Write a two-page case study on Alaska Airlines (based on the case analysis I have uploaded). That output is the answer to the case study (which you will re-write). The case study would be the “problem”, and I am expecting the format to be like the ‘Amazon as an Employer’ case (link to the case study).
You should be the author of the case, and the audience will be the one to supposedly answer the said case study. Identify the characters, who will be included in the case. You may use pseudo names to cover the identity of the actual persons mentioned in the online reference/s.BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS
MANAGING HUMAN CAPITAL ISSUES: THE CASE OF ALASKA AIRLINES
I.EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / CASE BACKGROUND
Trading is increasingly becoming centralized and consolidated to almost one market center due to increasing technology and increasing availability and use of the internet. Some of the major human capital issues that affect the performance of many tourism industry businesses are communication problems and the education level of employees. Many airline companies provide services differently to their clients who intend to tour different parts of the world. An example of such business is the Alaska Airlines in Seattle city in Washington D.C. Alaska Airlines provides a series of business activities like air transport from one destination to the other, accommodation services to the tourists, hotels and restaurant services, and other crucial services offered in the tourism and hospitality industry. It was established in the late 1920s and currently has over 28,000 employees and aims at maximizing profits as the main object, among many other goals.
Alaska Airlines plays a huge role in the tourism industry by providing essential services to many tourists from across the world, hence adding value to Washington State and the country. Therefore, it is essential to appreciate the company’s contribution to the national GDP by the large number of employees working in the company and the tax remittances it is obliged to pay to the respective governments. There are other social and community activities that the company is committed to ensuring it returns to society for development and growth. However, in the past two years, Alaska Airlines has been facing human capital issues mainly poor communication skills and poor employee education as discussed later in this paper.
II.STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
What can Alaska Airlines? Human Capital Department do in order to improve employee performance?
Point of View: Ben Minicucci
III.OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1.To identify some of the human capital issues that affect slowing down the company’s rate of achieving its objectives.
2.To define human capital theories that explain how this contributes to the business performance in terms of growth and development of tourism and hospitality and, in this case, Alaska Airlines.
3.To examine some of the challenges and human capital issues that Alaska Airlines faces, provide some recommendations, and discuss how to avoid such challenges.
IV.SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS
Most big business entities like Alaska Airlines are run by a board of directors, including the top CEO and other professional, qualified, and experienced managers responsible for specific departments. With over 10,000 employees, a company like this needs comprehensive management and expertise in managing and allocating resources equally and where they are more required (Mayer et al., 2018). The scope of the management board is to ensure they plan the business operations successfully by staffing and getting all necessary resources and other tools of production-ready, organizing, controlling, and other essential tasks that are important for the growth and development of the comma. Alaska Airlines is headed by Mr. Ben Minicucci, the company CEO, and is assisted by the committee of the board of directors of Madam Patricia Bedient, Mr. James Beer, Tilden, and Daniel, among others. These professionals are experienced in different career fields and with comprehensive knowledge, experience, and competence in their departments. A colossal entity with over 10,000 employees needs a robust management plan and strong internal and external controls to guarantee security, safety, and control of activities within the organization.
Alaska Airlines ‘ human capital issues are among common problems experienced by many trading firms in the tourism and hospitality business across the country. This case analysis helps the company CEO identify areas of the business weakness regarding human capital issues and benefit from the recommendations aiming to improve the situation to improve production. This will improve his management strategies and procedures like ensuring effective communication and hiring qualified employees, among other measures. The sub-division supervisors ensure they report to the responsible heads of departments for quick response and action to affect the overall company goal. The company management must always look for resources like sources of finances to facilitate company projects allocate the resources and in a manner that assures success by choosing the most profitable project with high profitability index and low-risk level. This should be in the best interest of the company owners and in line with the objectives, mission, and vision statements.
However, apart from the management’s scope, there are limitations that the management faces and function as obstacles to their overall target and accomplishment of company objectives (Zhang, & Zhu, 2021). While Mr. Minicucci and his team struggle to avail all factors of production and reduce all other possible threats and challenges of developing and growing the company, there are external and internal factors that affect and limit their effectiveness.
?Competition from other companies in the tourism and hospitality sector is one of the main challenges. In potter?s five principles, the possibility of new entrants and competition from existing companies reduces their growth and development rate. The presence of many employees brings in the challenge of communication, which becomes poor and ineffective in most cases.
?Communication in the workplace builds strong interrelationships and upgrades understanding among the workers. The management of Alaska Airlines has severally suffered from ineffective and poor communication strategies both horizontally and vertically. This affects the company’s performance primarily because if employees do not adequately communicate company issues, it reflects the poor service to the customers hence suffering from client’s loss to the company’s competitors.
?The company faces high employee turnover rates and impacts from natural causes like the COVID-19 pandemic that has been affecting the tourism and hospitality sector for more than three years now (Zhang, & Zhu, 2021). This acts as a massive blow to the company. With reduced international travel, curfews, and other restrictions that affect people’s freedom to move anywhere of their choice, the customers also reduced, hence losing business.
?Financing the company’s investment projects is another major challenge: the management is responsible for sourcing from either financial institution, saving from dividends, profits, and tax, among other sources. Alaska Airlines is limited to financial freedom, and this remains a severe limitation to the company from developing and growing bigger.
V.FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY
Human capital theories explain why the company has been having a human capital issue. Human capital theory urges that human beings who provide most of the labor work in a company have the potential to improve by increasing their productivity through training and acquiring more extraordinary education skills (Zhang & Zhu, 2021). Most of the activities and jobs in this airline company require career personnel and people with expertise in their working departments. However, the human capital theory stands to explain differences in productivity, quality, and value of work produced by skilled and non-skilled personnel. It is essential to appreciate that not all employment activities in the company require a career because more than 10% of the employees are subordinate staff performing simple duties like cleaning. However, the other employees consist of professionals like accountants, engineers, secretaries, administrators, and other employees who work in various positions to help achieve the annual cumulative company goals. There are human capital theories that highlight some of the human capital issues in Alaska Airlines and are discussed below.
Communication Skills: Communication skills are a human capital theory that plays a significant contribution to the success of company goals in a company. Where the company management and its staff effectively communicate, the level of understanding of each other on another level and teamwork prevails. This enables the employees to perform better by becoming more productive in terms of the quality and quantity of the work.
Technical skills: These are skills employees train in employment, like attending summits and seminars where issues about specific professional careers are discussed (Kuo et al., 2021). This helps the company employees be informed and aware of the present technology and requirements the business needs to match the market competition and maintain or improve the company’s productivity.
Education: Employees and even managers of Alaska Airlines choose to advance their education level and increase knowledge and understanding of performance. This human capital theory elaborates how productivity per employee can be improved by adding more education and knowledge and advancing an employee from one level to the other, even in job groups. Education also leads to promotions because though adding more skills, one increases the capacity to think broad, perform more technical tasks, and make crucial company decisions positively and to the company’s advantage (Mrusek, Miller & Olaganathan, 2020).
Creativity and Experience: The current world we live in requires inventive minds who can develop business strategies that will push the scale of production and sales revenue to another level. Creativity is a human pioneer, and an individual’s ability to produce new marketing brings and excellent packaging, among other new ideas that will capture the interests and desires of the market, is likely to boost productivity. Gathering practicing experience also is a human capital theory that boosts productivity in the company and has been an issue.
VI.AREAS OF CONSIDERATION
A.Company SWOT
Strengths
?Steady and consistent growth
?Continues to make significant progress towards restoring pre-crisis financial metrics
?Customer-friendly loyalty program
?Competitive advantage through low fares and high-value model
?High level of employee engagement Weaknesses
?Dependency on West Coast markets (shorter routes)
?Integration impacting margins and company?s financial position
Opportunities
?Cooperation between online and offline channels
?Opportunities in airline retailing; increased automation
?Membership in the Oneworld alliance and partnership with American Airlines Threats
?Fluctuations in fuel price due to unpredictability in crude oil prices.
?Highly competitive industry
?Disruption of operations due to failures in their system
VII.ALTERNATIVE COURSES OF ACTION
ACA 1: Mr. Ben must have a proper education in management careers and have practiced long for him to successfully manage the comprehensive operations of Alaska Airlines.
The management of Alaska Airlines has to ensure proper allocation of resources and, most crucial, organizing and controlling the large numbers of employees to ensure each individual is productive. Most of the companies in the hospitality sector have been experiencing human capital issues in management, raising of finances, employees crises, completion, and natural and external calamities, among other factors which limit their potential and abilities to succeed. This is all determined by the level of education its leaders and employees have acquired (Lowe & Sharp, 2021).
ACA 2: Enhance leadership skills.
The scope and duties of management and the company?s roles are usually straightforward (Xu & Dioumessy, 2019). Every leader must take responsibility and ensure companies? interests are always safeguarded. Failure to adhere to this results in a human capital issue that indicates that such employees have no interest in Alaska Airlines and hence cannot protect and push its agenda for success due to lack of creativity and inexperience. All of this is determined by the quality and values of the leader and the skills they have in the management of the business. The leader’s higher experience has scaled the institution to greater potential and colossal success and achievement.
ACA 3: The CEO and his team need to consider effective communication strategies and improve the delivery of emergent message in the best way to enhance understanding within the company.
Most of the Alaska Airlines business involves services, and therefore, communication is essential and must be appropriately affected. Reconsidering their communication strategies may improve their performance and hence an alternative cause of action. Good communication skills improve understanding and satisfaction, especially the consumers, and they find it easy to return for the same sufficient services from the business. If they encounter any problems, they are free to voice them out since they are guaranteed to be listened to and understood properly through efficient communication with the employees.
VIII.RECOMMENDATION
Based on the types of human capital theories, the author believes that ACA 3 would be the best option for resolving the issue at Alaska Airlines because its major business is service providing, which necessitates outstanding communicators for effectiveness. Within the organization, instructions must also be followed correctly, and there must be an understanding between employees and their managers; hence, effective communication skills will make all operations within and outside the company run more smoothly, resulting in improved performance. Assume that Alaska Airlines’ the entire?management and?employees all?have excellent communication skills as a result of their specialization in respective vocations – better production can easily be accomplished in that circumstance.
IX.ACTION PLAN
There are activities that the company should undertake as soon as they can in order to improve the situation in terms of performance and productivity. The identity of items/participants, as well as the timeframe in which these actions are conducted, should all be included. These are some of the activities/items:
ACTIVITY PEOPLE INVOLVED TIMEFRAME RESULTS
Board Meeting CEO (Ben Minicucci) and Board of Directors ASAP ?The management, through the CEO, will be able to establish strategies to meet their goals quickly because there will be high revenue, resulting in profits, allowing for growth and company development in less than the company’s financial year.
?New operational plans and corporate objectives need to be defined (and should include workforce support, empowerment, and capacity building), which would result in increased productivity and improved organizational structure.
Monthly Meetings Per Department (Employees and Department Supervisors) Last Sunday of each month ?Strengthen relationships and team cohesion
?Ensures the team is aligned with the company?s goals and encourages discussion between colleagues.
?This discussion will give the idea of what is required and allowed for future plans and help identify possible areas for improvement.
Upgrade their Recruitment Technology Human Capital Team 3-4 months ?Using a good ATS system will enable Alaska Airlines to have time to plan, keep up with trends, and enhance the company?s culture.
?Alaska Airlines? Human Capital team must hire employees based on their skills and career qualification to further enhance the quality of services they provide.
?Establishing a good criterion in the assessment of employee qualification would strengthen and improve the company?s workforce.
Seminars/Webinars/
Team Building Everyone Off season ?Using training to stimulate the learning process and update their certifications.
?Specifying the responsibilities for learning.
?Allows current employees to be more skilled, self-driven, and motivated to serve as good assets of the company.
Peer Evaluation Everyone Annually ?Monitor employee performance
?Encourages recognition and supports collaboration.
?Facilitating accountability for performance improvement.
The author believes that implementing the following programs for Alaska Airlines will best address the case problem, as well as fulfilling the stated objectives and the recommended course of action (ACA 3).
REFERENCES
Alaska Airlines. (2020). Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air aim to hire nearly 2,800 employees in 2020. Retrieved from https://blog.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/2020-hiring-forecast/
Alaska Airlines. (2022).?Working as a Flight Attendant at Alaska Airlines: 56 Reviews | Indeed.com. Indeed.com. https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Alaska-Airlines/reviews?fjobtitle=Flight???
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Board of directors | Alaska Air Group Inc. (2014). Alaska Air Group Inc. https://investor.alaskaair.com/corporate-governance/board-of-directors
CAPA. (2022). Alaska Air plays to historic strengths as it evolves. CAPA – Centre for Aviation; CAPA – Centre for Aviation. https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/alaska-air-plays-to-historic-strengths-as-it-evolves-595900
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