UA Employees Must Take Company-Mandated Course on “Caring”
Jeff Edwards March 07, 2018
Thousands of United Airlines workers will now be required to take a mandatory training session to help hone customer service skills and learn to become more “mindful and compassionate.”
United Airlines certainly seems to have had more than its fair share of public relations nightmares recently. In April 2017, the legacy carrier earned backlash from customers and regulators alike after a viral video emerged of an elderly physician being violently removed from an overbooked flight at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD). Just weeks earlier, the carrier earned headlines and the public’s scorn after barring two girls from boarding at Denver International Airport (DEN) because they were wearing leggings. It seems the airline’s infamous customer service troubles even managed to make a man of the cloth lose his religion.
Now, the company is hoping a four-hour-long course on how to treat passengers will help the airline to start to rehabilitate its image. According to CNBC, the so-called “core4” training sessions will be mandatory for nearly 30,000 in customer service positions. The core4 course will focus on four core characteristics management would like its frontline workers to personify, including “caring, safe, dependable and efficient.”
In addition to role-playing customer service scenarios and discussing management’s expectations for how employees deal with those hypothetical scenarios, the program reportedly stresses the importance of “open body language, smiling, making eye contact, speaking with a positive tone and being mindful and compassionate.” The airline hopes that these skills could help to defuse potentially embarrassing passenger interactions in the future.
“Core4 puts a value on emotional intelligence,” Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) President Sara Nelson told NBC News. Many United Airlines workers, however, have taken a decidedly less positive view of the core4 program.
United Airlines President Scott Kirby was widely criticized when he announced last week that the employee bonus program would be replaced with a lottery tied to workers meeting metrics inspired by the core4 training program. After facing strong opposition from its workforce, the company soon backtracked and announced that it would “pause” plans to drop employee bonuses in favor of “core4 Score Rewards” prizes.
“Our intention was to introduce a better, more exciting program, but we misjudged how these changes would be received by many of you,” Kirby told employees this week. “So, we are pressing the pause button on these changes to review your feedback and consider the right way to move ahead.”
It seems that the employee bonus program earned a last minute reprieve for now. In the meantime, the airline confirms that the core4 training program will also continue as planned.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
I don't care if they don't care. Most people that are "abused" ( and I use that term VERY loosely, by airline employees and FA's, deserve it. The people that need the training, are the passengers that are unruly, demanding and rude. How about banning people from flying until they pass a "generally-acceptable behavior class". Flying is not your RIGHT.
Problem is, nobody is in the mood to do any "fluff" training, after a possible benefits takeaway.
Well of course the employees aren't happy about this. They have no interest in changing their culturally ingrained attitudes toward their customers. A four hour course will change nothing and is just a waste of time. Furthermore, this is only for their front-line employees. The problems they have are allowed to exist because it starts at the top. Top-down and across the board.
The street goes both ways. I won't be showing "open body language" and smiling when some yahoo is screaming at me and making unreasonable demands (while videoing with their iPhone inches from my face). The body language you will see is the back of me. You need only read about the dozens of nutty, immoral, indecent, lying passengers here on FlyerTalk to see that bad behavior is not always on the part of airline employees. Wake up.
If a company has to mandate company classing on basic service delivery, then they have chosen the wrong people. United is terrible (as is AA) and I avoid them at all cost