An Analysis of Human Resource Management at British Airways

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices at British Airways. It begins with an introduction to HRM, its purpose, and its functions, specifically in the context of workforce planning and resourcing within British Airways. The report evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the airline's recruitment and selection processes, and assesses the effectiveness of key HRM elements in providing talent and skills to fulfill business objectives. It further examines the effectiveness of various HRM practices in raising organizational profit and productivity, including job design, reward systems, flexible working options, and training programs. The report concludes by exploring internal and external factors, including employee relations and employment legislation, that influence HRM decision-making at British Airways. The report offers a detailed overview of the airline's strategies and their impact on employee engagement, productivity, and overall organizational success.

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Human resource management
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Introduction:
Human resource planning is the process of determining current and future requirement of HR
resources, further developing and implementing plans to meet the organizational requirements
and monitoring effectiveness of the resources. The report is intended to evaluate the scope of
various HRM functions to achieve the objective of organization. HRM functions of British
Airways have been evaluated here. Employees and employers both benefited through HR
practices and its benefits are discussed in this report. It also aligns the strengths and weakness of
recruitment and selection process. The employee relations and internal organization environment
lead towards getting productivity and profitability of the organization. Employment legislation
plays important role in aligning HRM functions and influence the activities of organization.
Report provides various application of human resource management at the last.
1.0 purpose and scope of Human Resource Management
1.1 Purpose and functions of HRM, applicable to workforce planning and resourcing in
British Airways:
Planning process utilized at British Airways:

Figure 1: Typical organizational plan
Strategic plans: These are the general plans outlines the priorities and activities required to
enhance the strategic goal of the organization. The strategic plan set by BA is achieving long
term loyal of the customer or gaining customer retention (Benowitz, 2009). The BA believes that
customer satisfaction is achieved through excellent customer services. And hence,British
Airways first objective is to improve the image of the organization. The research conducted by
the organization regarding customer satisfaction and employee interaction results that customers
satisfy with positive behavior by staff. The negative contact (unfriendly and rude behavior) result
in customer dissatisfaction. This can be avoided by conducting training program like “putting
people first” for the staff who had direct contact with the customers.
Tactical plans: This aimed to achieve tactical goals and implementing parts of strategic plan. BA
regularly arranges seminars, different sessions and training program for employees to enhance
their performance and productivity (Gediz and Yalçınkaya, 2010).
Operational plans: Tactical plan set by the organization further implemented in daily operations.
Each training program arranged by BA was monitored and executed successfully.
Forecasting: The competition in airline industry is increasing globally. Hence, BA need to
anticipate such training program that fulfill future corporate needs of the employees. The
organization need to aware employees about the competition and keep them focused on
continuous improvement (Kemery, 2009). Significant factors needed for organization success are
managing brand image, international competition, managing issues of joint ventures and so on.
The analysis shows that BA has implemented HRM planning process successfully. But, there
are certain limitations to its HRM practices like ratio-analysis, contingency plan and trend
analysis need be considered in future HRM planning process.
The significant functions performed by the British Airways are:
 Providing benefits, compensation and incentives to the deserving employees.

 Align strategies to establish a relation between Managers-employees-labor
 Developing strategies for HR planning, recruitment and selection processes
 Safety and health management
 Human resource research
1.2 Strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to recruitment and selection:
British Airways pays special attention to its recruitment and selection process. Actually it is a
significant process for every organization because it helps in getting the competent candidate for
an organization and makes them appropriate for the job. HR team at the British Airways
prepares three major documents for inviting new candidates for particular vacant position. Job
analysis would be performed before preparing these documents (Lawler & Boudreau, 2009). Job
analysis is a systematic evaluation and study of the particular designation to determine their role
and responsibilities of the job.
Strengths of recruitment and selection process:
Recruitment and selection process is key strength of British Airways. This helps organization in
multiple ways. Continuous recruitment and selection procedures are run under various branches
of BA and it has various strengths like employee engagement, sustained job performance and
employee retention and low turnover.
Weaknesses of the recruitment and selection process:
Inefficiencies
Time spent on the searching and recruiting tools by the company that does not result in getting
better quality candidates is the major weakness of recruitment process (Hargis & Bradley,2011).
It gets difficult to approach the deserving employee as they already working in the
Internal recruitment: narrow ideas
The company sometimes uses internal-only recruitment process that restricts selection of
candidate from outside the company. This creates job assurance among internal employees that
promotions are internal. This prohibits the company from getting the new highly skilled and
qualified employees. External hires would come-up with new ideas and approaches which can

benefit the company. Excluding the external candidates also limits the organization from getting
talent pool.
External recruitment: Time and expense
The disadvantages associated with the external recruitment are time and money required to
complete the recruitment and selection process. Internal recruitment can be done through emails
and job board positions at the company. British Airways spent lot of money on the recruitment of
new candidates at various positions (Wang & Niu, 2010). Company’s significant resources and
time spent on this recruitment processes like marketing and advertising, paying recruitment
agencies to access the qualified external candidates. The screening process done for external
candidate require more diligence as compare to internal candidate screening.
Online: Cumbersome
In the edge of internet online recruitment has increased which grows the application from lot of
candidates. The recruiter hence, need to sort of various useless applications in order to search the
right applicant. This is the drawback of recruiting candidates from online media.
2.0 Effectiveness of the key elements of Human Resource Management
2.1 Assess how the functions of HRM can provide talent and skills appropriate to fulfill
business objectives at British Airways
Human resource development involves activities and programs that lead towards organizational
and individual learning. Various HRM functions handled by an organization help to achieve
organizational goal and improve its productivity and performance. The major activities include
HR planning, job analysis, job design, training and development, employee recruitment,
selection, employee motivation, and employee relations.

Figure2: Human resource functions
Planning: The planning process is discussed in above section. The HR planning intended to
perform the functions which place right number of employees at required places within
appropriate time period. The planning process performed at British Airways involves following
steps:

Figure 3: planning process
Recruitment: Recruitment procedure is handled by the HR department at British Airways. The
airways faces challenge to fulfill the vacant position of air hostess, pilots and operating staff
within underlined time period (Intan-Soraya & Chew, 2010). To recruit qualified and skilled
employee British Airways first publicize the job posting and invite applicant, perform screening
of qualified candidates, further interviewing session will be conducted. The final hiring session
has been performed by the manager responsible for final selection.
Learning: The organization providing extra efforts on continuous learning of employees should
generate huge revenues and can achieve significant place in market. According to the human
capital theory manager’s involvement is must in workplace learning to develop good workforce.

BA manager’s always try new activities and learning program to enhance knowledge of their
employees to sustain in competitive business environment.
Training and development: The objectives of training and development program at British
Airways include; enhancing the knowledge and change values and attitudes of staffs, breaking
down the regimented approach of management team; enhancing the employee knowledge and
support and guide sub-ordinates and encourage trust between manager and subordinates (Lee,
1999).
Job analysis: British Airways uses various ways and data sources in order to perform job
analysis and that are interview, questionnaire formation, observation. These methods are used by
BA’s HR team to collect information for job analysis. All the HR functions like planning,
recruitment and selection are based on job requirement and the competence of candidates. The
process used at British Airways to perform job analysis is given in following figure:

Figure 4: Process of Job analysis
Compensation and benefits: This is another significant function used by British Airways to keep
employees motivated, to build strong employee relations and maintain. British Airways regularly
monitors the performance of the employees and appraisal, feedback, compensation and
incentives are provided on the basis of individual’s performance.

2.2 Effectiveness of different HRM practices for raising organizational profit and productivity in
British Airways:
This section will discuss the different HR functions and strategies used by British Airways in
order to enhance organization productivity and profitability.
Effectiveness of job and workplace design and reward system:
Reward management is the central management issue but British Airways management team is
handling it excellently (Ekonomi, 2014). This program helps British Airways to gain employee
motivation, satisfaction, retention and commitment. It also depicts the harmonious management
style of BA to gain successful position at market, with huge revenues and excellent performance.
Moreover, recruiting and selecting best talent in the field exceeds them in the market
competition. Non-monetary and monetary rewards are given.
British Airways has good reward management control strategy which provides opportunity to
develop and operate reward in more organized and logical manner. The spirit, hardwork and
mission of the company have been reflecting through it.
Link between motivational theory and reward: ‘Content and Process’ theory states motivation as
a process which helps to influence the thinking process of individual and enhances the desire of
achieving goal with extra perfection. The reward can be intrinsic or extrinsic (i.e. financial or
non-financial). According to Maslow’s theory managers would be deflecting their attentiveness
in offering complementary fair relationship with the employees (Gediz and Yalçınkaya, 2010).
Effectiveness of flexible organization and flexible working options:
British Airways developed and implemented flexible working schedule intended to strengthen
their employee commitments. This flexibility option help company in handling the situation
which might prove unsafe for its functionality. Flexible working not only helps organization to
respond to competitive business context but also help in enhancing productivity and profitability
(Çelenk and AtmacaM, 2011).
Effectiveness of training program:

Training program is the significant function of Human resource management. Training and
development is a vital factor for best HR functioning. It is a integral activity managed by top
management team at British Airways. Various forms used in the British Airways to train their
employees are; induction training, training on job instruction, fresher’s training, vestibule
training, apprenticeship training.
3.0 Internal and external factors that affect Human Resource
Management decision-making, including employment legislation:
3.1 Employee relations influencing HRM decision-making process at British Airways
Employee relations is nothing but a phenomenon used by the managers or leaders to interact with
their sub-ordinate. Employees are significant element of any successful organization. Employees
have source of knowledge and come-up with excellent ideas but most of the time this source
remain untapped due to lack of communication. Involving the employees in organization
decision making process motivates them to contribute towards organization success and it also
saves time and money of the organization in increasing productivity (Treu1992). The better
relationship building at organization helps to reduce the conflicts.
British Airways uses different ways to improve organization performance and productivity and it
has been discussed below:
Building communication and encouraging teamwork: British Airways asks the opinion and ideas
from its employees which gives them opportunity to share their opinion and knowledge with
others. Proper hierarchy has maintained at the organization but it is taken care that every
employee can have access to every level of hierarchy. This helps employees to feel their
importance in organization, involvement in decision making increase their morale.
Interaction and sharing vision with employees: It is vital to maintain continuous interaction with
staff. Management need to keep them updated about organization’s vision, policies, procedures
and decisions. This strategy of keeping employees well-informed will help them to make sound
decisions. The employees would feel as a member of the organizational family which increase

their morale, motivation and satisfaction and it encourage them to do work with more
commitment.
The strategies British Airways used for building and improving employee relations and
engagement:
The British Airways is using survey to access employee engagement within organization.
Employees have been asked about the share vision, objective of the company (Sezgin, 2005). In
survey employee asked about current program, project and discussion, conflict or problem
running within the company. This survey result helps to show the awareness and engagement of
employee with organization and the management.
Another strategy used by BA is selecting the well-qualified and skilled manager at every
department of the organization. The managers who knows how to interact with employees? How
to involve them within company programs and decision making process? And how to enhance
employee motivation, morale and satisfaction? are the needed within organization.
Managers coaching and training is significant. They should be accountable for the managing
employee engagement within organization.
3.2 Employment legislation and its key impact:
Employment law got its significance when industrialization went global and it changes the
business world in greater extent (Anis, Khan and Humayoun, 2013). The employment laws
should be considered by every organization and which has greater impact on company’s decision
making process are discussed below:
Fair Hours and Wages:
The National Minimum Wage Act 1998, The Working Time Directive 1999; these laws was
implemented within every organization which controls the extra hours working of employees.
According to this law company should not force employee to work more than company hours.
Company need to offer fare wages to employees according to this law. British Airways
implements the rule of fair working hour, wages and safer working condition at workplace and
the employer can be sued in case of finding unsafe or unfair working condition. Minimum wages
conditions are revised annually. Hence, HR management need to verify the value of amount paid

to the employees. This is how the legislations have impact on decision making process of
organization.
Workplace equality:
The acts came under the workplace equality are The Equal Relation Act 1976, The Disability
Discrimination Act 1995, The Sex Discrimination Act 1975. These laws passed where any kind
of discrimination and unequality is considered as breach of legislation. According to the law
people should get working condition with fair and equal treatment. Employee has right to raise
voice against any kind of discrimination related to race, culture, religion or color.
The federal laws have impact on human resource management practices at national level. HR
professional should know about every changing factor of legislation to enhance the organization
liability to match the legislation’s rules and regulations.
4.0 Apply Human Resource Management practices in a work-related context
Technologies based on the internet have popularized to support all characteristics of recruitment.
Recruitment means hiring stands for overall process of attracting, interviewing, short-listing,
selecting and appointing a well qualified candidate for appropriate job. In any recruitment
process, first of all it is needed to find the need for replacement or a new position in your
organization. If a candidate completes all the steps of hiring for a job then suitable candidate will
be chosen by British Airways on permanent or temporary basis.
Social Media Recruitment
To hire a candidate regarding their resume and interview is not only a way for a good job. Social
media recruitment is one of the most popular way of hiring a candidate for an opportunity.
Today’s most of the people spend their free time on social media such as Twitter, Instagram,
Whatsapp, hike, facebook, hangout, Skype, Viber, Telegram, Tumblr etc. This is the type of
connection between people all over the world to reach a new type of employee. These types of
employees are very versatile and adaptable. They easily adapt new technologies and ideas. Social
media sites are increasing in numbers. And facebook is one of the mostly used social sites by
people in their free time. Youth is staying all night long on social media. They can do work at

any time. By their social profile, you can get useful information regarding his area of interest,
skill, his ability. And provide him a good opportunity on the basis of his skills and ability. You
can find a best employee by viewing his social profile. Your recruitment job can be made easier
by tapering your search based on social communication. Social networking service is very fast
working today.
Social media platform is very comfortable for people. They can easily adopt this platform
because of their interest on public network.
Tracking system of the applicant
Tracking system of an applicant is a software application (Applicant Tracking system), which
authorize the needs of recruitment by electronic handling. It is an online source of recruitment
that can be implemented depends on needs of company for a suitable candidate of a desirable
job.
Recruitment agencies:
The recruitment agencies have specialist and qualified experts who shortlist the candidates
according to the company requirement. The agency provides the pre-screened and pre-referenced
candidates that why highest probability of getting qualified and skilled candidates. Recruitment
agency performs many recruitment tasks which includes the external advertising.
Professional referrals or internal referrals:
British Airways uses the professional referrals when it wants to select the candidates for higher
positions, managerial posts. The organization asks employees working on top management level
to refer the candidates and further the refereed candidates are selected after completing
interviews and all selection processes. It costs less than other methods and has better retention
rates.
5.0 Conclusion:

The report underlines various human resources management terms and its impact over the British
Airways business. The discussion and analysis of HRM practices shows that British Airways has
good recruitment and selection practices which helps organization to get skilled and qualified
employees. Every good thing comes with certain drawbacks and hence, the recruitment and
selection processes also have some weaknesses on which British Airways has to focus. The
employee relation and legislations are the key aspects of HR activities and BA follows all the
legislation during recruitment.

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