United Airlines has unveiled the latest iteration of its employee bonus program, a plan that theoretically could pay employees more but likely will pay less.
The old program awarded $100/month for hitting operational targets (paid on a quarterly basis).
Under the new program, employees can earn up to $125/month. $75 of of that will be dependent upon customer satisfaction scores while $50 will depend upon on-time departures. Let’s dig a bit deeper.
Customers are asked to rate their flight on a score between 1 to 5 according to feedback form distributed by email after their flight. Per United Executive Vice President for Human Resources, Kate Cebo, “Our goal for 2019 is to achieve a score that’s at least one point higher than in 2018, and we’ll share monthly goals as we go.”
There’s still a layer of opaqueness about this. Will employees have transparency into the raw data? What sort of improvements will be necessary in order to continue to earn bonuses? The details are still unfolding.
Unless I misunderstand the new policy, it offers an inherently limited lifespan. If the goal is a one point improvement per year and scores are only ranked 1 to 5, it will be nearly impossible to move that score up any higher after a good year. I also question the reliability of these surveys in the first place: surely they attract only those most happy or unhappy, but usually unhappy. Admittedly, I have not filled out a single survey this year. Maybe I will start doing so now…
The $50/month bonus will require United to post better on-time departure stats (D:00) than American, Delta, and Southwest. United slipped slightly in punctuality this year and President Scott Kirby wants to change that in 2019.
I’m personally not a fan of pushing hard for on-time departures over on-time arrivals. While flights may run into all sorts of operational and weather delays beyond the control of the airline, the only thing customers care about is on-time arrivals. Who cares if your flight departs 20 minutes late if it pulls up to the gate early? On the contrary, what difference does an on-time departure make if there is no gate for the plane when it lands and you end up disembarking 30 minute late? By pushing so hard to close the door on time, upgrades and standby lists risk being skipped.
CONCLUSION
Is this an improvement over the old program? No. Maybe the problem is introducing a bonus in the first place, which quickly becomes an entitlement.
The new changes to the bonus program will likely dampen morale, as a $125/month potential is less than a reliable extra $100/month.
But this bonus program is a huge improvement over Kirby’s televangelist-style lottery system which was a tone-deaf insult to employees who work very hard to make United operationally reliable.
So, is the new program naughty or nice? It is too early to tell.
> Read More: United Airlines Inflames Employees With Bonus Cutbacks
(H/T: Brian Sumers @Skift)
As American Airlines has proven, paying employees more has zero correlation with better business results or higher customer satisfaction. United could triple the bonus and give it to everybody ( the “participation ribbon”) and United will still be a crap airline.
I think until the airlines de-unionize (which will never happen), we will consistently see shit service from the US3. So long as matronly, lackadaisical, no-shits-given FAs rule the skies/route because of their seniority with zero possibility of being dismissed for poor attitude/performance/whatever, then we’ll never see a US airline actually improve. I’m not necessarily anti-union, but anyone who doesn’t think unions have a huge role in the terrible service of the US3 is completely daft.
The reason Airlines are Unionized is because they treat their employees like trash. Management runs the company for shareholders and themselves. Customers are dupes they take cash from. The joke of air travel is the ever increasing dehumanization of the human cargo. Look a t seat spacing and the crazy methods on pricing and milage programs. The draconian things they do to the passengers has resulted in some small amount of legislation to protect the flyers from these conditions but in truth the companies area all terrible. The great rating they get as service companies are hollow. Look a little deeper and the food, service and treatment of passengers and their luggage is terrible. The monopolies these last few mega carriers have a tangle hold on travel. They squees the passenger and their employees for every bit of cash. Meanwhile the work on these aircraft is done in China and outside the US. The regulation of this is much less rigorous than here in the US.
Southwest.
So United sets up a new series of criteria that will be somewhere between difficult an impossible to meet on an ongoing basis, but expect this to be cheerfully accepted by the employees? What could possibly go wrong?
As a passenger, the focus on D0 is unwelcome, as it encourages several customer-unfriendly practices:
– Boarding way too early. AA was notorious about this for a while; they’d start boarding 45 minutes (!) prior to departure, so when I’d show up at scheduled time, they were already halfway through Group 4 and, naturally, tell me I have to check my carry-on. Even though I paid extra for MCE just to avoid that problem.
– Closing the gate early, which really p*sses off those running to make a connection thanks to the tight “banked” connections everyone forces you on to these days.
– Boarding early or on-time but then sitting at the gate with the door closed or on the taxiway waiting for departure. I’d much rather take a boarding delay and, you know, get some stuff done or have time for a meal.
Ironically, instituting the D0 part might actually make those survey scores worse…