Overview of the Company
This paper intends to analyze the human resource strategy management of Australia based airline Qantas airways. In order to understand the human resource practices by Qantas Airways, the study gives an overview of the company and then discusses the human resource management within the company. Additionally, the paper elaborates the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of the approach within the company. The study critically analyzes the human resource management of Qantas Airways and identifies the areas which are needed to be improved (Homsombat, Lei and Fu 2014). Additionally, the paper gives the possible suggestive measures as recommendations so that the company can take adequate measures to do the needful. The main purpose of the essay is to give a clear understanding of importance of the human resource management practices in business.
The largest airline services of Australia, Qantas Airways has been operating from Australia, for more than 90 years. It connects over 1000 destinations across the world. In order to expand its growth, it has partnered with more than 25 airline services from different corners of the world (Penner 2015). It began its journey in the year of 1920 and then onwards it has been secured itself as the leading brand in the aviation industry. The company also has few brands under it, which operates in both domestic and international as well as in the freight category. It also serves in-flight catering services. The travel operations by the company are Jet star, Qantas link, Qantas holidays, Qantas frequent flyer and so on. The company presently has more than 30,000 employees.
The vision of the airline is to serve premium as well as low fare airlines in order to remain in the leading position. The company has created different brands keeping the customer affordability in mind. For instance, its brand Jet Star offers lowest air fare so the people belonging from the middle income strata can afford it. At the same time it offers premium airfares also for the affluent class of the society (Lan, Clarke and Barnhart 2016). The company is popularly well known for its quality customer service that has enabled it to become the leader in the industry. Over the years, the company has been able to maintain its brand position which can be seen by the brand loyalty of the customers to the company. It has been adopting several business strategies along with human strategies to retain its position as well as to keep its business operations effective. Its business strategies helped the company to a great extent to secure its position in the market as premium brand. However, some issues and challenges are there which are considered to be affecting the its business operation thus having an influence on its market position. Therefore the study takes into consideration human resource management analysis of Qantas Airlines and the ways it can improve its productivity by addressing the challenges and issues of its business operation.
Human Resource Management of Qantas Airways
The human resource management of the company operates four areas which are of significant importance. The areas are corporate, development, learning and business operations. The study sheds light on the human resource strategy in the human resource strategy and its relevance with the business operations of the company.
The human resource management in the corporate level is liable for the remuneration of the employees and other benefits. Apart from employee centric benefits and remuneration, the human resource management of the Qantas airways also looks after the business relation with the other airlines. The human resource department of the company maintains the overall development of the management (Clark 2017). The human resource management in the business operation level, the human resource management department collaborates with the other departments in the company in order to increase the effectiveness of the employees while maintaining a connection among the departments (Taylor and Emanuel 2013). Overall, the human resource department of the company plays an important role in the company. The responsibility of the human resource department includes the recruitment, quality maintenance of the work force along with the strategic plans which will ensure the employee retention in the company (Wu et al., 2017).
The human resource practices in Qantas have taken different measures in order to retain its position in the market. The company was previously owned by government thus did not focus on the growth of the company. The company was privatized in the year of 1995 and then onwards had taken different measures in terms of human resource management practices so that it can expand its growth further (Caster and Scheraga 2014).
The first measure which was taken by the company was intended to cut down cost. As a first measure, the company reduced the cost of the labor to ensure the affectivity and productivity of the work force. It moderated the pay scale by providing flexibility and moderated wages in view of motivating the employees of the company. As part of the cost cutting measure, the company also had eliminated some practices which earlier consumed a lot of money such as unnecessary salary hike (Bamber et al., 2013).
In order to cope up with the changing external as well as internal environment the human resource management of the company has initiated different changes in the business of the company. During the time, when the company was under the ownership of government, the authoritarian hierarchical structure in its business was followed (Sarina and Lansbury 2013). However, after the privatization of the company, it introduced democratic structure in the company, which unlike the autocratic leadership form, encourage more employee engagement in the company.
Human Resource Function in Qantas
The company recruits employees from different language background from different corners of the world. In order to make them suitable for the organization and make them aware of the culture of the company, the human resource management has introduced several employee training programs so that the company can uplift the productivity and efficiency of the employees (Bamber et al., 2013). From cultural training to apprenticeship training, the entire training program was introduced in view of achieving affirmative results from the company.
However, the company has taken some effective strategies in order to elevate the effectiveness and efficiency of the work force in the company; still there are some challenges and issues that the company has to undergo. The cost cutting measure of the company which the human resource department of the company introduced in order to bring more effectiveness in the work force, has failed to assure the non-biased management (Wright 2012). As a result, many instances were there in which the employees were seen complaining to be paid less salaries. Some incidents even reported strike by the employees claiming to be paid less. Even though it has changed its policies of human resource management, it could not successful to address the employee interest. As a result, the issues were reported to have caused major employee outcry in the company. Needless to say, this in turn grossly affected the reputation of the company.
Some recommendations are given below by implementing which the Qantas Airways will be able to address the issues regarding mainly the work force. The human resource management interventions will include planned actions and events so that the company will be able to improve the performance and effectiveness of its workforce. The company needs to enhance its employee engagement strategies so that the employees can feel valued at work, especially those who come from foreign countries (Taylor and Emanuel 2013). The salary policy needs to be modified as per the international market keeping the employee interest in mind. In order to avoid such protest and strikes by both pilots and the ground-staffs, which harms the brand image of the company, the human resource management should introduce such a strategy through which the employees will be able to communicate with the hierarchy before going to take any drastic step like protest or strike. While recruiting new talents in the company, the company must ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the company so that it need not to fire the inefficient workers later.
Areas to be Improved
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is apt to assert that the human resource management has actually a crucial role to play in any company for the further growth of the company. This paper aimed to analyze the human resource strategy management of Australia based airline Qantas airways. In order to understand the human resource practices by Qantas Airways, the study has given an overview of the company and then discusses the human resource management within the company. Additionally, the paper elaborated the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of the approach within the company. The study critically analyzed the human resource management of Qantas Airways and identifies the areas which are needed to be improved. Additionally, the paper gave the possible suggestive measures as recommendations so that the company can take adequate measures to do the needful. The main purpose of the essay is to give a clear understanding of the importance of the human resource management practices in business.
References
Bamber, G.J., Gittell, J.H., Kochan, T.A. and Von Nordenflycht, A., 2013. Up in the air: How airlines can improve performance by engaging their employees. Cornell University Press.
Caster, P., and Scheraga, C. A., 2014. A Strategic Variance Analysis of the Profitability of US Network Air Carriers. In Journal of the Transportation Research Forum (Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 113-136).
Clark, P., 2017. Buying the big jets: fleet planning for airlines. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
Homsombat, W., Lei, Z. and Fu, X., 2014. Competitive effects of the airlines-within-airlines strategy–Pricing and route entry patterns. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 63, pp.1-16.
Lan, S., Clarke, J. P., and Barnhart, C., 2016. Planning for robust airline operations: Optimizing aircraft routings and flight departure times to minimize passenger disruptions. Transportation science, 40(1), 15-28.
Penner, 2009, Aviation and the global atmosphere, UK, Press Syndicate of University of Cambridge.
Sarina, T. and Lansbury, R.D., 2013. Flying high and low? Strategic choice and employment relations in Qantas and Jetstar. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 51(4), pp.437-453.
Taylor, H. L., and Emanuel, T. W., 2013. A civil aviation view of aircrew training. Aircrew training and assessment, 17-36.
Wright, T. P., 2012. Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences (Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences), 3(4).
Wu, W. H., Bergman, L, Johnston, A. R, Guest, C. C, Esener, S. C, Yu, P. K and Lee, S. H., 2017. Implementation of optical interconnections for VLSI. Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on, 34(3), 706-714.
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