Human Resource Management in British Airways

The study examines the human resource management (HRM) role in British Airways' operations. It highlights the company's efforts to create a friendly work environment, provide benefits, and improve employee relations since privatization in 1987. The assignment also discusses the importance of training and development programs in enhancing employees' work abilities and increasing profitability.

Human Resources
Management in Travel and
Tourism Sector

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Role and purpose of HRM....................................................................................................3
1.2 Creation of an HR plan..........................................................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................7
2.1 Employment relationship in airline industry.........................................................................7
2.2 Employee legislations that affect HRM.................................................................................8
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................10
3.1 Job description of cabin crew :............................................................................................10
3.3 Comparison of selection process of British airways and Easy-jet.......................................11
4.1 Training and Development in service industry....................................................................13
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
References......................................................................................................................................16

Introduction
Human Resource Management is the process of recruitment, selection, training, development,
induction and motivation of employees. It helps to improve the relation of employees in the
organisation and to achieve the individual and organisationalS goal.
British airways is a subsidiary company of international airline group. On fleet size British
airway is second largest company in United Kingdom. It was created in 1974 and privatized in
1987. It is the merger of British Overseas Airway Corporation, British European Airway,
Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airline.
These report highlight the role and purpose of service industry, role of HR and HR planning
process. It presents the employment relationship in British airways and legislative structure in
airline industry. It also highlights the role and responsibilities of operation manager and cabin
crew and compare the selection process of British airway and London transport. These report
also focus on the types of training programme, there needs, role and importance and the
difference between the training and development programme.
TASK 1
1.1 Role and purpose of HRM
Human resource management is an approach toward the management of people it does not
involve management of technology or the products. The training of employees, recruitment, staff
development and reward system these all activities is managed by the human resource
department, it is more direct toward building a relation between a firm and an employee.
The role of human resource management in various industry differ from each other. The
role of human resource department in British airways is :-
1.To plan the recruitment and selection process, recruitment process can be internal as well as
external, the recruitment and selection process is carried out for the various department such as
operation agent, flight attendant job, regional sales manager, passenger service agent etc., which
is done through advertisement, conducting interview in telephonic way, face to face, and through
group discussion, deciding the location for an interview etc., short-listing the candidate.
2.The second most important role of human resource department play is to understand the
employment act relating to the British airways which includes the law related to employee
history, the minimum wage for the employee, overtime rules and minimum disputes.

1. To know about the company rules, regulations and policies.
2. To maintain the company policy such as safety management system and training system.
3. To plan some benefits for the employee such as vacation pay, life insurance, retirement
plan, providing them free air fare etc.
The purpose of human resource department of British airways is:-
Human resource department's primary purpose is the development of the employees and the
organisation as well. The human resource department of the company provides highly skilled and
efficient employees to the company. They motivate and train the employees of Company. The
HR department teaches them and motivates them to follow the ethical values of their company.
They treat the employees with respect(Gannon and et.al., 2015).
A company should be aware of the internal as well as external factors of the environment as now
nowadays the airline industry is highly effected by the technology, climate change etc. To face
such type of issue the employees are trained properly in order to deal with such type of issues
the human resource department provides the best type of training to the employees. As it is the
duty of HR department to organise the human resource of the department and use them to
operate the organisation in a unified manner. The main function which a company's HR team
plays is that, it creates is coordination between different departments of the organisation. The
purpose of human resource is to make the efficient use of human resources as to give maximum
output to the company. The HR department should ensure that there should be a healthy work
environment in the organisation. There should be a friendly relation between the management
and the employees. The HR department also manage various legal, social and environmental
issues. The HR department also serves the company by giving timely advice and taking proper
actions by studying the market, like employment trend, labour market and payment analysis for
different post. With the proper planning by the human resource department the company get
better results. The purpose of airline industry is to provide satisfying the customers with there
services. The industry also provides proper safety measures to the passengers. Thus, it takes into
account the need of the passengers(Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017).

1.2 Creation of an HR plan
Human resources planning is the process of identify the need of current and future human
resources in an organisation. British airway plan there human resource to meet the demand and
supply. The process of HR plan involve following steps:
4. Analyse objective : The objective of British airways is to timely departure and arrival of
there flight from Heathrow to Madeira and Madeira to Heathrow respectively.
5. Inventory of current human resource : In British airways 45000 employees, 16500
cabin crew members and 3900 pilots works. It has 280 aircraft and 123000 passenger fly
with it every day(Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017).
6. Forecasting demand and supply : British airway forecast demand to meet the future
need of employees due to the retirement, death, expansion, growth and productivity of the
organisation. Supply forecasting is number of employees within and outside the
organisation. They can be measure by internal and external supply. The internal supply is
to rotate the employee, call retired employee, transfer and promotion. British airway need

1185 employees, 450 cabin crew members and 110 pilots to meet the demand for 7
flights in a week. The forecast supply for British airway is 1140 employees, 420 cabin
crew members and 105 pilots(Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., 2018). The role of cabin
crew members is to provide the best services to there customer during there trip. The
cabin crew must ensure the all safety measure before the time of take off. The variable
shifts are available to air hostess. The ordinary shift are 12 to 14 hours per day. Typical
air hostess has to spent 75 to 90 hours per month in flies and 50 hours in other activity
related to there work.
7. Estimate the gap : The difference between the forecasted demand and supply represent
the surplus and deficit of employees. The deficit employees means that there is need of
new employees to recruit and the surplus represent the need of termination of employees.
It is an HR responsibility to find the gap in the organisation and fill this gap.
8. Formulate plan : HR has to formulate the plan for British airways to fill the gap in the
organisation. HR has to set the timing of departure and arrival of each flight and no. of
employees, cabin crew member and pilots for each flight. HR need to develop a proper
plan for each departure flight from Heathrow to Madeira and the arrival flight from
Madeira to Heathrow.
9. Implement the plan : After formulating the plan in British airways, now HR has to
implement these plan in the organisation. HR has to communicate the plan with crew
member and employees and assign the duties.
10. Monitor, Control and Feedback : British airways has to monitor and control the
activities of each employee and schedule of the flights. They also have to check the
services provided by them to there customer and get there feedback from the feedback
form and through the online ways like rating the services. They also can get the feedback
from there employees regarding the work environment and take there suggestions for any
changes in the company.

TASK 2
2.1 Employment relationship in airline industry
Employee is the backbone of any industry. The relation of employer and employee is especially
important in airline industry because it is a service based industry. From past few years airline
industry try to improve there relation with there employee mostly with crew member. Employee
affects the organisation both positively and negatively. The good performance, better services
and ideas can increase the reputation and revenue of the industry and the worst performance,
strike, demand for higher wages can also decrease the rate in the market(Brewster, C. and
Hegewisch, A. eds., 2017). Airline industry apply various strategy to improve the employment
relationship. They try to fill the communication gap between the top management and lower
management level.
British airline
Initially the perception of customer toward British airway was poor. British airways feel pressure
from there employees to increase there wages. The prices of fuel also increase. But after
privatization they improve there performance. They focus on employee involvement, job security
and provide support to them. They treated there employee as valuable asset of the organization.
British airway provide secure and comfortable environment to there employees for work
efficiently. They provide professional environment and training to there employees to enhance
there market image. They provide this training and development programme to there employees
to enhance the performance and improve there skills. British airways provide special courses to
solve the cabin crew problems.
To enhance the relation with there employees British airways give various rewards, pay and
pension fund to the employees. They use various benchmark for these pay and rewards system.
To solve the pension issue of there employee they also start 3 month face to face communication
programme. British airway also start industrial relation change programme to reduce the
communication barrier and improve the relation between manager and trade union.
The HR management also play crucial role to enhance the employee relation in organization.
British airways also take initiative to communicate with employees regularly and openly. They
give there employee an opportunity to freely talk about there issues and problem with top
management. Many employee start to communicate there problems to the company like wages

and pension problem. This initiative helps them to improve there relation with there employees.
They inspire and motivate there employee to work hard and also provide them some reward to
boost up there motivation level.
They offer there employees some career development programme. Every employee wants some
growth and appraisal in there work(Morgeson and et.al 2019). The rotational training can help
there employee to enhance there skills and work in multiple area. These also help the
organization to fill the vacant position in time of emergency.
British airway start to give attention to there employee. The employee feels valuable in the
company and give there best. They share there vision to the employees and take suggestions
from them. British airway also involve there employee in decision making programme. To solve
the conflict between employee and employer they consult and discuss the issue with the
representatives of employee from different trade union.
British airway cut the wages and number of employees to meet there financial demand and solve
the problem of economic crisis. They re-develop some innovative schemes to solve this
economic crisis and improve the relation of employee and employer.
2.2 Employee legislations that affect HRM
The human resource department has to take care of the employment laws because the violation
of such law can lead to close down of the industry.
The various employment laws are:-
1. Health and safety law : “The health and safety act 1974” states that the employee of the
organisation must provide safety to their employees and all the other members working under
their premises. The human resource department of the British airways provides proper about
200,000 training days per annum around the world to the employee and its crew member to deal
with the any kind of emergency and providing safe journey to the passengers.
2. “Equality act 2010”: which consist of race relation act 1976, disability discrimination act
1995, sex discrimination act 1975. This law aims on protecting the employees from any kind of
discrimination's on the basis of religion belief and sex. To maintain equality in an organisation
the british airways conduct a programme such as music festival, festival melas, peanut festival,

religious festival so that all the people from different organisation feel included in the
organisation.
3. “The national minimum wage act 1998”: Which now have been changed from 1 April
2018 which states that now the minimum wage of the labor should be £7.83 per hour for the
workers with age of 25 and £7.38 for the workers whose age is between 21 to 24. This law
applies to the workers who are working on
• contract basis,
• for the agencies
• the home workers
The HR department of british airway uses an indicator that helps them to study the external labor
market and wages provided to them. It helps the department of the company to plan for the future
so that it retain and attracts the people(Kaiser and et.al., 2015).
4. “Working time regulation 1998”: the law aims at giving a minimum working week and
daily rest within the working hours to the employees. It states that an employee should work for
only 48 hours in a week and not more than that. And an employee should be given a break of
minimum 20 minutes in a shift of 6 hours. British airways provide to its employees a flexible
working hours by providing a part-time job facility, job sharing facility and working from home
facility.
5. “Employment right act 1966”: under this act the employees get the rights once they start
working in any organisation. The rights related to prior notice before dismissal, the reason for
dismal, maternity and paternity leave, disputes regarding payment statements, the rights related
to unlawful wage deduction.
The British airways not only provide the incentives as a reward to the employees but they also
give employees an attractive pension plan, free travel plan and discounted shopping. British
airway also have a special scheme for employee known as “flexible benefit schemes” under
which it provides a wide range of benefits to the employee which consist of defined contribution
pension for the future. Under this scheme a customer have a wide range of benefits from which
they can select according to their requirement. Various benefits under this scheme are
• child care vouchers

• cycle to work
• additional life insurance cover
• private medical insurance
• dental plan
• health care cash plan
• and critical illness cover
The company give its employee a discount on hotel booking, provide interest free loan to
purchase the tickets at the time of peak season and it also provides employees a free membership
for sports and other leisure facility for the first year of the employee joining(Lowe and Hayward,
2016).
TASK 4
3.1 Job description of cabin crew :
The work of cabin crew member is, to provide outstanding customer services by means of taking
care of the safety and comfort of the passenger. The proper training is provided to the crew
members to deal with any kind of critical situation or in any emergency situation. Cabin crew
members should ensure that they contain all the emergency equipment with them before the take
off, checking whether the flight is clean or not, checking the availability of meals and
refreshment, first aid, giving duty free goods, checking all the seat belts. The members give the
demonstration to the passengers regarding the safety procedures and the security procedures. It is
The responsibility of the cabin crew members to provide pleasant experience to the passengers
and serve refreshments and meals to the passengers. Cabin crew must provide the first aid
facility to the passengers. The cabin crew has to welcome the passengers warmly with the cordial
greetings and should assist them to their seats. The crew has to treat passengers with patience.
And to make announcements regarding flight delay or any other kind of important information
on behalf of pilot. And before the flight land they have to complete all the paperwork such as
stock control, any incident or problem occurred during the journey(Baum, 2015).
Personal specification of cabin crew:

◦ Skills
Cabin crew member should have a good communication skills and tolerance capacity they must
know how to remain calm in difficult situation. They must know how to handle the passengers.
Crew member should treat the passengers in a friendly manner. They should be capable of
dealing with every kind of situation individually, Cabin crew member should be able to build
professional relationship with the team members so that they can deliver excellent services to its
employees. The crew must know how to operate the computers.
◦ Qualification:
To become a cabin crew a person does not require any degree or a higher qualification. The
person with secondary qualification can also apply for this job. The person should be of 18 years
or above. To be a member of the cabin crew the person should have valid passport with no
restriction to travel across the countries. Should not have any criminal records the crew members
have to deal with the passengers so they must have a good communication skills so that they can
handle the customer easily, a person should be good in handling the passengers and
understanding them. The person should be fluent in speaking english and writing as well as the
people travel from different areas of the world and english is the language which is
understandable by the people across the world so it provides an ease to the person in
communicating with the crew members and the passengers. A person should have airside pass an
airside pass is a card issued to the employees by the airport authority for an airside pass a person
requires an id proof, address proof. (Sparrow, 2016).
3.3 Comparison of selection process of British airways and Easy-jet
British airways EasyJet
Vacancies are placed on the BA web page
Applicants have to give answers to the online
questions .
Vacancies are placed at the jet airway's web
page.
Once the person meet the minimum
requirements, Then applicant have to fulfil the
online application forms giving their personal

details and uploading cv
Once they meet the requirement, then they
have to appear for the psychometric test which
include numeracy, verbal reasoning, spatial
reasoning and situational judgement test.
After the fulfilment of application a person
have to complete the online test the link will be
send to the candidate to appear for the online
test to check the ability of the candidate, the
duration of test is 30 minutes the question
based on verbal reasoning, situational
judgement and workplace behaviour are asked.
Once the test has been finished the result will
be provided within 72 hours.
Those who successfully completes the online
test are invited to appear on the assessment day
in which the candidate has to take part in role
play, has to give answers to multiple choice
question based on the situation, and has to face
an interview
Then the results are evaluated if it meets the
company requirement than the candidate is
invited at the assessment centre. 'The
assessment day are held at the different
locations and about 60 peoples are invited to
join at a time the aim of conducting this
assessment programme is to introduce you to
the company
The proper training of 6 weeks is given to the
candidate
Training of 45- 90 days is given to the
employees
After successful completion of training
programme the person is appointed as a cabin
crew
After successful completion of training
programme the person is appointed as a cabin
crew

Task 4 :
4.1 Training and Development in service industry
Different types of training
Every organisation need some training programme in there industry to enhance the skills,
knowledge and motivation of there employee. British airways adopt different types of training
programme in there organisation like job specific training, management training, induction
training, training in new technology, personnel training, supervisory training, flight training,
customer experience, and health and safety training.
Induction training is provided to new recruits in the company to familiarize them with the
existing environment and culture. It helps the employee to understand there job, role,
responsibilities and code of conduct of British airways.
Training in new technology help there employees to work in changing environment and adopt
the new technology. The new technology make there work easy and comfortable.
Flight training in British airway help there employee to work on system. Firstly they provide
virtual training, they use sensor system to feel the equipment. Then they provide the physical
training to there staff.
Health and safety training in British airway help there staff to explain these safety measure to
the customer in take off and emergency time. In training programme they explain some seat belt
safety, flight safety like life jacket safety etc. to the customer.
Management training helps to manage the day to day activities and the schedule if there is any
delay in there flight. These training also helps to solve the conflict and maintain the relation in
the firm.
Difference between training and development
Training and development programme are provide to increase the performance and productivity
of the firm. But they are two different concept.
Training programme provides there employees to enhance there knowledge and skills according
to the job requirement(Brewster and et.al 2016). British Airway provides training to there
employee to gain the technological knowledge. It is a short term process to meet the present
requirement. Training is a job oriented process. It aims to enhance the skills of specific job. It
gives to many employees in single time.

British airway provides the development programme to there employees for there career growth.
Development programme is an organized activity to learn new things. It is an educational
process to increase the growth opportunity of an individual. Development is a long term process
to meet the future requirement. It is career oriented process. It provides to increase the self
motivation of employee. Its objective is to prepare the individual for the future challenges. It
provides to an individual to increase the conceptual and general knowledge.
Benefits and effectiveness of training
Training programme help both the employee and the company. British airways provides training
to there employees to increase the profitability of company and skills of employee.
Benefits of training to company
The effective training programme helps British airway to complete there activities on time with
optimal utilization of resources. It makes the employee perfect in there work so there is less need
of supervision. It also saved the time and money of the company. The turnover of employees in
British airways also reduce to the training programme. The staff are more satisfied with there
work and also reduce the time and cost of recruit new employees. Management training helps to
improve the industrial relation.
Benefits of training to employee
The training programme increase the motivation and self confidence of British airway staff. It
brings the positive attitude among the employees and help them to adopt the new changes.
British airway provides training to increases there skills and help them to earn higher incentive
and rewards from the top management. The good training them to work in team and also to lead
the team. It enhances there effectiveness and efficiency to work and the chances of getting
promoted.
The role and need of training
There is a vital role of training in any organization. British airways provides training in the
organisation to improve there image in market, to take the effective and efficient work from there
employee and to increase the overall performance. The company needs these training programme
to familiarize there new employees to the vision, mission, objective and goal of the organisation.
The training programme also reduces the chances of accident in the firm. British airways

provides training to there employee in order to improve the health and safety of the company and
provide a better environment to the staff. This help them to develop the team spirit and team
works in there staff. They need training programme to improve the relation with there customer
and provide them to better services. To increase the flexibility and stability they need this
training programme in there organization.
Contribution of training and development to the effective operation of the organisation
The training and development programme of British airway make the operation work easy. It
helps to improve the operation activities and maintain the finance and budget of the organization.
It improves the work efficiency and save the time and cost of the company. It helps in smooth
working of the organisation(Brewster and et.al 2016). Training and development helps there
employee to enhance there work ability and provide them an opportunity to get rewards,
incentive and promotion. It helps there company to increase the profitability and get the trust of
there customer.
CONCLUSION
The study shows that the human resource management plays an important role in the working of
the organisation. The British airways provide a friendly work environment to their employee it
also provides various benefits such as life insurance plans, dental plan, and many other benefits
to their employees. The employee relation has also been improved after the privatization which
was held in year 1987.the British airway provide training and development programmes to their
employees.

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