SFOrunner

Has anyone been able to quantify what the total compensation for the affected employees looks like? Someone else reported that the employees are receiving Cash Profit Sharing (CPS) in addition to base salary / cash compensation. What is the average value of these quarterly performance bonuses?

The headline certainly is attention grabbing, but is it that big of a deal in terms of a dollar amount, relative to their total comp?

gernabae

I really despise the D:0 metric.

In my opinion, it pushes front-line staff into making bad decisions just to make the metric. Think about all the times we hear of someone complaining that an aircraft door wasn't held open for "two more minutes," or flights that went out mis-catered or not so clean.

Since the metric that the bonuses being measured against isn't whether or not you made a smart decision that saved the company money, rather that you released the aircraft brakes come hell or high water by the D:0 time, what incentive does an employee have to screw up their station/region/national D:0 metric in favor of the traveling public? Other than, I suppose, not being screamed at or having to do a bit more work to handle re-accommodation. A:15 is a much better performance metric that can encompass good tactical decision-making both on the ground and in the air.

milypan

fly18725

Tech companies, and many others in traditional industries, are recognizing that some decisions need to be made quickly, even if there's the potential for failure. Personally, I like to see companies move quickly to try something new, even if it doesn't always work out. Spending too much time over analyzing everything is a good way to manage yourself out of business.

Clearly, airlines can't make any compromises on safety. I think there's too much significance placed on the announcement of an incentive structure, and the willingness to walk it back when it was poorly received.

I think there's an onus on employees to look at the situation reasonably: they didn't like a management decision and they provided feedback in an appropriate and largely constructive manner. Management listened and is changing course. If employees can't see that as the basis for a productive relationship relationship, I think that United is saddled with a bunch of hopelessly inflexible employees.

Ber2dca

Bad decisions happen all the time in corporations in any field of operations including initiatives that don't work out and need to be reversed. Just recently Lufthansa overhauled their entire branding only to realize a week later that the blue they went with is way too dark. They spent several millions on that.

From my own personal experience with medium to large corporations I can't think of one that didn't make some bad calls on a leadership level or below. Some of them worse than this one (which hadn't even been implemented yet before being reversed). I've also seen situations where employee benefits were reduced and people weren't thrilled.

One thing that is different here though to my personal experiences and perhaps a sign of the toxicity of United as a company is (1) that employees immediately took their outrage public and (2) the rampant ultra-negativity vs leadership which is indicative of very low trust and bad labor relations. It seems like employees at UA are willing to use the public's negative view of United and thus the media's willingness to do negative stories on United as a way of blackmailing leadership into doing as they wish. Of course, that is self-defeating..as they're reinforcing the very negativity that threatens the sustainability of their own jobs at United.

JBord

I agree with the thought behind your #2 , but there are few cases where you should test major comp changes (which dissolution of a bonus plan would be, regardless of the $ amounts) with focus groups for a number of reasons I'm sure you'd come up with after thinking about it for a bit. In fact, the announcement of the program was more or less a big focus group, and look what happened. What's more amazing to me is that I can't think of any credible compensation consultants that would suggest or approve of a program like this. It smells like a decision that was made by Kirby solely on his own, perhaps based on prior experience. I think if it had been implemented, Kirby would have been fired within a year and UA would have told it's employees that they were working on a new program.

You're 100% correct, but I don't think it should be used as an excuse for anything UA or other corporations do or fail to do. You need Amazon-like quickness for programs released to your customers, you don't want it for an employee comp program. With delivery speed comes a certain expectation that a release may not be perfect. As customers, we're getting used to that. We can wait for Apple to get their maps right as long as we get all the other new iphone features every year. But you don't mess with people's compensation without making sure you're 100% ready to implement it and back it up. Even though this program will now never be implemented (as most people know "pause" is exec speak for scrapping something without admitting it was stupid and wrong), I can guarantee that it's already deepened the trust issues employees have with management.

Halo117

If UA wants to be like amazon and google....have them work on getting pde working on all devices and hard product issues, not piss off the folks that provide the soft service/intangible items. Or here is a novel idea, implement personal metric goals.

How do folks here think a metric tied bonus is an enitlement? If you hit the metric you get the bonus...period. where is the entitlement? In this case you hit the metric and you get the chance at a bonus...yup even better

Overall you structure the incentive to be achievable but not impossible and enough to make it worthwhile. If it doesn't work you don't make it worse, you find out why the incentive isn't working then adjust. I can't imagine UA employees said "we want drama to that metric bonus...all in and let it ride".

jjmoore

About a year after deciding to forego a deal with Boeing to purchase 60 B733's at $20MM a piece.... that would have been so nice to replace some of the CRJ-200's and RJ-145's on the longer routes (GRR-DEN, FAT-DEN, EWR-OMA, etc etc)... but now, we have the new AW CRJ-200's (that run lots of new routes from IAD's A gates.. ugh!

Not to mention... if my company EVER decided to forego bonuses in exchange for a lottery program, I would quit almost immediately and move on.

goalie

Because executives never eat their own, only their employees young

zymm

I would be really interested to see employee turnover rates for different positions compared across all US airlines. You don't spring something this obviously bad on employees unless you really don't care if they stick around.

As to the whole 'fail fast' tech company culture....moving fast is not an excuse for putting no thought into ideas. The goal is not failure, rather accepting and learning from failure is merely a recognition that success is not always a linear process. You should be sure that the problem you're trying to solve is important, and have a clear idea of what you success looks like. It's very easy to move quickly downwards or backwards I don't think the best way to cut employee compensation is one of the most important and impactful problems facing United right now. If the goal is truly to motivate employees, then I don't see any logic behind making compensation random.

halls120

Kacee

I don't think management believed that for a second. This was about cutting the costs of the bonus program, and then pitching the change as an "enhancement."

Sound familiar?

goodeats21

Agree. It seems rather curious given that their improved operations lately has to be saving them money, compared to sub-par ops just a short time ago. The bonus worked...
Typical United Management.

FLYMSY

goodeats21

It was called "Going the Extra Mile", which FTers consolidated as "GTEM" .

There was a report that GS members got some type of similar chits in their annual packet this year, but didn't sound like a fully-formed program like before.
It was a great program, for both customers and staff....so doubt it will come back.