Communication Assessment: Hawaiian Airlines’ Maintenance and Engineering Department

1. Communication Assessment:Hawaiian Airlines’ Maintenance and Engineering Department by Lani Almanza, Jennifer Campbell-Meier, Bill Kunstman, Zachary Keever, Viil Lid, Stephanie Rolfe & Miwa Yamazaki

2. Hawaiian Airlines • Hawaii's largest airline since its founding in 1929 • serves 18 domestic and international destinations in the Pacific region. • specializes in air transportation to, from, and among the Hawaiian Islands and the South Pacific • Carrying more than 6 million passengers a year • daily flights to seven destinations throughout the Hawaiian Islands • Daily flights to the mainland • weekly flights to the South Pacific destinations of Tahiti and American Samoa. From http://www.hawaiianair.com/about/corporate/history.asp

3. “…times of uncertainty produce unhappy people.” • Second Bankruptcy • “more civil than the first bankruptcy” • Maintenance & Engineering is currently without a Vice President • 4 VPs, 2 Senior Directors acting as VP and 2 Interim VPs (acting as consultants) since 1994. • Last VP stayed 2 weeks.

4. Maintenance and Engineering Division • Departments • Engineering and Reliability • Aircraft Maintenance • Quality Assurance • Planning and Materiels • GSE and Environmental Compliance • Groups • Management • Labor

5. Methodology • Interviews • Conducted 56 interviews across the division • Surveys • Distributed over 300 surveys • Received 62 completed surveys

6. Methodology (cont.)

7. Methodology (cont.)

8. Constraints • Organization • Large organization • Multiple shifts • Essential work • Holidays and vacations • Secure area • Unable to interview as many people as we hoped • Random Sampling • Convenience Sampling • Accidental/Snowball Sampling • Surveys not handed out directly

9. Strengths

10. Employee Productivity • “We accomplish a lot with a small workforce” • “The work never runs out & I feel proud when I see the plane at the gate”

11. Employee Satisfaction. • “Which job? Mine? Pretty good, 7.” • “Personally, I get satisfied, what I fix doesn’t come back.”

12. Employee Commitment

13. Employee Competency • Interviewees across departments and levels reported that labor group’s competency is one of the division’s strengths. • “Qualified, competent people” • “Capability and know-how are there.” • People, “… take pride in the fact that Hawaiian Airlines has a good performance record.”

14. Weaknesses

15. Lack of Strong Leadership • Lack of Vice President - lack of vision, cohesiveness, 'personality’ • Lack of Leadership - 'unhealthy' attitudes to communication - micro-management - feedback leads to better motivation

16. Lack of Strong Leadership

17. Departmental and Group Differences

18. Departmental and Group Differences

19. Departmental and Group Differences • Labor group generally dissatisfied with communication • Management group generally indifferent to communication

20. Lack of Formal Information • Current culture surrounding Hawaiian Airlines formal communication • Key issues involved with information Withholding

21. Lack of Accountability • Lack of supervision • Lack of experiences, • Lack of abilities of handling issues • Lack of Immediate feedbacks • Suggestions are not taken account and there is less visible improvement.

22. Lack of Accountability (continued) • Lack of appropriate evaluation • Supposed to have formal evaluation but not in the past few years (range is from a few years to five years) • Informal feedback orally • Favoritism • Employees are working based on their ‘favorite basis’ • Failure to follow through • Everyone has different priorities and not follow through between shifts

23. Lack of Morale • Interviews • mean 3.335714284 • People distinguished between their personal morale and the morale of Maintenenace and Engineering

24. Lack of Morale • “ .... Maintenance Department as a whole seems to be on a road to nowhere. Nobody knows where we are going or where we want to be.”

25. Lack of Morale • no long-term planning • no consistency – of procedure, of incentives • negative spiral when see conflict within management • accountability non-existent • micromanagement • bankruptcy • lack of communication – kept in the dark

26. Recommendations • Reinstate hangar meetings • Revisit length of term of vice president • Bring back employee evaluations company wide • Reassess communication tools Develop email policy Re-evaluate radio and walkie-talkie use • Management training for all managers & supervisors Conflict management Evaluations • Develop a M&E program for ideas and recommendations