Emirates Airlines Company Analysis - Research Paper Example

? Emirates Airline Emirates airlines company analysis Company overview The Emirates Group is a commercial air transport investmentthat transports passengers, cargo and postal carriage services. Apart from these services, Emirates group also offers services in institutional and in-flight catering, travel, ground handling, and IT services (The Economic Times, 2012). The company also has its interest on wholesaling and retailing of consumer goods, food and beverage services, and hotel and resort operations. In addition, the company offers services on visa processing, cargo support, freight forwarding and logistic, call center, sports, engineering, training services, risk management and security, and club services. Emirates Group Company has a fleet of about 169 aircrafts. The company operates in the United States, east and west Asia, Europe, Middle East, Australasia, Indian Ocean, and Africa (The Emirates Group, 2012). The Emirates Airline began in 1985, and it has its headquarters in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The company’s main mission is to emerge the top airline in the world, which is inspired by the fact that Dubai ranks among the leading cities around the world. Emirates Airlines is owned partly by the government of Dubai and partly by a city part of the United Arab Emirates. The airline is part of the Emirates Group of companies, which began in 1959. Today, Emirates Airline can be regarded as the largest airline in the Middle East and is Dubai’s national airline. The airline is best known for its first class and business class services and has received several international awards in safety, on-time arrivals, and in-flight services (The Emirates Group, 2011). The Emirates respects diversity at the workplace and in the management of its operations. This helps in eliminating a negative culture within an organization (The Emirates Group, 2012). Enhancing a positive culture helps the company in attaining a competitive advantage over other international airlines. The Emirates Airline has a strong positive culture, especially in terms of cultural differences in all areas of its interest. The management encourages the sharing of a common goal among its employees, which is ideal in creating a team work culture within the organization. A team work culture enables employees to pay attention to the company's goals, which enables the airline to sustain its competitive advantage. Team work produces actions that are highly coordinated. The management and employees are in constant joint efforts that enhance the quality of Emirate’s services and products (The Emirates Group, 2012). Hiring personnel at the Emirates The Emirates airline focuses more on hiring employees with significant experience in airline and travel industry. Persons interested in working with the airline apply for the preferred positions on the company’s website or by dropping their applications to the company’s offices around the world. Successful applicants are then invited for interviews test for a person’s skills, employment history, motivation, and availability. The nature of the interviews depends on the job applied for, and jobs such as those of pilots may involve intensive recruitment procedures. Interviews at the Emirates mainly involve panel interviews, company presentations, one-on-one interviews, and group interviews (The Emirates Group, 2012). Objectives of personnel selection process The Emirates airlines recognizes that for it to achieve its strategic objectives and to secure its values, recruiting and retaining skilled and committed workforce are of the essence. Therefore, the company’s recruitment and selection procedures are structured in a way that helps the company to hire the best suited candidates for various job positions. The recruitment and selection procedures are guided by several policies. At the top, of the recruitment and selection procedures is the need to ensure that there is an equal opportunity for all applicants. Secondly, the hiring process focuses on ensuring that employees are hired based on their merits. The company also encourages as many people as possible to send their applications based on their skills, capabilities, experience, and competencies depending on the applied job (The Emirates Group, 2011). The hiring procedures are designed in a way that ensures the most suitable candidates are hired. In addition, the recruitment procedures are valid, clear, and are applied consistently by recruitment personnel and ensure there is fair treatment for job applicants. The selection decisions are informed by the job demand and requirements as well as competencies identified in job applicants. To ensure that recruitment and selection of employees attains its objectives, the company conducts regular training to its recruiting personnel. The company also follows legal procedures necessary during recruitment and hiring procedures (Robertson & Smith, 2001). The main goal of the hiring procedure is to identify employees who are best suited for the job as well as the organization. In situations where the right employees are not selected, the company may suffer losses due to unsatisfactory performance from employees. To achieve the objective of hiring the best personnel, the human resource department at the Emirates airlines may obtain essential information regarding the job seeker through the use of various sources of information (Robertson & Smith, 2001). Sources of information used for personnel selection Relevant sources of information that can be relied upon during the job recruitment and selection procedure include reference checks, written tests, biographical information, interviews, and performance simulations. Written tests Written tests have been in use at the Emirates airlines for a considerable period. The recruiting personnel believe that the use of written tests is the single best selection device. This is informed by the fact that tests yield sufficient information regarding the job applicant compared to biographical information and recommendation letters. In addition, written tests are less subjected to bias compared to interviews. Written tests offer the advantage of giving the most suitable job applicant, offering job satisfaction to the appointed person due to excellent relationship between the organization and the employee as well as reducing absenteeism and employee turnover. Written tests fall into various categories, which include intelligence tests, personality tests, and interest inventories (The Emirates Group, 2012). Intelligence tests At the Emirates airlines, job positions that require high mental activities demand the use of intelligence tests. This is because intelligence tests are the best predictors of how well a person can think, and reason as well as solve problems. Measuring of a person’s Intelligence quotient serves in helping in the identification of a person’s general intellectual abilities. Different jobs at the Emirates airlines use different intelligence tests depending on the nature of the job. A pilot position may call for a thorough intelligence test because the job requires persons of high intellectual capabilities. Therefore, the more a job position is demanding in terms of reasoning, thinking, and problem solving, the more intelligence is required to accomplish the task. Contrary to this, highly routine jobs that call for less information processing demands require a lower IQ to accomplish the task (Ullah, 2010). Personality test Over the past decades, application of personality tests has gained significant popularity in the recruitment and selection of employees. The main aim of using the personality test is to hire employees that are of high performance. At the Emirates, efficiency of employees is paramount in the realization of the company’s goals and objectives. The use of personality tests helps in assessing characteristics that are essential for the performance of certain assignments. Examples of personality characteristics that are of interest to the hiring personnel include emotional stability, self-confidence, neurotic tendencies, introversion and extroversion, and aggressiveness. The human resource department mainly uses the “big five” personality traits during the recruitment and selection process (Anderson, 2007). Considering the use of personality tests at the Emirates, the most dependable personality traits are emotional stability and conscientiousness. This is because conscientious persons are usually motivated and dependable while emotional stability makes a person to be calm, cool, self-confident, and steady (Anderson, 2007). Interest inventories The main aim of using this strategy is to assess the applicant’s interest towards various activities. This is based on the fact most people excel in their work because they have a strong interest in whatever they are doing. Therefore, interest inventories create a strong relationship between the task performer and the actual task. A combination of interest inventories and personality tests offer additional information, which include persistence, self-confidence, and dependability. Performance Simulations The use of performance simulations aims at allowing the job applicants to perform partial or whole simulations regarding the job in question. This is meant to determine whether the applicant can perform the assignment successfully. At the Emirates, persons seeking pilot job undergo perform simulations using a distinctive aircraft simulations purposely designed for recruitment purposes (The Emirates Group, 2012). Approaches to conducting an employment interview There are three approaches that help interviewers in the analysis of a job in order to obtain evidence on the required experience. The first step entails the identification of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are ideal in performing the task in question (Ullah, 2010). The second step entails the formulation of questions related to how job seekers have demonstrated their knowledge, skills, and abilities. The third step focuses on enquiring for additional information on past performance, which is done through contacting referees and previous employers. The main advantage of using the three strategies is that the main focus is on experience relevant to the assignment in question. Questions used at this level calls for job applicants to offer examples of their previous behaviors. At this stage, applicants may be issued with the interview questions before a one-on-one interview (Bridges & Gaut, 2011). In most instances, interviewers are interested in certain responses and will be slow to ask subsequent questions before the applicant responds to a question. As mentioned earlier, interview questions at the Emirates for various job positions are constant to aid in the assessment of applicant’s experience. In addition, the use of similar questions job posts minimizes errors in employment selection and placement at the Emirates. References Anderson, G. (2007). Personality Assessment in Personnel Selection. Retrieved from: https://www.cpp.com/pdfs/Personality_Assess_Personnel_Selection.pdf Bridges, R. & Gaut, Y. (2011). Interview Skills. Otago: University of Otago. Robertson, I. & Smith, M. (2001). Personnel selection. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 441–472. The Emirates Group (2011). The Emirates Group Official Site. Retrieved from: http://www.theemiratesgroup.com/english/ The Economic Times (2012). Emirates Airline. Retrieved from: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/keyword/emirates-airline The Emirates Group (2012). The Emirates Group Career Center. Retrieved from: https://www.emiratesgroupcareers.com/english/Careers_Overview/national_careers/The_recruitment_process.aspx Ullah, M. (2010). A Systematic Approach of Conducting Employee Selection Interview. International Journal of Business and Management, 5 (6). Read More