Employee Relationship of British Airways (BA)

• Brief description of organisation

British Airways happens to be the ninth largest airline in the world, in terms of the number of passengers it carries. At the international level, it operates to more destinations than any other airline and therefore is considered as an airline possessing the strongest network in the international market. At present, it is operating to 167 different destinations in 87 different countries around the globe (British Airways Plc and British Caledonian Group plc, 2002).

British Airways has the major advantage of being based in a premier location, i.e. London Heathrow, which is considered the heart of the European air travel and is a major business hub. …show more content…

Furthermore, the two categories can be further divided into 4 typologies:

Typology Characteristics
Traditionalists Unitary, anti-union policies
Sophisticated paternalists Employee centred human resource polices
Sophisticated moderns Pluralist, joint management union decision making in defined areas
Standard moderns Unions recognised but employee relations fire-fighting predominates
(Farnham D, 2000, p37)

If BA was to be given some sort of title regarding its management framework, then the "neo-unitary" one holds best due to the following reasons:-

 Aims to integrate employees into their organisations through encouraging involvement
 Believes strongly in market-centred, individualist values
 Seeks employee commitment to quality and customer needs.
 Corporate culture heavily stressed
 Invests heavily in training.

• Historical employee relationship

Recently, BA has adopted very effective means of communication, thereby enforcing the idea of a "large family" at BA. This culture was initiated by the "Putting people first" (PPF) training programme launched in December 1983(Hannagan T, 2002, p 138). It aimed to revolutionise employee attitudes to such an extent that the working ethos was to change from a hierarchical and militaristic culture to one of self-improvement and confidence building. Direct contact with all staff was considered so important that "down route"