Individual case analysis of JetBlue Airways

JetBlue - Case Analysis

The expansionist goal of JetBlue is a rather ambitious one, and however the industry has shown that achieving a fleet of 280 airplanes would require far more than five years, it is not impossible to achieve. JetBlue is among the 100 hundred airplane companies which emerged during the past 30 years since the deregulation of the airline industry and they now have the chance of being the third to succeed on the long-term. The question being posed here is whether they will be able to expand their staff from 6,500 employees to a total of 25,000 employees and their fleet from 73 planes to a total of 290 in only five years. And what forces could affect their goal?

However there are numerous determinants for the success of JetBlue's expansionist strategy, two forces are of extreme importance: the personnel and the employees. In an industry like the airline, where there is no actual product offered and the company's financial outcome depends directly upon the services offered by their staff, the employee is seen as the organization's most valuable asset. Also, this quality of the services provided determines if the customer will return to the company or not and in the end, shows how customers determine the company's results. As such, the direct interdependence between customer satisfaction, quality of services offered by the airplane staff and organizational results is what makes employees and customers the most important forces in achieving success.

In order to retrieve the most beneficial results, the management at JetBlue must implement a wide series of strategies relative to their personnel as well as their customers. The staff strategies could refer to: active listening, affective cultures, coaching, communication and communication medium, constructive feedback, counselling, cross-cultural communication, discussion time and horizontal communications.

Active listening, as well as interactive listening, should be implemented as to make sure that the message sent by the management is clearly understood by the employees. During meetings, both corporate officials as well as staff should feel encouraged to state their opinions in regard to numerous business aspects. Also, both employees as well as management should receive and offer feedback on their actions in order to identify any shortages, eliminate them and improve the quality of their operations. The overall objective of such measures is to choose the most appropriate communication medium and improve the communications between leadership and operations on both vertical and well as horizontal structures.

But aside from an adequate communications system, the performances of the staff also depend upon their on the job satisfaction. In order to increase this, JetBlue must integrate each employee into the corporate family. They must cherish all of their employees and embrace their cultural diversities. Foremost, they must be offered numerous training programs, which are both for the benefit of the employee (increases his confidence) as well as for the organization, which, through investing in its human resource, will be able to offer services at superior quality standards.

However an affective culture is not desirable within a professional business environment, the employees should be encouraged to address any complaints or dissatisfactions. In addition, the company should offer specialized assistance and counselling to those who need it. The counselling sessions could be addressed to employees facing personal difficulties or those which have been traumatized by an unfortunate airplane event.

All the human resource strategies are aimed at increasing employees' satisfaction on the job, unifying their individual goals with the organizational goals, motivating them to increase their performances and support JetBlue in reaching its overall objectives.

In regard to their customers, the airline company must improve the communications and implement a wide series of strategies that help them identify, address and satisfy the multiple needs of their clients. In this order of ideas, the decisions to be made relative to the audience could include: company hotlines, feedback, corporate talk shows, formal communication channel, informal communication channel, online discussion forums or televised/videotaped speeches and meetings.