An Assessment Of The Employees Relation Issues And Its Impact On The Role Of Human Resources Management In British Airways

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PROJECT – SMBA7014 – TERM 2

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EMPLOYEES RELATION ISSUES AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN BRITISH AIRWAYS

LECTURER: Andrew Caswell

STUDENT: JULIANA ROCIO FORERO NINO
ID: 090211-78

ASSIGNMENT DUE ON 29 DECEMBER 2010

Executive summary
British Airway’s Cabin crew, pilots and staffs have been producing chaoswithin the company using strikes as a way to claim their rights. However, those strikes are playing against the overall business strategy of first class customer service as flights have been delayed or even cancelled. What have been done in the HRM department to improve relations with BA staff and how it could have been improved is one of the objectives of this project.

AN ASSESSMENT OF howEMPLOYEES RELATIONS ISSUES IMPACT ON THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN BRITISH AIRWAYS
The project is intended for those with an applied interest in Human Resource Management. It should form the focus of an in depth investigation of a particular HR issue or problem in people or organisational management. This should not involve primary research such as interviews or questionnaires etc. It shouldbe a critical examination of a specific issue based on existing data and information, and your own observation of one company/ organisation/ commercial institution or aspect of that organisation.
1. Introduction
British Airways (BA) is the largest international schedule airline in the UK and is one of the leading airlines in the world. BA has been a role model for its competitors which want toimitate it. However, this is not the only reason because BA is known. BA has been in the public eye for almost two decades because its multiples organisational problems. Its transformation from the public to the private sector in the 1980’s has been a big headache for the shareholders and employees as the culture from the public company remains, meaning that employees strikes are very common. BAstrategy is to serve business, first class and long haul operations by offering high customer service standards. However, due to many internal problems, the company has been bothered by cabin crew and pilots strikes which have ended in flight cancellations and many customers unsatisfied.
Literature review
Organisations have to face both external and internal environment which affect theirperformance. The external environment is everything that is exterior to the organisation’s limits that can affect it. This external environment is divided in two main groups: the general environment which includes technological, political and economical dimensions, and the task environment which involve suppliers, competitors, and customers among others, as seen in figure 1 below. On the other hand,the internal environment is the organisation itself which comprise the people, the physical environment and the culture.

Figure 1. The organization and its environments (Griffin, R. 2008, p.50)
Managers have to keep aligned the environment and the organisation so that there are not unexpected threats coming from that environment. Managers must have knowledge and understand the organisation’senvironment to build up its performance to the highest. Each manager has its own role that implies specific responsibilities, for this paper in particular the focus will be on the role of Human Resources Managers (HRM) in the internal environment. HRM has its focus on people from the bottom to the top, and all that that involves (Griffin, R. 2008).
HRM has been transforming its performance fromworking only on the administrative level to work in both the strategic and administrative level. According to Ulrich (1997 in Torrington, Hall & Taylor 2008, p.783) Human Resources (HR) could play four different roles within the company such as strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion and change agent, implying that HR has to perform successfully in both administrative and...