 minutes or less for flights in order to prevent the company from serving food instead of peanuts. This will be an additional expense. Human Resources will play a significant factor in the La Guardia expansion as well. Additional staff will need to be hired on at La Guardia. In addition to the hiring of new employees, training of new staff will need to be coordinated as well. These are key components needed in order to stay true to Southwest mission: “Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit”. Southwest Airlines has to manage its operations in different parts of the world. The company needs diverse workforce and the company is highly dependent on diverse workforce. For example, the company needs local employees to manage its operations in Malaysia. Therefore, it is crucial that Malaysia natives should be able to work freely with American people. It can happen only when Southwest Airlines have a strong diversity management system in place. The paper would analyze the current diversity management system at Southwest Airlines. The paper would also analyze the existing issues and challenges. Based on the existing issues and challenges, the paper would also discuss some of the diversity management recommendations or suggestions for Southwest Airlines.
Due to competing airlines, Southwest Airlines must strategically assess and implement effective organizational plans. It is vital to monitor every aspect of operations to ensure that things are cost effective and beneficial to the organization. Constant IT updates and training will also allow Southwest to have a competitive edge and minimize cost. For example, reduce additional staffing, keep up with current trends in the airline industry. Leaders have to establish a clear and effective change management process to make sure that above are in place, well communicated, accepted and anchored within the organization daily norms, beliefs, and practices (Richard & Roh, 2013). Technology innovation been and evidence of globalization as it contributed tremendously to the organizational learning in most firms of which it is one of their powerful tool to organize, reorganization and exchange knowledge especially the explicit knowledge their global network in diverse geographical locations. The existing diversity management system at Southwest Airlines can be shown as:
Southwest remained the most heavily unionized airline in the industry. Both national unions such as the International Association of Machinists and “associations,” such as the one formed by the Pilots represented its Employees. By 2007, Lamb’s People Department was responsible for hiring roughly 4,000 people per year in an organization of more than 35,000. This was sufficient to support growth and replace departures in an organization with a relatively low Employee turnover rate of less than 5%. That year, it received 329,000 applications for employment (Heskett & Sasser, 2013). Operations might affect management and decision making by making a check of resources, schedule for changes, be able to ask analytical questions, assigned duties and conduct training and preparation.
Human Resources might affect management and decision making by the organizations mission to summarize its purpose, value and vision, the culture in how each employee react to one another, the structure that requires different staffing and funding to allow for maximize profitability (Bowman, 2010).
When leaders are transparent within their organization it builds trust and a positive environment. It is believed that the managers can set the tone for their organization whether good or bad. When there is clear communication and collaboration amongst teams is encouraged the team can conquer many things. When leaders establish a good environment subordinates will want to follow and participate to help meet the demands of the organization. The management of SWA has seen how good leaders can encourage their staff in a positive way and in turn they will want to invest their time to the organization (Chelliah & Shen, 2014). It is rare to find managers today that have that type of compassion to go the extra mile. With so many tasks being added to their responsibilities it is difficult to find managers going out of their way to do the little things. Many are just trying to keep up with the tasks that they are required to do. It sounds like your manager was a rare gem.
Southwest Airlines promoted diversity management through ‘work life balance’ for employees and supporting employees who work virtually. By promoting this type of working teams, SWA have employees on teams who are on the east coast, west coast and even virtual team members in different countries (Richard & roh, 2013). While SWA tries hard to schooled meetings and video conferencing to hit an overlap of employees work schedules, it is hard to do, the international employees work evening shifts so they see working during US working hours. The key drivers of diversity management for SWA can be discussed as:
One of the major drivers of diverse workforce is the lack of opportunities in the home country. The unemployment rate in Nigeria was getting to an alarming level so much so that graduates had to take up menial jobs fit for the ‘unschooled’ just to make ends meet, this also discouraged many youths and so some dropped out of school and went into music as that was a surer way to make good money rather than waste so much time and resources on University education only to come out with no hope of survival as they had no vocational skills to fall back to. However, this problem has been tackled as there has been a recent introduction of vocational training in Nigerian higher institutions to curb this problem and this would really go a long way in giving graduates the skills they need to work.
There are many effective strategies that help motivated team members, for example choosing the right communication style, frequent communication, pay virtual team members well, Nurture virtual friendships, and creating a true “team” feeling. Some of the emerging trends in diversity management field are the advancement of technology, and the changing requirements and regulations by the state.
The key aspects of workforce diversity for Southwest Airlines can be discussed as:
Planning task force: Core team of leaders representing key departments that meets regularly with defined deliverables and management of diverse workforce
Vision: Road map to the feature; broad to include all impact areas and narrow to define path towards diversity management
Mission: What the organization is and who they are in terms of diverse workforce
Values: Operational fundamental beliefs as a guideline for behavior and culture
Goals: Broad strategies that achieve the mission
Objectives: Strategies that are measurable, specific, realistic, action-oriented, and timed and they achieve the goals and vision of the organization
Tasks: Assigned to departments or individuals specific, measurable and timed lists that are actionable
Implementation strategy: Makes initiatives and resources priorities
Monitoring of plan: Monitor the success and challenges while evaluating the successes of the plan. The plan can be reworked if elements of the plan are not on track.”
SW airlines were able to implement their strategic plan with less stress because they were a small company. Larger organizations have several layers to address and change has to be implemented at every level all details have to be well defined and all employees have to accept the change, often this is the major issue people accepting change after walking the same path for many years. Creating goals without a clear vision makes it difficult for followers to understand the ultimate objective. Being able to visualize the outcome of creating changes helps one to embrace behavior and process change. While the team is developing training and employee programs based off the mission and core values for the Company, there has to be a lot of flexibility for change on what that training looks like. There have been many times where the development plan has been created and the implementation has started, then we get notice that we need to scale back or change the vision of the programs to communicate different messages. Being able to review and change the path is vital within this department. The way SWA is thriving with the diversity management can be shown as:
One of the major issues in the existing diversity management culture of Southwest Airlines is the lack of communication. The management of Southwest Airlines should realize the importance of communication between departments. It is true that, just like people, departments have different viewpoints. They are not wrong perspectives but simply different. It is important that departments communicate with each other and share those insights and then come together around the mission of the corporation to find pathways to success. Just as people sometimes fall into the thinking that they personally are the key to victory, departments may be so focused on their part of the business that they fall prey to not realizing the importance of other sectors of the company. Collaboration is very important within organizations. To assist with a supportive and innovative climate inclusion, and collaboration is highly correlated to an organizations success. Having all departments come to the table with the advantages the risk and the disadvantages. Contributing new innovative ideas and strategic planning will allow the organization to continuously grow and increase productivity.
Most managers have a hard enough time building a culture of collaboration within their own teams, much less with teams across multiple departments. However, this collaboration is often exactly what the companyneeds to solve problems, create infrastructure and share knowledge (Fadmin, 2016).
Hiring and training will also be an issue depending on how the employee transfer process occurs as well. Heskett and Sasser (2013) indicate that one of the reasons for the merger was to allow more access to New York, which has been desired by long-term employees for some time. The merger will benefit many but will need to be emphasized repeatedly as a positive situation to alleviate employee’s fear of having to worry about delays and other more negative factors associated with the larger airport but LaGuardia in particular.
The existing diversity management principles at Southwest Airlines also may be concerned about the people and the culture, keeping the good customer experience, low rate of delays, high reliability, low far, and continue the high focused strategy centered on low fares and point to point flights (Heskett & Sasser, 2013). When it comes to collaboration, the CEO, president, and board have to set a consistent expectation of collaboration within the various divisions of the corporation. The adage that “What you permit, you promote,” means that if departments are permitted to be at odds with one another to the detriment of the mission then leaders are promoting poor mission compliance. It is vital the leaders give the vision and lead in a way that promotes collaboration.
Great customer service is based on dedicated employees that are vested in the company, who are happy to be employed by that company. If SWA compensates their employees by offering them a good salary, with better than average benefits, then employees are more proned to providing better service.
Customers and employees tend to higher levels of trust in companies that are honest and open. The shared decision-making and collaboration between the human resource management and operations departments will assist in problem solving and at the same time strengthen the diversity management culture within the organization. For the overall success of the organization it is of vital importance that both the human resource management and operations department collaborate (Loes & Pascarella, 2012).
Transparency in diversity management is vital to the company, because if the employee’s don’t trust SWA it could affect their productivity. They will likely also loose good employees, which can have an overall impact on customer service. Without good customer service, the chances of a company failing increases. Reputation is important, and the employees are the backbone of the company so they should always be transparent by keeping their employees updated (Ashikali & Groeneveld, 2015).
Often the people who should be in the meetings are the ones left out but they are the ones who have to work with employees’. Communication is key to any change within an organization, often upper management do not want to meet with all employees they just want to know how much will it cost, will it be on time and within budget. The sad part is when the change causes issues the employees are to blame how can people who weren’t trained on a system they don’t understand be accused of causing issues and delays on projects.
Conclusion
The above paper discusses the diversity management principles for Southwest Airlines. With the above discussion it can be said that to improve the cross-functional teams within the department, all staff should be trained on the basic capabilities of Google Drive and Drop Box and encouraged to utilize the programs to more effectively share information. Further, training between the departments is highly encouraged. A better understanding of the roles and expectations of the other departments would assist everyone overall (Barker & Mak, 2013). Further, the typical hierarchal systems within the department should embrace a more horizontal leadership function and encourage participation within each institution and organization when making decisions. Gaining the thoughts and feedback from individuals working on the front lines will assist in buy-in and creating a better product that will work for everyone.
Needs assessments are a vital tool that will benefit organizations in many ways. For example, assessing the needs of staff/employees to do their job efficiently and effectively. Assessing what works and what do not work for the organizations is highly correlated with productivity rate. The diversity management at Southwest Airlines could also effect human resources, because SWA would need to create more jobs in order to accommodate the there needs. If they want to increase their demand, they must increase their staff. SWA must strategically plan out how they will increase business and their revenue without having to hire too much staff, or use additional planes. Part of SWA’s decision making is flying shorter routes, this gives them shorter turn around times (Reidenbach & Robin, 2013).
The diversity management function at Southwest Airlines is iterated throughout the six steps as each one has a need to consider the goals and how best to achieve those goals. In the experimentation step there is emphasis given to developing a hypothesis and then organizing to make it measurable over a given (short) time frame (Christensen & Mackey, 2014). The function of leading is provided through having dedicated process leaders and furthered by having them work with a New Venture Board to determine that goals are being met and that hurdles are being overcome. Control is exercised extensively in their process since it is run like a scientific experiment (Euchner & Ganguly, 2014). The timing, measures, outcomes, and assumptions are all controlled iteratively to decrease the likelihood of blind spots in the model.
References
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Barker, M. C., & Mak, A. S. (2013). From classroom to boardroom and ward developing generic intercultural skills in diverse disciplines. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17(5), 573-589.
Bowman, N. A. (2010). College diversity experiences and cognitive development: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 80(1), 4-33.
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