Flexible preferences

I like what you said about mixture of experience ^ It does sound ideal (although, perhaps idealised?)

I'm sorry to hear that you're not feeling recognised by the company. It is a strange thing, they appear to have set up a mechanism for recognition - surveys, golden tickets, stats and such - yet you are left feeling unrecognised. I wonder if there is a management failure here?

headingwest

Why do you say idealised?

A good company that treats its employees well will always have a steady stream of new employees as well as employees leaving, whether through retirement, medical retirement or just changes of career. With this type of turnover there is always a mixture of new, more experienced, and long serving employees - which I agree is the perfect mix.

The problem BA will have is that the vast majority will now have the same experience. Or dare I say it, some won't be experienced at all, although that is not to say that they won't be trained. Working 'through the ranks' is surely the best way, rather than parachuting somebody into positions of responsibility just because there are no other takers.

Flexible preferences

Yes I agree with you completely. It sounds like a very healthy mix, and we don't know that BA won't achieve that. At the moment there is a lot of fear and anger.

I wondered if idealised because it seemed the way it was written that perhaps it was being remembered as better than in actually was; something that can happen when we look back fondly... It wasn't a statement, it was more a question

headingwest

BA is, as always, playing with its name. Management seem to think that the reputation alone will draw in new employees who are eager to work for them, just like they draw in customers who expect a better experience.

The problem is that the BA brand is becoming more and more tarnished as they engage in their pathetic cost cutting exercises. Now the long serving employees are leaving in their droves, next it may be the customers.

Flexible preferences

But not you?

headingwest

Funny you should ask! Next year I've got far less booked with BA, I'm flying with AY, JL, CX and IB.

Flexible preferences

Fair play. You are putting your money where your mouth is. I take it you are no longer 'striving hard to reach BA Gold' as you say the brand is so tarnished?

headingwest

I'll get my Gold status next week when I fly to Lisbon with Iberia.

Flexible preferences

Well it doesn't make sense to me how you can have one standard that says the BA brand is tarnished, and another that strives to get BA Executive Club Gold and that continues to fly them.

Why would you want Gold status in a tarnished brand that treats its staff so 'pathetically'?

headingwest

I don't really care about BAEC Gold, it's more about getting oneworld status. As I occasionally travel to the UK and USA, BAEC seems the most logical way. Plus with the soft landing I'll have status for nearly 3 years and won't have to jump through the hoops until Sept 2018.

Don't get me wrong, I love British Airways....but I think they're losing their direction (forgive the pun).

Lite

I don't think it's too idealised. Don't get me wrong, the many years I spent cutting my teeth at one of the country's best loved and most missed charter airlines was hard work. They were very strict and worked you very hard, it probably has a lot to do with how good their reputation was. They also had an excellent culture for taking employee feedback, paid us well for what we did and because of the incentives and the way we were made to feel, I can honestly say I was always happy to help them out when they asked for concessions from us or if we'd work days off in the busy summer season. Generally we had a great mix of crews, especially at the established regional bases, who still remembered flying on the first generation turboprops and 707's, mixed with fresh new blood. Businesses now generally don't believe in jobs for life or value experience, but there are still those out there who do treat their colleagues well and use that reputation to attract really good new people too.

The recognition for surveys and statistics just doesn't work for us here. When you get a Golden Ticket, you tell your manager who puts it on your file. There's no genuine interest in how it was achieved or what can be learned from that experience to share with other colleagues on how to better look after our GCH's. The personal recognition letters are lovely and they're a really nice touch. I genuinely love receiving them and do so to receive them and know I've done a job well done, not for the sake of a statistic. BA, like any big business, can't listen and act on all the feedback from customer facing colleagues. Nothing would ever get done. It would do well though to listen to the people looking after your customers every day to see if there are quick fixes to issues which are major problems for those colleagues and in turn the customers they serve. Instead there is a culture that if you feed something back the company doesn't want to hear you're beligerent and anti-company and so people give up feeding things back. It's very sad to watch people simply lose interest in making things better because they know they can't and the company aren't interested.

So I just come to work, enjoy my job and love to spoil the customers I come into contact with, help new colleagues get a bit more confidence and have a laugh with those who I've worked with and built an excellent rapport with before. I come on here to see what's going on and what's been happening with our customers (especially if I know the answer to something on a thread and can respond), plus if there's anything useful I can use in my briefings or feedback from a thread then I'll use it. Otherwise I leave work at work, certainly wouldn't volunteer to involve myself in focus groups or company forums and wouldn't give up a day off to help out in disruption. Sadly I've been here more than 18 months, so if I do go in the new year then BA don't really care and they've made their money back. They won't conduct a leaving interview, so I can't even leave feedback to try and make things better for customers as they try to understand why I leave.

HIDDY

I don't see the company having any other choice, other than going bust and starting up again.
I have experience of that happening. Got paid off on the Friday then on the Monday we all marched down to the job centre to apply for our new jobs with different working conditions. Before we went back to work we all went to the pub to celebrate.

Littlegirl

That is a silly thing to say because Lite is on the cheaper fleet that is paying less than the competitors, so if they are making her feel like she does, and I have to say, she is a real professional, then they are really making a mistake.

BA are making really high profits, so I don't see any need for them to go bust to lower their wage bill.

Society is going mad at the moment with CEOs and company executive needing huge wages to apparently keep them working hard, higher than ever, with a much wider gap between them and their staff, yet the staff apparently only need the lowest possible wage and a really bad pension nowadays. Something is going very wrong with the way our capitalist society is starting to work. It's almost like we are going back to Victorian tines, when some were very rich but most struggled to make ends meet!

Sad really!

V10

Well said. This is management exploitation of the workforce, nothing more or less.

secretplantofightinflation

Well put.

The fixation on profits from some of the posters on this board is bizarre. I genuinely couldn't give a toss if BA made a pound or a billion in profit. I'd rather they just invested in improving the product and looked after their staff.