Voices A message to fl yers

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Pay It Forward

BY LISTENING TO ITS EMPLOYEES, UNITED IS CREATING A BETTER AIRLINE.

FOR DONNA TOWLE, United’s Vice Bethune became CEO of Continental. Jeff Smisek, now United’s CEO, was part of the senior leadership team brought in to turn around the company. He and other senior leaders set about overhauling the lines of communication between management and the coworkers on the front lines.

Towle remembers that “one of the fi rst things Gordon said was, ‘You gotta listen to the frontline employees.’ And so we did, and the employees told us what customers needed, and what tools our coworkers needed to do their jobs. At the time we had the worst employee attendance in the industry. People simply didn’t want to come to work.”

So the team decided to fi gure out why attendance was so low. They discovered that there was a disconnect between management and the front lines. “We immediately started a dialogue with the employees, and it paid off right away,” says Towle.

With the new United, CEO Smisek, Towle and the entire United leadership team are committed to keeping lines of communication

open. It begins with expanding the President for HR-Employee Relations, organization’s focus. “All companies success in business boils down to use metrics and analyses to measure three simple concepts: trust, pride and manage what gets done,” Towle and camaraderie. If you make these says, “and that’s obviously important. your overarching goals for how But the truly successful companies coworkers relate to one another, also focus on how things get done. In Towle says, great customer service the merger, we want to place as much falls into place. emphasis on the how as on the what.”

“Employees need to feel they’re To do this, Towle and the HR team part of the process, and they need to be part of the process,” Towle says. “To make this happen, we need “ At the end of the day, we want our coworkers to listen to them. Companies to be proud to tell others that they work at the new that listen to their coworkers fare well in the long run United. We want this to be a fun place to work.” and are great places to work. If you provide a good employee have developed an innovative plan to experience, your coworkers will in create a better workplace for United’s turn provide great customer service— coworkers. It begins with the open that’s the lynchpin of success in any lines of communication. Working with service-oriented business.” Smisek, she created an Employee

Towle joined Continental 26 years Advisory Group composed of 24 ago and can remember a time when frontline employees from across things weren’t going too well. all departments of the combined

“Fifteen years ago, Continental company (half from United, half was a terrible place to work, and our from Continental). As the leaders employees had little pride in their organize and execute the integration jobs or in the carrier,” Towle says. of the two airlines, they are consulting “Continental had a bad reputation, with the employee advisory group to largely based on how our coworkers make sure the airline is listening to the delivered the product and service. experts—the frontline employees. Back then, it felt like managers never “We can’t make this great merger listened to our frontline employees.” successful without our coworkers,”

All of that changed when Gordon Towle says. “If they aren’t engaged in

Donna Towle, United’s Vice President for HR-Employee Relations, second from right, speaks with, from left, Tom Neuman, Marlene Hawkinson, David Lynch and Paola Gomez.

and supportive of the process, we won’t get the benefi ts we all want to achieve.”

Beyond the advisory group, Towle is dispatching teams to act as impartial liaisons between the leadership and frontline coworkers, the “boots on the ground.”

“Our coworkers need to have someone in management they can speak to who is neutral and unbiased,” Towle says. “We’re going to provide venues where employees can feel comfortable sharing ideas and getting feedback from leadership.”

The goal, Towle says, is to make coworkers confi dent that they can ask any question of management and get a straight answer; that management delivers on promises; shows appreciation for good work and for extra eff ort; seeks and responds to suggestions and ideas; and shows interest in coworkers as human beings, not just employees.

“At the end of the day,” Towle says, “we want our coworkers to be proud to tell others that they work at the new United. We want this to be a great place to work.”

And it’s not just coworkers who can reap the rewards of a great place to work. These initiatives have a great payoff for the customer, who in turn will receive great service and be able to ask any question and get a straight answer from a United representative, who will appreciate the customer’s business and respond appropriately to the customer’s suggestions and ideas.