Human Resource Development of Professionals in Saudi Arabian Airlines - Research Proposal Example

A Study of the Human Resource Development Competencies as Perceived by the Human Resource Development of Professionals in Saudi Arabian Airlines Chapter 1 Introduction Human resource development practices With each passing day, it appears to be the main goal or stated objective of every firm, both small as well as large, to be able to implement and put into place the best or the most effective Human Resource Development (HRD) practices and methodologies (Odden, 2011). Organizations currently exist in a highly competitive business environment and more often than not, it is firms that have not only implemented but also followed their respective human resource practices that are the ones that are able to achieve both short and long term success. Human Resource Development allows organizations to focus on getting the most out of their employees and to facilitate their growth and development. One of the central strategies in terms of HRD, which many businesses tend to implement, is to look a range of compensation as well as pay for performance based strategies. In doing this, firms are trying to ensure that the employees feel that they are being rewarded or compensated, well so to ensure that they will see a big rise in their underlying productivity, self-confidence but also the belief that they have towards their firm. This approach is often successful, as it gives employees an incentive to care about the quantity or quality of their work, rather than simply performing at the minimum level possible. Many businesses make use of a sustained and effective HRD competency model that attempts to achieve many goals, including the development of a well-structured competency model and pay for performance mechanism (Reilly, 2008). The conceptual framework is based on ensuring that if proper and timely human resource policies are implemented into mainstream operations, the airline could be a role model for others to follow. The main conceptual model that would be applied here is the so called “ASTD Competency Model” which is one that has its focus on both “business” but also “management” based areas (Nel, 2009, pg. 20). Saudi Arabian Airlines Generally speaking, Saudi Arabian Airlines is one of the most dominant and large airlines not only in the Middle East but in the immediate region. Saudi Arabian Airlines was brought into airline service in 1945 and at that time, it only had one aircraft into service (Saudi Arabian Airlines, 2012, Online Portal). With the passage of time, the airline started to put a lot more focus as well as financial and other resources towards both expanding its employee base and developing its fleet. This is exactly the strategy that the airline has been pursuing and in the present day, Saudi Arabian Airlines has more than 139 aircraft that are actively serving within the airline and most of them are Boeing and Airbus based airplanes (Saudi Arabian Airlines, 2012, Online Portal). With the passage of time, Saudi Arabian Airlines has continued to put more focus both on its domestic, but more importantly on its international expansion. This has been the reason why Saudi Arabian Airlines has emphasized having a very diversified and a large airline inventory (Saudi Arabian Airlines, Reference for Business online, 2102). The focus for Saudi Arabian Airlines was not only to expand in a number of lucrative Middle Eastern markets but more so in some very key and strategic hubs in the region such as countries like India, Pakistan and so forth that have very large populations (Saudi Arabian Airlines, Reference for Business online, 2102). The airline’s main headquarters is located in the city of Jeddah and it currently has an employee base of more than 35,000 employees (Saudi Arabian Airlines, 2012, SAP Report). For such a big and rapidly expanding airline, it is not only important but at times simply imperative that it is able to enact and put into practice an effective HRD competency model, which focuses on the need to have a viable compensation and pay for performance strategy. A lot of the information for the purposes of this analysis on the airline was conducted by contacting the airline’s main Customer Service Relations department back in Saudi Arabia (Contact Number, +966-2-6862828) and the first and foremost question that was posed to them was to evaluate and determine how effective or efficient the airline’s current compensation strategy is as implemented by its human resource department. While doing that, it was determined that the main salary of its full time employees is often related to a base salary that is linked to the seniority of that employee within the firm and then computed. The baseline salary that is given to employees is also adjusted for the particular duty station that the employee might be stationed in, as some duty stations such as those in Europe are relatively more expensive to stay at than those that are found in parts of Africa and Asia. In addition to this aspect, there are also a number of additional benefits that the airline offers, mostly to its full time employees such as its engineers, its cabin crew, its pilots, and sales staff all over the world. These are often inclusive of items such as comprehensive sick and vacation pay, a health plan and also the provision of days paid off that the employees accumulate with the number of working days. What the customer service representative also informed the researcher is that at the present time, the airline still has not put into practice a full-fledged means of having a pay for performance strategy, where the main goal is to associate some type of additional pay that is contingent based on that employee achieve a number of set goals or financial objectives (Hegar, 2011, pg. 411). What this often means is that on one hand, the firm might be giving its employees the set base salary but then there is a certain amount of that compensation that is directly associated with the underlying performance and the successful achievement of a number of such performance based targets (Hegar, 2011, pg. 411). At Saudi Airlines, this aspect of having pay for performance doesn’t seem to be used on a frequent basis but is one that is limited to a number of its top level management based jobs. Therefore, the particular HRD Competency Model that could be appropriately applied here is the so called “ATSD Competency Model” (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22) and there are a number of elements and sub elements of it that could be directly beneficial when applied to the context of Saudi Arabian Airlines. The first or primary area of this model is a number of the so called “foundational competencies” (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22) that should be inherent in every single organization, such as the notion that the firm has a sound and solid organizational culture and that itself ties into the “Interpersonal Competencies” (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22). When it comes to these interpersonal competencies, the main aim should be to ensure that on one hand, there is a large scale diversity that is inherent in the organization but at the same time, there is also a cohesive and coherent line of communications. According to the Customer Service representative that was contacted, in every single department of the airline, such as the catering division, the human resource division, the engineering and the sales division, there is a senior manager or a top line director that is there at all times to oversee and look at all of the aspects and work based issues of his immediate staff. Then the various supervisors and sub managers within the airline’s departments also have meetings every couple of months where a number of issues are raised and discussed, concerning what the future course of action should be. In essence, the airline does seem to be addressing the communication element of its human resources but one aspect that appears to be lacking is that of diversity. The customer service person informed the researcher that the bulk of the airline’s full time and its catering employee base are male and now the airline has slowly but surely started to fill in a number of more positions by hiring and recruiting females. A number of such females are often hired as cabin crew and also some in its sales and marketing department. A number of its engineers as well as pilots are also foreign/international, but again the main premise here is that the airline seems to be lacking when it comes to effectively yet efficiently implementing a diverse workforce. One of the core tenets of the ASTD Competency Model is to ensure that every given entity is able to leverage on its diverse workforce and take the best of working qualities from them. In addition to that, what should as well be stressed is to ensure that the organization is able to “identify, recognize, appreciate and leverage diversity” (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22), and this is something that still has to be very much worked on in the airline. The ASTD Competency Model is considered to be one of the most appropriate as well as relevant models that have been developed, and one of the fundamental elements that is addressed by this model is looking at ways that could be used to “drive results” (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22). With each passing day, now there is a lot more airline- and aviation-based competition in the Middle East region, and that has increased the importance for Saudi Arabia Airlines to be effective, and to keep up with its baseline compensation and other forms of compensation. All employees would want to feel that all of their hard work as well as underlying dedication to the firm is being paid off and rewarded, and that often happens when there is an increase in compensation in addition to having some form of additional performance associated compensation. The most important area, which the airline needs to leverage and put most of its current focus, is on introducing a number of pay for performance based compensation strategies. These would ensure that on one hand, its employees do have that inherent inventive to work that much harder but with the same token, they also would realize that a certain portion of their compensation is tied on how much harder they are willing to work (Iles, Almhedie & Baruch, 2012). An analysis of the practices that should be implemented by Saudi Airlines to ensure a sustainable HR framework The problem to be addressed as part of this study is to examine what effective or efficient compensation and financial rewards practices could be implemented by the human resource department at Saudi Airlines to ensure a sustainable and continuous improvement within employees underlying motivation and productivity levels. Therefore, the main issue that has to be addressed is to consider approaches that could be undertaken to diversify the compensation strategies and methodologies that the airline currently uses. In addition, the airline should evaluate the basis of enacting some form of a pay for compensation strategy, as one of the core aspects of the ASTD model is to drive up the financial growth and performance of an entity and in addition to that, also being able to both “measure and evaluate” (Nel, 2009, pg. 22) the end results and outcomes that are anticipated. There could be a number of actions undertaken by the airline and as per the suggested ASTD Competency model to evaluate why some features or specific areas of its compensation model might not be working or functioning as desired. One possible reason is that maybe there is a lack of inherent motivation to pursue an effective, well-structured and organized compensation package, and this is where the need to leverage having realistic goals comes to play (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22). The airline needs to re-evaluate its business model to determine where some areas of potential weakness are when it comes to its HR performance. Once such areas have been identified, the next step should be to acknowledge that by having the right organizational structure but also the right employee productivity practices (Nel, 2009, pg. 20-22), Saudi Arabia Airlines could fulfill such goals. An instrumental element of the ASTD Competency model is that it is aligned for business driven factors. Due to this, a significant element to consider is that if and when a business like Saudi Arabian Airlines might see less than perfect performance, then it should ensure that there are managers and supervisors to be able to implement the right productivity measures. These could also be achieved by improving underlying compensated and performance based financial rewards. Significance of the study The main significance of this study is that it would help to shed more scholarly light in terms of what sort of a human resource framework could potentially be ideal for the Saudi Arabia Airlines setting. That framework could then be further explored and finally a determination could be made whether it could be applied in a realistic setting within the airline today. There are various reasons to pursue this study and the biggest one of them is simply to put forward that conceptual framework developed for Saudi Arabian Airlines, which later could be modeled for a number of other private and private sector companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Due to the large scale production and export of oil and petroleum reserves, the infrastructure, human intellectual as well as the IT sector in Saudi Arabia is in a continuous state of change and evolution. One of the first things that should be remembered is that in any firm, it is often the employees that form the core of the operations and that is also very much true at Saudi Arabian Airlines. Within that context, the airline’s human resource department needs to take a close and in depth look at the current compensation based strategies and then make a feasible determination of whether those practices are also in line with other competitive airlines (Stokes & Oiry, 2012). The application of the ASTD model will help to ensure that the airline will more effectively realize that there indeed are a number of aspects that it needs to implement as part of its HRD efforts (Nel, 2009, pg. 22-24). On one hand with the ultimate goal of improve the underlying efficiency and work results, the airline has to have some sort of a “coaching” (Nel, 2009, pg. 22-24) mechanism installed whereby more delegation and responsibility should be assigned to the different divisional supervisors that would now act more like mentors/coaches rather than pure managers in terms of working hand in hand with all employees and seeing what could be done to improve their performance. In addition to that, the second element that should be focused to make Saudi Airlines more profitable and efficient through better compensation and financial performance measures is to “facilitate organizational change” (Nel, 2009, pg. 22-24). This is yet another important aspect of the ASTD model as it acts to ensure that if change is introduced and implemented within the organization, it becomes more important than ever to ensure that the airline has so called “change agents” (Nel, 2009, pg. 22-24) that are able to facilitate all of the desired and expected results. The main goal here as such is to apply the HRD ASTD competency model and ensure that all of the compensation and performance deficiencies that currently exist in the airline could be overcame or at least mitigated in a timely manner (Hall, Daneke, and Lenox, 2010). Therefore, this in-depth study of human resource based competencies at Saudi Arabian Airlines, which also happens to be one of the largest public sector entities in the country, has the potential to give a better understanding about human resource deficiencies that currently inhibit the Saudi market. The study will allow for the development of a number of recommendations and alternatives for further improvement of human resource concepts that could improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Saudi employees. In essence, the main focus would be to see what compensation and rewards based methodologies could be enacted by the airline’s human resource department to see a viable and exponential improvement in its employees’ perceived productivity as well as morale. Research Questions The underlying research questions to consider the range of weakness and gaps when it comes to human resource effectiveness and efficiency in the contemporary Saudi Arabian marketplace. Hence, the following are some of the research questions that would be examined: 1. What are the major factors contributing to the current gap in Saudi Arabian airlines and its HR practices? 2. What measures can be taken to streamline and bring to par such HR gaps whether they relate to less than perfect retention, employee training, compensation and so forth? 3. What are the most efficient training and academic education that should be given to current Saudi Arabian Airlines professionals to alleviate HR shortcomings? Limitations The biggest limitation is the lack of abundant information that one could find in regards to the human resource aspects of Saudi Arabian Airlines. Although it is a public company, there is not a significant amount of publically available information on some aspects of the company. However, recent times, the company and other media have had more information released to the general public and this would be able to be effectively and efficiently utilized. The airline’s Customer Service/Relations office was able to provide a lot of that in depth and valuable information in regards to current compensation strategies but also a general overview of the airline and how it is being run and managed. There is also more recent print material that has been published in regards to how the airline is structured. Additionally, the airline’s online portal would also be important for finding as much comprehensive information as deemed possible. The ultimate goal would be to use information that is both reliable but also valid at the same time and the airline’s online portal should provide some of that needed information in addition to secondary research. Definition of Terms The definition of terms would be related to human relations concepts applicable to the traditional Saudi marketplace, including the meaning of effective retention, ongoing training and an efficient performance based compensation package. Compensation: The first definition is that of a base compensation that is often related to the fixed amount of compensation assigned to an employee. Pay for performance: The second applicable term is that of pay for performance compensation, which is often associated with the attainment of additional goals to be achieved. Retention: The concept of retention is related to ensuring that the firm is able to have the same employees stay at the workplace for a significant period of time. Motivation: This concept is based on the notion that more employees would or could achieve their very best if and when there is an underlying set of factors that improve their self confidence and hence their motivation. Performance: This is the product of the activities undertaken by an organization or an institution within a given time period. This concept relies on how much effort is being put by the employees and the organization at large towards achieving its efforts. Productivity: This is the efficient utilization of resources with the aim of improving the output of the goods and services offered by an organization. It is the actual cause of competitive advantage, which generates economic viability in the long run and a good living standard for the employees and management of an organization. Assumptions The assumptions in this research are that the airline is evolving and growing fast to keep up with the increased market share and as such, timely yet relevant information could be gained by contacting the airline’s human resource department and other sources from within the airline itself. The other key assumption that is to be made is that over time, Saudi Arabian Airlines would take a close look at enacting some types of pay for performance measures so to ensure that its employees do feel both appreciated as well as valued for all the hard work and dedication being performed. In addition to that, the other assumption is that the ASTD model through its HRD focus on interpersonal communications, the issue of managing organizational change as well as focusing on end results would make the airline more viable and financially stable in the long run. Conceptual Framework The conceptual framework to be used for the research is the ASTD Conceptual Framework. References Hall, J., Daneke, G., and Lenox, M. (2010).Sustainable development and entrepreneurship: Past contributions and future directions. Journal of Business Venturing, 25(5), 439-448. Hegar, K. W. (2011). Modern human relations at work. New York: Cengage Learning Press. Iles, P., Almhedie, A., & Baruch, Y. (2012). Managing HR in the Middle East: challenges in the public sector. Public Personnel Management, 41 (3), 465 (28). Nel, R. (2009). Puppets or People: People and organizational development: An Integrated Approach. New York: Juta and Company Press. Odden,A. (April 2011). 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Company Profile, Reference for Business online. Retrieved from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/35/Saudi-Arabian-Airlines.html Stokes, P. & Oiry, E. (2012). An evaluation of the use of competencies in human resource development – a historical and contemporary recontextualisation. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 4-23. Read More