Topic – Impact of Workforce development on organizational performance: Qantas Airline
Workforce development is a broad area of organization or business because workforce development covers employee training, employee performance, motivation, compensation, etc. In general, organizational performance is highly influenced by workforce development. According to Khan, Khan and Khan (2011), a poor workforce plan can result in poor organizational productivity. Aspects of workforce development plan such as training has the distinct role in the achievement of an organizational goal by incorporating the interest of organization as well as the workforce. Organizational performance may depend on several other factors but productivity is highly dependent on the internal aspect like workforce inputs. Thus, workforce development programs have crucial impact on organizational performance. Major purpose of the report is to identify the impact of workforce development plan on organization performance of Qantas Airline, Australia. Considering the importance of workforce development, some major area such as employee training, employee performance, motivation and compensation have been covered in the discussion.
Qantas is a dominant player in Australian transport and aviation industry. Qantas has been running its operation for many decades and the success of its operation is the result of day to day operational excellence. The net revenue achieved in 2018 of Qantas Group is $17,060 compared to the revenue achieved in 2017 with $16,056. The workforce strength of Qantas Group is 26,150 (Raynes & Tsui, 2019). Mission of Qantas is to become the leading premium airline being dedicated to best and aim to meet daily expectations of people it serves. The operation of Qantas goes on with vision of being the premium airline.
Qantas is known to be controlling a series of flying operations along with a diverse portfolio which is fully owned by related airline businesses with the inclusion of Jetstar, Jets Transfort Express, Network Aviation, Qantas International, Qantas Domestic, Qantas Freight, etc (Raynes & Tsui, 2019). There are some supportive services including Qantas Loyalty, Qantas Engineering and Qantas Aviation service delivers specialist services with the inclusion of Qantas Ground Service, Ground Service Equipment, etc.
Furthermore, it has been identified that Qantas operation are highly extensive air transportation network which serves the nation Australia and 22 more nations in Asia, America and Middle East. The organization provides schedule passenger and freight services based on the combination of own aircraft as well as codeshare agreements with airlines.
According to Alshubaily (2017),aviation is certainly one of the highly regulated sectors across the world and to continue the operation Qantas group supports wider liberalisation of policies and then it moves towards the open aviation market. Such built policies enable the firm to remain competitive and gain benefits to consumers as well as industry participants. Such operation also enables the firm to make significant contribution to the economy. Overall contribution of Qantas Group to Australian economy was around $22 billion.
As put forward by Williams (2017) Aviation sector underpins includes Australian business and tourism and the estimated annual revenue of this is $43.54 billion which contributes 15.91 billion to Australian economy. Taneja (2017) mentioned that industry as a whole employs more than 88,000 people across its five major sub-segment such as domestic commercial aviation, international commercial aviation, air-freight aviation, air freight transports and aviation support infrastructure. According to Singh (2016), almost 70% of employers reported that organizations in the aviation sector the find a consistent skills shortage particularly in last year. The major shortage is mainly found in the workforce such as trainers, instructor, pilots, maintenance engineers, technicians, aviation software engineers, etc. As put forward by, Lohmann and Spasojevic (2018), the major reasons behind the shortage is the cost and time to achieve the required qualification, limited wages, aging workforce, existing staff retiring, and increasing competition from other organizations.
Nonetheless, Giang and Anh (2016) commented that aviation industry is most likely to continue to grow significantly in the coming future and this brings benefits to both Australia as well as other marketplace across the world. International economic growth drives this growth such as increasing disposal income in emerging market and increasing air travel in developed economies. It has also been identified that international aviation activity is predicted to grow with double figure by 2030 along with domestic as well as international activity and due to Australia’s capital. On the contrary, Bamber (2018) mentioned that since the demands of air travel is increasing Australian airline as well as airports tend to face tougher competition for competent and skilled labours from the developing nations. There is a high demand for skilled and qualified posts such pilot and engineers. Many developing nations are in the rush of increasing pilot wages to hire talents from the global market to sustain the growth.
It has also been identified that aviation organizations prefer to invest in technologies to develop a streamline and automated manual process in airline service but to make use of technologies, workforce also requires training and knowledge. Uhrin, Bruque-Cámara and Moyano-Fuentes (2017) mentioned that such technology-based the solutions are most likely to create new career paths for the existing employees since there are opportunities to train and enhance skills.
As put forward by Whyte and Lohmann (2015), there is a series of record breaking profits of Australia’s two largest airlines Qantas as well as Air New Zealand which developed the sustainability of the models because these two organizations have particularly endorsed their strategies in the market place. It has been noted that dominance in the domestic market has enabled the company to remain active in highly competitive market conditions and to maintain profitability. Competitiveness in the aviation market of Australia is high because the large organizations like Qantas and Air New Zealand hires workforce from developed market to increase the quality of service and this consequently influenced the other players in the market.
It has been identified that emerging international markets, growing demands of airline services, technology influences the in aviation sector of Australia, there is an increasing level of competition. However, to fulfil this growing demand, airline organization like Qantas Airline faces tough challenge of workforce. Operation of Qantas lacks skilled and competent employees contribute to fulfilment of growing demands in the airline sector. In addition to this, the large organizations like Air New Zealand is hiring workforce from foreign and international markets. Therefore, market dominance of Air New Zealand is creating pressure on Qantas Airline. Consequently, Qantas airline is in the need of suitable workforce development plan through it can fulfil the growing demands of market and strengthen the workforce to deal with the challenge regarding the quality of service.
Research Aim
This research aims to identify the impact of workplace development on organizational performance of Qantas Airline. Research also aims to investigate how workforce development plans helps to satisfy the growing market needs in the airline sector. Following are the key objectives to meet the stated aims.
Research Questions
Workforce development:
Workforce development is plan that is usually implemented by organizations to enhance the skills and knowledge of the employees. This can be done by providing employees with periodical training program, assigning them in live project, assigning the workforce with suitable leaders.
Employee performance: Employee performance is the work performance of the organizational members performed as the job responsibility to meet the organisational goals.
Organizational performance: Organizational performance refers to the overall performance of the organization which includes the performance in sales, profits, employee productivity, customer base and suppliers.
This research contributes to development of knowledge of readers about the current market situation of aviation industry of Australia. Outcome creates an insight about how organizations in the aviation sector in Australia deal with the market challenge, workforce shortage and skills development. Although a number of studies have been performed in Australian aviation market but those were based on market competition and economy only but hardly a study has focused on the current labour shortage in the aviation sector. Therefore, this study reveals how organizations in the sector is most likely to deal with the emerging challenge of labour shortage.
Area of field or research
This research paper falls under the area of workforce development studies. There is a validated evidence of the need for an industry-wide approach to aviation workforce planning and development which should be supported by streamlined regulations and policies. This might include collation, aggregation as well as sharing of all relevant aviation occupational training and licensing. This study particularly focuses on the development process of workforce, so that growing need of airline services can be dealt accordingly.
Key Workforce characteristic
As per the data provided by Civil Aviation Authority, aviation sector in Australia employed 55000 workers in 2015 (Opengart & Ison, 2016). When it comes to aviation characteristics, Taneja (2016) a large percentage of aviation workforce are hired under permanent employment contract. It has also been identified that the distribution of employment of job category in Australian airline remain consistent with the distribution of workforce seen in most foreign airlines. In this context, Hampson et al., (2015) commented that Australian airline generally have a higher share of workforce expenditure which is treated as the percentage of total operational expenditure in all types of airline. Opengart and Ison (2016) argued that as the age distribution is reaching the national average, there is a high chance of the fastest growth in the share of workers that fall under the age group above 45 years. Therefore, little more consistency in this trend is most likely to pose greater challenge to business with respect to succession planning, workforce up skilling which is associated with the new technology.
Similarly, only 20% of overall workforce is held by women and this is relatively lower compared to 46% share of employment observed across all industries in the aviation industry of Australia (Oyaro Gekara, Snell & Chhetri, 2015). Almost 20% is significantly driven by high number of female workers in Flight Attendant occupation because women hold 10% of the employed workforce in some major categories. On the contrary, Wang, Kao and Ngamsiriudom (2017) mentioned that vacancies particularly in the aircraft maintenance promoted online have significantly decrease and this decrease is more than the half observed in 2015. Taneja (2016) arguably mentioned that employment in this particularly segment of occupation is highly affected due to peaks and trough over time compared to the average market trend. This data fact certainly indicates high vulnerability of employment to economic downfall.
It has been identified that vast majority of workers in the aviation are hired in a permanent position, while the share of causal contract remains highest among pilots with the percentage of 8.6%, cabin crew (8.2%) (Opengart and Ison, 2016). On the other hand, aircraft engineering and maintenance roles have the most significant proportion of causal contract. The following figure shows the size of aviation of employment.
Workforce management theories
As put forward by Oyaro Gekara, Snell and Chhetri (2015), even though there are several dynamic forces that often disrupt forces organizations and drive them to be finding innovative and effective ways to deal their workforce. It is not just about gaining competitive advantages but in some contexts, business need to stay afloat. Raynes and Tsui (2019) mentioned about some sophisticated management models that progressive business in the aviation sector are adopting to help and build agile organization. However, the following management theories are often used to shape and design the workforce.
Contingent Workforce Management
As put forward by Alshubaily (2017) contingent workforce management builds a whole workforce of temporary employees such as freelance workers, or the contractors. According to Khan, Khan and Khan (2011) such workforce model can give organization a flexibility it perfectly matched with a large self-contained projects. This tendency is often observed in the workforce development plan of construction. Opengart and Ison (2016) argued that there is a set of barriers associated with this particular model of workforce such as organizations are most likely to experience reduced workforce stability and thereby, it ends up being a wrong choice for the business that already has reduced workforce.
Blended Workforce Model
Blended workforce model clubs both permanent employees, consultants and independent contractors as well as contingent workers. According to Van Horn, Edwards and Greene (2015), this method is often being deployed within the business that are often being applied because it addresses organization’s need for the flexibility, stability and agility. Nonetheless, Taneja (2016) argued that almost 16% of business’ workforce is the temporary labour and this indicates a highly possibility of negative impact; this issue is often overlooked.
Methodologies
The above research papers performed on workforce development and its impact on aviation include both primary and secondary data analysis. Authors have particularly focussed on the organizations of airline industry in Australia and collected data from survey and interview, while to perform the secondary data analysis, data have been collected from books, journal and blogs.
Theories related to workforce development reviewed above are filled with contradictory views. Authors of previous studies have mentioned about some fundamental model such as Blended Workforce Framework which provides certain advantages to work with the workforce under such framework , organizations are just supposed to hire temporary workforce. Moreover, studies not mention about real-world use of this model those models and theories. In addition this, the workforce designs presented in the review were used in the early days but the market situation in the present days have significantly changed. Hardly a paper in the review has mentioned about the use of technology.
The existing papers performed on the impact of workforce development on organizational performance identifies some major issues such as labour shortage, skills deficiency but papers lack a clear insight about how research workforce planning program can positively influence organizational performance of airline organizations. In addition, research lacks clear insight about how organizational performance. No theories and models related to organizational performance have been discussed in the previous research papers.
Conclusion
The proposed research project fundamentally focuses on the workforce development issues that are significantly affecting organizational performance of airline organizations in Australia. The proposed study proceeds with the aim of investing and identifying the impact of workforce development plan on organizational performance. The findings of existing papers overlooked several area that fall in the context of workforce development. Therefore, studies further aims to identify the impact of workforce development such as training, skills and competency development on organizational performance.
References
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Bamber, G. J. (2018). Low-cost airlines’ product and labor market strategic choices: Australian perspectives. Members-only Library.
Chang, D. S., Chen, S. H., Hsu, C. W., & Hu, A. (2015). Identifying strategic factors of the implantation CSR in the airline industry: The case of Asia-Pacific airlines. Sustainability, 7(6), 7762-7783.
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Hampson, I., Fraser, D., Quinlan, M., Junor, A., & Gregson, S. (2015). The Future of Aircraft Maintenance in Australia: Workforce Capability, Aviation Safety and Industry Development.
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Raynes, C., & Tsui, K. W. H. (2019). Review of Airline-within-Airline strategy: Case studies of the Singapore Airlines Group and Qantas Group. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 7(1), 150-165.
Singh, A. K. (2016). Competitive service quality benchmarking in airline industry using AHP. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 23(4), 768-791.
Taneja, N. K. (2017). Driving airline business strategies through emerging technology. Routledge.
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Uhrin, Á., Bruque-Cámara, S., & Moyano-Fuentes, J. (2017). Lean production, workforce development and operational performance. Management Decision, 55(1), 103-118.
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