Diversity and Communication at United Airlines - Research Paper Example

Diversity and Communication at United Airline Today, organizations are keen on promoting diversity in the workplace. Increasing the diversity in the workplace is not only in line with the current government requirements but it has also been observed to improve the general performance or the workforce in a particular organization. This is because when an organization has a diverse workforce, the different people come with diverse perspectives and ways of looking at things. Therefore, they are able to apply diverse alternative methods when performing tasks which improve the overall workers performance. Diversity has also been observed to be beneficial at the level of management. This is because when a diverse board of members has, then the board of directors is able to come up with different solutions to a single problem and it is thus easy to choose the most appropriate solution to a particular problem. This enhances the decision making process unlike a situation where all the board members have the same mindset and come up with limited alternative solutions to a particular problem making decision making less effective. Communication is another aspect of management that has attracted a lot of attention lately. It has been recognized that communication within an organization and between the various stakeholders defines the overall organization success (Lott, 190). When dealing with a diverse workforce and diverse clientele, the message intended to be passed across is likely to be misinterpreted due to existence of different kinds of communication barriers. Poor communication often leads to misunderstanding and conflicts between people of different backgrounds. Managing diversity and ensuring good communication involves understanding the culture of the diverse groups of people. Overcoming barriers such as stereotyping and language barrier is an important step towards overcoming problems arising from poor communication when dealing with people from diverse backgrounds. United Airline is one of the largest Airlines in America. The company operates over 5 thousand flights across six continents daily. The airline serves people from different parts of the world that come from diverse cultural and social backgrounds. Although the company has previously received law suits for racial segregation, the company recently received an award for being among the leading companies in promoting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality. The company has been named as among the best places to work in according to the Human rights campaign reports and has had a great rating for five years in continuation. Nevertheless, despite this progress, there is still rampant inequality and racial segregation being practiced at United Airline today (Duerre & Schwandt, 243). This paper looks at the issue s of diversity and communication at united airline. After interviewing a few workers at United Airline it was evident that despite the fact that there are many diversity policies that have been policies that have been put in place in the wake of the racial suits against the company, people of color is still having trouble getting promotion to higher levels of management (Lott, 125). According to one African American worker at the company who was interviewed, despite the fact that Counsel General Brett being hired into management and the promotion of James Simons to become the chief pilot both of African American origin in the year 2010, there are still many qualified people of color who have been locked out of management while Caucasian men will lesser qualifications get hired. Moreover, it is said that the plaintiffs who had filed the racial discrimination law suits have become the receivers of harassment and illegal retaliation. Moreover, despite the fact that the company has come up with these policies that are expected to promote racial diversity, there are still other laws that allow for the systematic disparity in the promotion and hiring of African Americans into positions of being operation supervisors and captains. The African American feels that they have not been given a level playing ground this company as their fellow Caucasian men. They feel that it is about the time that the company completely breakdown the system that lock them away from management and create a new system where hiring is purely based on merits and not a person skin color (Lott, 120). For this to be achieved, there is also the need to promote transparency and fairness in the manner in which promotion are given in the company. This will promote fair competition among the airline workers. In the 2012, law suits, despite the plaintiffs having more than 10 years of experience at the company, none were ever given the promotion to either mid-level or high level managerial positions. They said that their white counterparts were trained into positions of management by being offered special temporary assignment positions which are never allocated to the minority workers (Lott, 138). Most of these non-minorities who got the special positions ended being promoted and got greater job security and remuneration than the minority employees despite having equal qualifications in terms of skills. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the company has shown a lot of discrimination in terms of races, the female gender has been favored by this company. The female representation in both the mid-level and high levels of management in this company is very admirable. Ruby McCleary, is a leader at the company and is among a number of women who have managed to rise to the high levels of management at United airline. According to her in an interview, businesses can only grow if they take care of the issue of diversity in organization. Having a diverse workforce creates a large pool of rich ideas that can be implemented to promote business. She observes that women are one of the quickest growing economic force and businesses need to cater for the needs of the women if they want to grow ((Duerre & Schwandt, 240). She also comments that United Airline has invested in the promotion of women and that the company recognizes the contribution of women in management in decision making and taking leadership position has been recognized as being paramount in United Airline. One of the important programs that have been implemented in United Airline is women forum. This is coordinated by the women in executive position and its main aim is to ensure the succession of women in leadership and it is implemented from the low levels. This program holds forum that allow women from different departments and different levels in the company to interact and they are able to share on how they can acquire power and be able to rise up the level of management. The junior women get to interact with the women in executive position and are coached on how to grow in their career. In terms of communication, United Airline has shown a lot of deficiency. Because of weather channels another natural phenomenon such as snow storms, flights are bound to be rescheduled. United Airline had had a record of not communicating to their customers in time in case of such occurrences. This has led to people being stuck at the airport for hours before they are able to board their flights to different places. A lot of time is lost at the waiting bay when the customers could have made other arrangements and avoid wasting so much time. There are a number of ways that the company could improve their communication to the customers to ensure that their messages are received on time. One way is through ensuring that they communicate about changes in schedules at least 48 hours before they occur (Duerre & Schwandt, 238). This communications should be done through phone calls, if the customers are not reached by phone calls they should be texted and the information should be posted in other media such as the newspapers, news channel and the social media. The company should also clearly state when the flights would be back on schedule and avoid telling the customers to wait for a flight for a few hours when they know the delay would take longer time. They should be truthful at all time to avoid inconveniencing the travelers. The data was collected through review of existing documents on the diversity of employees at United Airline. A few individuals who works for the airline were also interviewed and their views are presented in this paper. The company records were also reviewed to see the company history in terms of diversity of employees. In conclusion, it has been observed that the level of diversity at United Airline still wants especially when it comes to the representation of different races. Since the filing of the laws suits gains racial profiling, there have been laws that have been put in place to change the order of things. However, it has been noted that the whole promotional and hiring system at United Airline is discriminative in nature. This implies that the problem is inherent and can only be corrected by a complete overhaul of the system to make it more fair and impartial. The company has however been commended for its treatment of women since it has created several position for female executives and is tolerant to other minority groups such as the lesbians, homosexuals and transgender group. Communication at United Airline has been found to be wanting with the need to institute measures to ensure that information affecting different people across the globe both employees and the airline customers is communicated on time. Work Cited Duerre, Mathias, and Alexander Schwandt. Logistics: the Backbone for Managing Complex Organizations. Bern [u.a.: Haupt, 2010. Print. Lott, Bernice. Multiculturalism and Diversity: A Social Psychological Perspective. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Internet resource. Read More