HR LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES IN AVIATION

The aviation industry is a fast-changing environment with growth prospects skyrocketing beyond imagination. There have been more Aeroplanes ordered and Jobs created in #Aviation in the last 3 years than in the similar period previous to that.

After facing a dark period for 2020–2021 during the COVID pandemic, where nations and economies shut down, airline travel has bounced back today to pre-COVID levels and has surpassed that level as well. Revenge tourism is at an all-time high, and air fares are skyrocketing. Demand is at its peak right now, with no letup in sight.

Airlines are recruiting and training more and more people, and it is already projected that in the next 5 years, recruitment may double the overall levels globally, especially in India and the Middle East. This sharply brings into focus the need for retention of trained manpower within airline setups and the efficiency of a robust, friendly and Humane Ecosystem

Indian Aviation has recently witnessed the exodus of pilots and cabin crew from the floundering Go Air a few months ago and then the resignation of 44 pilots from Akasa Air to join Air India Express. Pilots, cabin crew, and engineers are the most valuable resources for any airline since they are the lifeblood of the industry, and airlines or candidates often spend thousands of dollars training them and months and years obtaining certification.

Indian DGCA CAR (Civil Aviation Regulations) rules require an Indian pilot to serve a mandatory 6-month notice period before switching airlines or joining any foreign airline. All airline companies generally include this in the terms of their contracts of employment. Whether such a clause or the legality of the rule is something we shall look at in another article, but for now, let us address the reasons for the failure of airlines to retain their talent.

Go Air and Akasa are two totally different cases on either end of the aviation spectrum, whilst one was a carrier founded by one of India’s most prominent and oldest business houses (Bombay Burmah of the Wadia’s, which dates back to 1863) GoAir was floundering with heavy debt, delayed salaries, questionable human resource practises, and an iffy on-time record. Akasa is a freshly minted start-up airline with brand new aircraft and great service that recently celebrated its 1st anniversary, with its founders being two of the more successful names in aviation and one a genius and a darling of the Indian stock market.

So what went wrong?

In the first case, it was easy to assume that uncertainty over the rumblings within and the airlines moving to ground flights and moving the NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) under the Indian Bankruptcy Code was the spark that was needed to set off the mass exodus of cabin crew and, critically, pilots. It is obvious that no airline can fly without its pilots, and it is rumoured that more than 250 pilots were absorbed by Air India Group Airlines alone, some to Indigo, and a number of Go pilots also went to West Asian Airlines, effectively dismembering the operational capability of Go even as it struggled to get bankruptcy protection and relief from the National Company Law Tribunal.

In the second case, where 44 pilots have left #Akasa Air for #AirIndia Express- #AirAsia combined, it has also impacted the airline’s ability to execute its entire schedule of operations. Akasa had previously sent out notices to those pilots who had “abandoned” or “not served” their 6-month period, and this week it filed lawsuits against them in the Bombay High Court, seeking damages. The legality of those actions will have to be examined, and the question of whether the 6-month notice period is a valid rule may have to be tested on the basis of the fundamental rights and principles of contract law.

The bigger question is: Why couldn’t these and other airlines hold on to their people? This is not merely a rhetorical question; it is a deeply thought-out principle of my experiences in Human Relations, which I choose to call

The retention principle

Today’s HR departments have become new Age L & D sections, where Personnel, Learning and Development, Industrial Relations, and Human Resource Development all exist in the same silos. Often, some gets neglected over the others, and In some cases, more than one is sacrificed in the larger commercial interests

To put it in a nutshell, just as an airline, hospitality, or customer service-driven company has to indulge in and ensure customer delight, it is incumbent upon airlines or companies to ensure employee delight, something that not every HR professional or airline management sees the need for or understands fully.

The Emotional Matrix

Your employee can only delight your customers when he or she has been delighted themselves, whether it be socially, emotionally, financially, or physically. HR professionals need to look within to gauge whether or not they are delighting their employees and how they are achieving that.

Whether it is by having open, honest channels of communication with zero persecution and judgement complexes, or whether it is by understanding the basic needs of the employees, In most cases, the breakdown of the relationship may not even be financial, but in all cases, it is emotional.

Are your HR/L&D leaders high on their emotional quotient? Are they empathetic to the concerns and needs of their employees? Does the organisation really care about the emotional well-being of their employees? These are questions that need to occupy the mind-space of their management.

The Loyalty Matrix

The answers to these three questions will give you the key to where your employees rank on the Loyalty Matrix. It is a universally accepted thesis that emotionally invested employees will be more loyal than family and will go out on life and limb for their organisations. There have been airline employees (including pilots) who have worked for up to 3–4 months without salaries when their airline was facing tough times because they were emotionally invested in the company.

A study of the world’s top 5 “happiest workplaces” does not throw up a single airline; similarly, an analysis of India’s top 5 “happiest workplaces” also does not feature an airline or even a corporation that owns an airline. This is striking when we consider that some of the best names in India own airlines.

Interestingly, three of the companies on the global list also feature on the Indian list too, namely, Cisco Systems, Hilton Hotels, and Google India (the sales force featured in one and not the other). So what does this tell us?

A few things become obvious: Cisco, Hilton, and Google all know how to translate their global success mantra into their Indian setups and have been consistent about it for more than a few years. The second is that it’s not the country, culture, or personnel involved — it is the process, the system, and the ethos of the company that have developed within the setup that are important. Thirdly, from employee feedback in these companies, it has emerged that their systems have a very high emotional quotient and are empathetic to the needs of their own employees first.

Why not aviation?

This brings us to the principal question: why are there no airlines on this list? What do airlines get so wrong? even though they are at the forefront of the customer service food chain. If an airline can please its passengers, why are they not pleasing their employees?

Is it because aviation is an attritional profession? or is it because people are transitory or because skills are individual and not transferrable in the real world to the next person?

I would say that its none of the above. Aviation leaders are not spending enough time harnessing the EQ of their employees; we are not having enough chats with them about their families, their goals, their ambitions, aspirations, and needs.

In the context of the Indian aviation scenario, I know employees of both of the airlines cited above and have spoken to them to understand their concerns. In the case of Go Airline , there was little question of loyalty because the airline had begun failing them more than a year or so ago.

It was alleged that they had delayed salaries, denied bonuses and travel allowances, and levied very high charges for Pilot Cadet programmes.

In the second case, some #pilots felt they were not valued enough, their rostering was restrictive and oppressive, and their career growth prospects were dim. Hence, they lost the emotional connection with being part of a brand-new startup. This is not to say that similar situations do not exist on other airlines, because they do. The human relations problem is stretched to its maximum in all three other big airlines in India, and there is a bubbling cauldron waiting to explode there too.

Sadly, I must admit that in the above cases, #HR lost sight of the employee disconnect and the situation moved on. Going for legal action is also not the solution, for it shows an unbending attitude and could eventually result in the unravelling of the “6-month notice period rule” by the courts as being questionable and unconstitutional in law, which will then affect all airlines. These matters will drag on in courts for years, and there will be no real winners in this. The corporations have spent millions of dollars setting up and running #airlines, and when they sit back and think about it, all they may have required was a pat on the back, a cup of coffee, and a chat with the airliner to find out his or her problems. Maybe it was time you took that time out to sit down for coffee with your pilot and crew too.