1. Describe what is so special about SIA’s five elements of its successful HR practices?

ANSWER

The five elements which made the HR practices successful are as follows:

The crew resources management is one that has its major focus on the dimension of the company,
which has the capability to polish the company’s strategy. The performance delivers the improvement of
the excellence in the service offered, values of the cost consciousness, expectation of the customer and
lastly the adapting dynamic market

The SIA focus more on worker’s side of the company’s service excellence that is sustained.

More focus in the training, newly recruited cabin crew and providing extensive knowledge about the
holistic industrial knowledge.

Company helps the staff to deal with emotional front and also basic demand of the customers.

The customer satisfaction, training program, and leadership for service excellence are the major areas
which really made the service as well as the cost very effective

2. Evaluate the effectiveness of each element’s contribution towards SIA’s leadership in service
excellence and cost-effectiveness.

ANSWER

1. Straight selection and recruitment Process:

Helps in choosing the most eligible people in every regard from academics to appearances. Better
qualified applicants show that service excellence continues.

It is critical for SIA not only to recruit the right employee to have good customer service, but also to
develop potential businesses. The correct recruit reduces the turnover expense and the training expense
of the "wrong" person, who might quit the business in the future. A welcoming culture may also be
retained within the company.

2. Extensive investment in Training and Retention:

In order to ensure that they stay educated and still ready to manage multiple tasks as required by the
organization, regular training is often provided to all.

3. Successful Service Delivery Time:

With strong staff, efficient customer delivery is often important to ensure the quality of the work
carried out.

Strong team spirit, encouragement and advice also add to work satisfaction in developing specific skills

4. Empowerment of frontline staff to control quality:

Leadership requires that the workers are driven about the job and the business in a strong spirit
In addition, since the frontline workers work directly with consumers, encouraging them means that
they feel "accountable" for making the correct decision and supplying customers with the best possible
service

5. Motivating staff through Reward and recognition:

It would inspire happier and pleased workers to perform well, resulting in better efficiency for
employees.

It will also improve employee leadership skills.

Recognition and compensation increase the productivity of workers.

3. Despite the evidence that such practices help service firms achieve higher company performance,
many organizations have not managed to execute them as effectively. Why do you think that is the
case?

ANSWER

To encourage such practices firms, need strategic focus, most service firms want to expand their bottom
line with minimal investment in time. Such HRM practices are a function of patience, employee
satisfaction and capital expenditure on training rather than just salaries, which erodes the focus of most
profit first organisations. Their zeal to expand their businesses and gain market share quickly eludes
them into thinking that paying higher salaries is going to help them reach their targets instead
understanding of focusing of the nuances of best HRM practices.

These companies falter from the hiring processes, training, propagating positive company culture,
employee recognition and employee empowerment. To build such quality and profitable services, where
the front-line workers have high visibility, employee’s well-being with regards to satisfaction, pay,
product knowledge, and culture of customer orientation matters the most to give the best experience to
their customers. This culture for customer orientation needs to be propagated from top down, and
needs to be in the fabric of the organisation with respect to pay, rewards, empowerment, product
development, training and company pride which seems to be missing in most organisations. Most firms
push back these essential practices because their strategic focus gets misaligned to meet their short-
term goals.

he rises of start-ups, most organisations want to attain customer acquisitions quickly, instead of
improving their customer service they invest heavily in providing extensive early bird offers, discounts
and cashbacks to lure the customers and set a behavior for discounts. However, they don’t manage to
retain the customer for too long, as soon the discount cycle breaks, the customer goes looking for
substitutes, hence the company keeps this cycle alive and sometimes lose their attention on their
employees. The key driver for retention in most services other than discounts is customer services which
many such high growth focused companies lose sight.

During the toughest times, the first thing most firms cut back are on their front employees, their pay
checks and training which generates toxic feelings towards their organization and poor-quality services
This trickle’s down to the employee service which further leads to high customer and employee attrition
rates and the cycle continues until the organisation has a seismic shift in their strategic vision, external
bailouts or the dissolution of the organisation.

4. Why do you think are US full-service airlines largely undifferentiated low-quality providers? What are
the reasons that none of the full-service airlines positioned itself and delivers as a high service quality
provider?

ANSWER

Most of the US full-service airlines are largely undifferentiated low-quality providers because

They are not facing any competition from the quality perspective from any of the full-service airlines.
Customers also don’t expect as no other airline is providing better service.

As mentioned in the case, if customers receive a level of service quality, over the time their
expectations will increase. But in US scenario, as no company is providing better service, customers
might not be expecting that and hence, the airlines didn’t feel the need to provide that level of service

Asians feel more pride by associating with a brand name as Americans. Americans have a lot of
unionization as well. Therefore, it’s difficult to replicate the same service level with this much stringent
recruitment and training process.

For all of the above reasons, none of the full-service airlines positioned itself and deliversas a high
service quality provider

5. Some of the SIA’s HR practices would be frowned upon in the US and Europe (e.g., having cabin crew
on time-based contracts that are renewable every five years). Is this fair competition (i.e., desired
competition between regulatory frameworks, as was favoured by Margaret Thatcher, former prime
minister of the UK), or is it arbitration of regulatory environments that encourage a “race to the bottom”
in terms of employee rights?

ANSWER

SIA's HR activities and the kind of assistance they got from the government of Singapore is largely part
of regulatory arbitration. While, contrary to international norms, the pilots and the SIA crew were
chronically underpaid, the Govt. In order to meet international expectations.

This must have occurred mainly when Singapore airlines became the nation's leading airline business
which therefore generate a lot of tax revenues and they would have to increase their salaries if they had
to pay extra of their workers. They would risk their competitive advantage in this situation by having
excellent consumer service at reasonable rates. This kind of contributed to a fight to the edge type of
situation, in which the company had power over what kind of human rights they chose to pursue and
what appeared to them to be a decent pay, allowing employee freedom to take a back seat and
consequently leading to a ripple impact in the airline industry in Singapore.
6. How do people feel if they are working in a culture that focuses so intensely on customers, but cut
costs to the bone internally?

ANSWER

The impact of customer centric culture while following cost cutting strategy is as follows

Emphasis on customer satisfaction is done during the employee training itself. This makes it easy for the
employees to accept the culture that focuses on customer satisfaction and makes them ready to reduce
cost through avoiding waste in any form

Variable pay system that motivates the employees towards increasing the turnover is an advantage. 50%
of the pay is depended on company’s performance and revenue.

Recruitment of hardworking and ambitious employees with need for achievement and affiliation are
done

SIA sift through their worker by utilizing their compelling HR practices to guarantee consumer loyalty
and cost decrease. This filtration is critical to help keep a solid culture and healthy environment in the
organisation

The achievement factor of how individuals like to function in an organization that just spotlights so
seriously on clients yet reduces expenses deep down inside rely upon how they train their kin and the
economic wellbeing when they work in that Organization. Henceforth high degree of consistency shows
that the way of life of the organization is very solid.