Southwest Airlines People-Management Strategy Explained
This paper examines Southwest Airlines' people-management strategy, arguing that strong employee relations are the foundation of the airline's customer service success. Drawing on Southwest founder Herb Kelleher's philosophy, the paper explores how the company's "warrior spirit" and family-like culture shape its approach to employee rewards, motivation, attraction, and retention. The paper analyzes Southwest's generous benefits package, communal workplace culture, and mission-driven hiring practices, while offering brief recommendations for sustaining and strengthening its workforce strategy. The analysis concludes that Southwest's people-first model is a self-reinforcing system in which valued employees naturally extend that sense of care to customers.
- Introduction: People First at Southwest Airlines: Overview of Southwest's employee-first philosophy and mission
- Employee Rewards and Motivation: Benefits package and employee value proposition
- Company Culture and Shared Values: Communal culture, shared goals, and mission statement
- Attracting and Retaining the Right Employees: How Southwest draws and keeps committed workers
- Workforce Considerations and Limitations: Potential drawbacks of Southwest's narrow hiring focus
- Recommendations and Conclusion: Sustaining the people-first model going forward
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently ties employee-relations theory back to concrete Southwest practices, such as specific benefits and mission statement language, grounding its claims in real organizational detail.
- It maintains an honest, first-person analytical voice — acknowledging potential weaknesses in Southwest's model (pace of work, narrow talent pool) without undermining the overall positive assessment.
- The paper keeps a clear throughline from Kelleher's founding philosophy to day-to-day operational culture, making the argument easy to follow even across multiple sub-topics.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of using a theoretical framework — the "top-down appreciation" model attributed to Herb Kelleher — to organize and evaluate a real organization's practices. Each section tests a different dimension of that framework (rewards, culture, hiring, retention) against available evidence, producing a structured organizational analysis rather than a simple description.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction establishing Southwest's core philosophy and the paper's purpose. It then proceeds through four thematic sections: employee rewards and benefits, company culture and mission, talent attraction and retention, and workforce limitations. It closes with a recommendations section that reflects critically on what changes, if any, the author would suggest. This six-part arc moves from theory to practice to evaluation.
Introduction: People First at Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines' overall people-management strategy is focused primarily on achieving strong customer relations (Gallo, 2013). The basis of good customer relations, however, is good employee relations. When employees feel valued by their employer, that value is passed on to customers — so goes the theory attributed to Southwest founder Herb Kelleher (Gallo, 2013). It is, in effect, a top-down strategy of appreciation and "spirit of mission."
The spirit of mission at Southwest Airlines is defined as a "warrior spirit" — a cumulative effort by the entire workforce designed to facilitate a family-like atmosphere throughout the organization, from management to subordinates to customers. All are treated like members of one big family, and this is the basic environment in which the airline's people-management strategy is situated (Gallo, 2013). However, as researchers reveal, there is even more to the Southwest story. At the heart of the company is a "secret sauce" that allows it to thrive (Gittell, 2003). This paper discusses the people-management strategy that Southwest uses to produce that "sauce" — or "spirit" — whatever one chooses to call it.
Employee Rewards and Motivation
Southwest's approach to employee rewards and motivation is generous, to say the least. The company offers an impressive benefits package, including a 401(k) savings plan, a profit-sharing plan, medical insurance, prescription coverage, vision and dental insurance, pre-tax commuter benefits, life insurance, long-term disability coverage, and various spending accounts. Southwest believes that its "greatest asset" is its employees (Southwest Report, 2010, p. 45). There is a reason the company trades on the NYSE under the ticker symbol LUV: it genuinely aims to cultivate a loving environment in which employees are valued above all else.
Company Culture and Shared Values
Southwest's company culture is familial and is built upon hiring individuals who possess the right attitude. The airline creates an environment that is essentially communal, characterized by shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect among managers and employees (Gittell, 2003). One of the most appealing aspects of Southwest's culture is its commitment to treating employees the same way it expects employees to treat customers. Indeed, its mission statement reads: "Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer" (Srinivasan, 2014). In other words, Southwest cultivates a "pay it forward" mentality.
If there is any one aspect of the airline's culture that warrants scrutiny, it is the pace at which Southwest expects its employees to operate. The rapid speed and focus required to turn planes around at the gate demands a great deal of energy and precision. Keeping everyone's stamina at optimum levels could become taxing over time. The company might benefit from ensuring that employees receive adequate rest periods during their shifts. After all, happy employees are helpful employees.
References
Gallo, C. (2013). How Southwest and Virgin America win by putting people before profit. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/09/10/how-southwest-and-virgin-america-win-by-putting-people-before-profit/
Gittell, J. (2003). The Southwest Airlines way. TheCLCI. Retrieved from
Southwest Report. (2010). Southwest One. Retrieved from http://www.southwestonereport.com/2010/_pdfs/People.pdf
Srinivasan, M. (2014). Southwest Airlines operations — a strategic perspective. Airline Industry Articles. Retrieved from http://airline-industry.malq.net/southwest-airlines-operations-a-strategic-perspective/
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