1 / 26

Communication Assessment: Hawaiian Airlines’ Maintenance and Engineering Department

Communication Assessment: Hawaiian Airlines’ Maintenance and Engineering Department. by Lani Almanza, Jennifer Campbell-Meier, Bill Kunstman, Zachary Keever, Viil Lid, Stephanie Rolfe & Miwa Yamazaki. Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaii's largest airline since its founding in 1929

jalene
Download Presentation

Communication Assessment: Hawaiian Airlines’ Maintenance and Engineering Department

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  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

More Related