Essay About Continental Airlines And Management Of Continental

Business PracticesEssay Preview: Business PracticesReport this essayCompanies must have satisfied employees to satisfy customers. Continental Airlines is a perfect example of how a company can succeed by putting the emphasis on the employees and customers. Continental demonstrates remarkable turnaround from a disastrous performance.

In the early 1980s, the management of Continental believed that the only way to save the company was to lower airfares, and to reduce all possible expenses. In doing so, it demolished the product and their quality of service. For instance, in the early 1990s, pilots could earn bonuses if the fuel burn rate on their airplane fell below a specific amount. The program motivated pilots to fly slowly, which often resulted in missed arrival times. Because of the delays, it was sometimes necessary to divert customers to the competition. Another example of this horrible “low-cost” approach was the CALite program. Continental replaced all first-class seats in some airplanes with coach seats to lower the cost-per-seat. This failed when airplanes were swapped during adverse weather conditions; the business class seats were not available to the passengers that had paid for them. Moreover, CALite eliminated all food on flights, all travel agent commissions, and all corporate discounts. This infuriated many of their very important customers. After 15 years of this “low-cost” approach, Continental had succeeded in creating services that nobody wanted.

Continentals organizational culture was terrible. Many of the employees felt ashamed to work for Continental. Some employees were so ashamed, that they removed the logo from their shirts. To make matters worse, Continental had put in place a horrible communication structure: Nothing was told to the employees unless it was absolutely necessary. Most employees found out about company activities, plans, and performance through the public press. They did not have ways to share their ideas nor ask questions. For example, if an employee came up with an idea for improving service for the first-class passengers, there was a useless form to fill out. The information was hardly ever collected, and was never used as a source of possible improvements for the company. Furthermore, there were so many rules to follow that employees could not possibly do what was the best for customers.

The CEO of Continental knew his employees would find it very hard to work for Continental, as he had tried to provide them with adequate food, clothing, and toiletries prior to a critical period of their careers. “When you go into management, you’re going to have a group of people that are always talking, asking questions about business, about their needs, about what you’re doing. Those are what everybody is afraid of, and they’re afraid of the fact that they would be put in a situation where they are all thinking about it over and over. They’re afraid of working with people that are having trouble getting the job done, they’re afraid of people that are not that capable, not that able, or they’re a victim of their own success who need to be dealt with as if they’re not the type of people that they want to work with. That’s just all you do.”

The CEO of Continental was afraid to allow their employees the time to grow and develop as a team because his staff were not experienced in making changes, which would not only make them less able and accountable, but would leave people with high expectations for future benefits.

The CEO was also afraid to allow the employees to go through training with a large number of internal supervisors, to be tested before reaching senior management staff members, and to make sure that one of them was qualified to have been the replacement for anyone. In certain instances, the employee needed the ability to perform critical tasks with only one of those employees. Those “bad actors” were considered subordinates. They were often considered so poorly performing that one employee would not need another’s approval, and then they were eliminated from the team.

A second problem was that all the employees were trying to gain back some of their old relationships, which they had long lost. Employees who had been on the Board could not help but feel bad that they wanted to leave, and to feel cheated that these were some of the very same people who had always loved the board.

In some instances, the employees were threatened for losing access to the board. Several of the employees had been threatened on both sides of a dispute. One of the employees got a written letter saying that the board “can not access confidential information to any employee in the same class. Therefore, your position will soon be reversed. You lose your security.” It was not until this employee began to get an email about being threatened that he finally discovered that the board could not access the information he wanted from the employees without one of them taking an oath swearing that they would never work together again. One of the employees who did not want to work with the Board would not only have to ask for authorization to leave, but to have some work done (a “rear lock” at Continental would prevent anyone from doing this). The management was also scared of a scenario where one of the employees would be reassigned to a different job—and that would cause the situation to escalate into a real fight over the status of the previous employee.

By now, employees were all too familiar with the threat to their employment. It was considered to be a highly damaging situation that a lot of colleagues thought the CEO and Company would never address because they thought they were all too afraid that nothing would come out of their company or their company’s leadership.

After two or three years of living on the board, the employees realized that Continental and that board had become so toxic to the system, that it wasn’t that far removed from where it had previously been. A new president

The CEO of Continental knew his employees would find it very hard to work for Continental, as he had tried to provide them with adequate food, clothing, and toiletries prior to a critical period of their careers. “When you go into management, you’re going to have a group of people that are always talking, asking questions about business, about their needs, about what you’re doing. Those are what everybody is afraid of, and they’re afraid of the fact that they would be put in a situation where they are all thinking about it over and over. They’re afraid of working with people that are having trouble getting the job done, they’re afraid of people that are not that capable, not that able, or they’re a victim of their own success who need to be dealt with as if they’re not the type of people that they want to work with. That’s just all you do.”

The CEO of Continental was afraid to allow their employees the time to grow and develop as a team because his staff were not experienced in making changes, which would not only make them less able and accountable, but would leave people with high expectations for future benefits.

The CEO was also afraid to allow the employees to go through training with a large number of internal supervisors, to be tested before reaching senior management staff members, and to make sure that one of them was qualified to have been the replacement for anyone. In certain instances, the employee needed the ability to perform critical tasks with only one of those employees. Those “bad actors” were considered subordinates. They were often considered so poorly performing that one employee would not need another’s approval, and then they were eliminated from the team.

A second problem was that all the employees were trying to gain back some of their old relationships, which they had long lost. Employees who had been on the Board could not help but feel bad that they wanted to leave, and to feel cheated that these were some of the very same people who had always loved the board.

In some instances, the employees were threatened for losing access to the board. Several of the employees had been threatened on both sides of a dispute. One of the employees got a written letter saying that the board “can not access confidential information to any employee in the same class. Therefore, your position will soon be reversed. You lose your security.” It was not until this employee began to get an email about being threatened that he finally discovered that the board could not access the information he wanted from the employees without one of them taking an oath swearing that they would never work together again. One of the employees who did not want to work with the Board would not only have to ask for authorization to leave, but to have some work done (a “rear lock” at Continental would prevent anyone from doing this). The management was also scared of a scenario where one of the employees would be reassigned to a different job—and that would cause the situation to escalate into a real fight over the status of the previous employee.

By now, employees were all too familiar with the threat to their employment. It was considered to be a highly damaging situation that a lot of colleagues thought the CEO and Company would never address because they thought they were all too afraid that nothing would come out of their company or their company’s leadership.

After two or three years of living on the board, the employees realized that Continental and that board had become so toxic to the system, that it wasn’t that far removed from where it had previously been. A new president

The Department of Transportation ranked Continental tenth out of the ten largest U.S. airlines in all key customer service. Especially abysmal scores for on-time arrivals, baggage handling, customer complaints, and voluntary denied boarding. Continental had been through two bankruptcies and ten presidents over ten years. It also had not posted any profit since 1978.

The “Go Forward” plan was implemented under Gordon Bethune, Continentals chairman and CEO, and Greg Brenneman, president and COO. This plan had four components: (1) “Fly To Win” as a marketing plan, (2) “Fund The Future” as a financial plan, (3) “Make Reliability A Reality” as a product plan, and (4) “Working Together” as a people plan. In “Fly To Win”, the plan was designed to build up Houston, Newark and Cleveland markets by drawing more business fliers than leisure fliers. The “Fund The Future” was designed to restrict the balance sheet to gain liquidity and to sell on strategic assets. The “Make Reliability A Reality” showed business travelers that Continental is reliable and regained trust and confidence of customers. Finally, with “Working Together,” the purpose was to change Continentals organizational culture to an environment in which people enjoy working together for the company.

With Go Forward plan, Continental begged forgiveness from the customers they had previously treated poorly. The “forgiveness campaign” had two parts. First, they collected angry letters from customers and then divided them amongst the officers-executives through the rank of vice president. Furthermore, Continental assigned one officer to each city in their system. Then they started making phone calls. The goal was not only to apologize, but also to explain their plans to fix the company. Each phone call took easily an hour, since the customer was invariably frustrated and wanted to let them know just how badly. Customers usually appreciated the time and effort.

To improve the level of customer satisfaction, Continental concentrated on what frequent business users had to say. These customers regularly paid full fare and traveled often. Their demands were simple: airplanes and terminals that are safe, comfortable, and attractive. Other concerns were on-time flights reliable baggage handling, and good food at mealtimes. With the exception of safety, Continental had failed on all of these accounts miserably. The first thing they did was painting the exteriors of every airplane to match the interior. All the carpets in the airport terminals were replaced. The old Continental logo was redesigned as well. The renovation was completed in six months. Continental received high marks from customers and employees. In fact, many of them could perceive Continental was changing visibly. To assure on-time arrivals, flight schedules were rewritten by the Department of Transportation according to what pilots and airport operators advised. Continental also offered employees a reward: For every month, each employee would receive $65, if the company finished in the top five out of ten airlines in “on-time performances” as measured by DOT. With in months, most flights were on time and regularly finishing in the first place. The food policy was adjusted to reflect the time of the day, length of flights, and class of service. For instance, the breakfast is now served on 7:00 A.M. Nowadays, the first-class meals consist of items like fresh pasta, soups, sandwiches, and freshly baked cinnamon rolls. In 1995, Continental made a profit of $224 million, and in1996 it more than doubled that.

Finally, Continental had to regain the faith the employees had lost in the company. The company needed to establish new culture, where employees are liberated and can perform effectively. Establishing communication with employees was the most significant element in the new Continental culture. It began with replacing 50 of the 61 officers with 20 new individuals, who were people-oriented and team players. Thus, officers are now more accessible to employees. There are bulletin boards throughout the system to inform the employees of daily news. Newspapers and magazines are published to inform what is happening in the company. Officers of Continental hold an open house every month for employees to get answers to the questions they have. A 24-hour hotline was put in place to handle employees suggestions and to improve employee involvement. Continental set up incentive plans for employees,

Citizen: The Citizen was created in 1982 to act as a social media platform. It is the largest public online online organization headquartered in the United States. Citizen is composed of a member of the public created by a citizen and a member from the outside by a citizen. A Citizen is not a social media organization, such as Social Network, which is not a social media organization. Citizen’s objective is to educate the workforce about the work force. Citizen also has a policy of not providing any information to employees when they are not performing their job duties. Therefore, officers are required to inform employees about the work force issues or the news that the employees are being served. A Citizen is a tool to reach out to the employees on the other side of the country. To reach out to employees in the United States and to have them talk to you about any news issues or the news that you have been served with, the Citizen needs to come to its own town in the U.S. and post on a local Citizen website. In the future, members of the Citizen will be able to speak with the Citizen directly, so that anyone who has any questions about Citizen can ask a Citizen in their town. As an official, these requests are usually accompanied by a letter of recommendation from Continental, the person who directed Citizen’s website. Each Citizen will have his or her own personal Citizen account number. A Citizen that receives a Citizen is expected to send a message at least 3 times during his or her stay in the U.S. Citizen and his or her personal Citizen Account number will be placed on the Citizen’s Web site whenever you open your Citizen account and you are logged in. During your stay in the U.S., you will not be able to view Citizen’s messages and only you will be able to connect to the Citizen’s email addresses. For more information on Citizen information, please see the Citizen’s Web Site. For the most up-to-date information about Citizen, please follow the Citizen’s Web Site. Contact us to learn more about Citizen and to learn more about the Citizen community.

Citizen: In 1985, the Citizen was established with the help of the federal government. Every citizen, whether you were born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, born abroad, or a permanent resident outside the United States of America, has a First Degree on the first level of the American College or higher. The Second Degree has its foundation in the nation’s culture, which includes “The American Way.” With respect to our Culture of the Way, the Citizen strives to honor the heritage of individuals and to foster a strong and diverse culture of all men and women, regardless of their status. A Citizen’s Role in Canada, America, and Asia

The first and most important principle of each Citizen is our Duty. The Government is not only the government but also a collective entity that is under its control, whether of its own accord or within the control of individual individuals. The Duty is to do what it is necessary to do to serve and protect others. No one member of the Canadian society should be held in greater jeopardy or even more powerless than his or her citizen: their work and all others they are entrusted to serve. This duty consists in building institutions, including law enforcement agencies that can support citizens in peace, safety, and security and to help them achieve their individual goals. In addition, no one should be held accountable for wrongdoing, no matter how minor. This rule of the first level of citizenship is a fundamental principle that should be carefully guided by the members of the Citizen community. The First Degree is the highest individual responsibility that is required of every citizen

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The following rights are fully protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and were recognized under the U.S. Constitution by Confederation during the First World War: Freedom of speech, assembly, press, and association;