Alaska Airlines Navigating Change Case Solution

1. What tools could Alaska Airlines leaders have used to increase their awareness of internal and external issues?

Among the bold decisions made by the top management of Alaska Airlines was of outsourcing the ramp work to an outside vendor. Operations, uninterrupted in any way by the termination of the existing employees, went on smoothly for the first few days after the decision. However, after the rise in demand during the holiday season, the outsourced staff were caught unprepared in managing the volume properly. Therefore, the operations were impacted heavily. The existing top management, since it was not experienced, was not able to come up with an effective strategy to cope with the issue at hand which forced a change in leadership. The newer leadership, then, was adamant to enforce newer policies which created pressure in the workplace. Under that pressure, employees were beginning to stress out and perform unsatisfactorily which Alaska could have identified as well as rectified if they had made use of a few tools. 

Some of the most critical identifiers of employee success are explained by the “Job Characteristics Model” developed by Hackman and Oldham. Being a helpful tool, it could have predicted the success of the outsourced employees in Alaska’s case. Among the major identifiers, the model proposes are “skill variety”, “task identity”, and “task significance”. As is evident from the name itself, skill variety refers to the distinctness of the skills required to complete a task. Task identity revolves around the extent to which an employee can identify with a distinguishable piece of work. Task significance relates to the importance and meaningfulness of the task from the employee’s perspective. Hence, the problems could have been greatly minimized if Alaska had used this model to adapt the jobs in terms of skill variety and make them more meaningful as well as identifiable for the employees. 

Moreover, the opportunity for the employees to give feedback on their feelings and concerns regarding their work is an immensely effective tool to gauge the problems. Asking for feedback could have resulted in a better understanding of the issues by the management and turn greater clarity in the instructions provided to the employees. In addition, we know that employees are generally wary of being observed as highlighted by the results of the Hawthorne experiments. Therefore, Alaska should have allowed them some degree of freedom in their work and ensured they did not feel as being heavily monitored. It could have resulted in greater comfort for the workers as well as better performance.

2. Which issues are foreseeable, and which are completely unpredictable?

Some of the issues could be identified beforehand while others were not predictable. Among the foreseeable issues was the rate at which the advancements in technology were happening and how the competition was changing over time. Moreover, Ray Vecci, with his opposition to the “Departure on Time” reporting requirements, had hinted at the gradually developing culture of “it’s okay to be late as long as we are nice” in the company. Also, the effects of two consecutive plane crashes could have been forecasted as well. The company, by a look at the financial statements, could have realized the issue of labour cost disadvantage as well. Labour dissatisfaction could have also been recognized if the company had asked for feedback.