The Southwest Airlines Way

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C H A P T E R

Hire and Train for Relational Competence

It’s mutual respect. We get it partly from the selection process. We really try to select peo- ple with the right attitude. We evaluate the impact they will have on internal and exter- nal customers.

—Chief Pilot, Southwest Airlines

BE C A U S E D I F F E R E N T J O B S require different abilities, one of the most important objectives of the hiring process is to find people who best fit the requirements of the job. The critical skills to be identified in the hiring process go beyond the technical and cognitive realm to include personality traits.1 Service management experts Leonard Schlesinger and James Heskett have made the case that service companies in particular should hire for “soft skills” such as customer orientation and teamwork ability.2 In a survey of employees conducted by Peter Cappelli, teamwork ability is the single trait that employees most frequently identify as being necessary to accomplish their work successfully.3

Teamwork ability can be understood more specifically as relational competence—the ability to relate effectively with others. Relational competence is a critical ingredient of organizational success,4 though it tends to be undervalued in the world of work.5 Particularly when hiring people for jobs that require high levels of expertise, organizations tend to

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Gittell, Jody Hoffer. Southwest Airlines Way, McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/erau/detail.action?docID=4654913. Created from erau on 2022-09-17 04:19:03.

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underestimate the importance of relational competence. Yet even people who perform highly skilled jobs—e.g., engineers, doctors, pilots—need relational competence to integrate their work effectively with the work of their fellow employees. When relational competence is overlooked, the result is the hiring of excellent individual performers who cannot contribute fully to the organization’s goals and who often undermine those goals.

This chapter shows how Southwest Airlines builds high performance relationships by hiring and training for relational competence, then compares Southwest’s approach to that of its competitors.

Hiring and Training at Southwest Airlines

Southwest places a great deal of importance on the hiring process to identify people with relational competence. Southwest’s assessment of how a job candidate will affect the “overall operation” of the airline goes beyond the typical search for appropriate skills and experience. Accord- ing to the former head of Southwest’s People Department, Ann Rhoades, one of the important unwritten rules at Southwest is that “you can’t be an elitist.”6 According to a Southwest ramp manager:

One thing we cannot teach is attitudes toward peers or other groups. There’s a code, a way you respond to every individual who works for South- west. The easiest way to get in trouble at Southwest is to offend another employee. We need people to respond favorably. It promotes good working relationships. . . . You find an individual with an upbeat and positive atti- tude—and you’ll find that everything that needs to be done, will get done. It’s very contagious.

Unlike other airlines where supervisors hire frontline airport em- ployees with little support from management, at Southwest employees are selected with the participation of station management and the People Department, using a time-consuming process to identify the desired characteristics. According to a ramp manager:

Something we look at is people who are very team oriented from prior work experiences. . . . [We say], “take an incident from your prior work and walk us through it.” Do they limit themselves to the job, or go above and beyond?

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We don’t just look at work history. We’ve turned away people with 15–16 years of airline experience in favor of people with none. The concept of teamwork is tough. You really don’t know if a person will be able to cross over from his or her primary responsibility and do other things. We get a feel for people who will go above and beyond.

According to Libby Sartain, former vice president of people:

We spend more money to recruit and train than any of the other airlines do. We take the time to find the right people to hire, at all levels within our orga- nization, and we spend time training them.

We really believe in the notion of “one bad apple.” It’s like a religion here. As a result, our turnover is far less than it is at other airlines.

Even when hiring pilots, Southwest explicitly seeks people who lack an attitude of superiority and who seem likely to treat coworkers with respect, in addition to being highly skilled in their profession. A story circulated around industry pilot circles that a pilot came to interview at Southwest and treated an administrative assistant with disrespect—and didn’t get the job as a result.

Even for mechanics, who are typically hired strictly for their techni- cal skills, and who are known at other airlines for being insular and not interacting well with nonmechanics, Southwest’s hiring goals were the same—to find team players who would relate well with the other func- tional groups. A Southwest personnel manager explained, “We’re look- ing for experience but also for someone who is going to be able to work with other groups in a good environment.”

Training New Hires

In addition to the hiring, an important related task is training and accul- turating the newly hired people, most of whom have come from other, more functionally divided companies. Southwest watches newcomers carefully at the outset, to identify and correct potential hiring mistakes. Colleen Barrett, Southwest’s president and chief operating officer, said:

We bring someone in, and it is fascinating to watch. We say, we don’t make decisions based on what is good for me or my department. It is collective. It’s

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not treated as a single decision. We do what’s best for Southwest as a whole.

If new hires do not catch on to the Southwest way of taking a holistic, collective perspective on work, they stand out as misfits, and are fired or counseled out. Barrett explained:

We’ve got to be pretty darn religious watching that person’s performance during the probationary period. That sounds strange for a family-oriented company, but if we see a misfit with teamwork or an attitude, we will coun- sel once or twice and we will be harsh.7

Often people who do not fit at Southwest realize it early on, sometimes even during the early stages of training, and they opt to leave. Barrett is sympathetic in these cases:

They stick out like sore thumbs, they really do, and they feel it even before others notice it.

Training at Southwest is geared toward building functional expertise as well as relational competence. Each newly hired employee receives both classroom training (from 1 to 2 weeks depending on the job) and on-the-job training (from 2 to 3 weeks depending on the job). A training coordinator is assigned to each newly hired employee to guide his or her on-the-job training. This on-the-job training takes the form of explain- ing to the newly hired employee both what to do and why. For example, a training coordinator explained to a new trainee:

. . . and then we write down the number of bags that we’ve put in each bin and hang it on the clip, so the operations agent can do the final weight and balance check, and determine how much fuel this plane is going to need.

As a result, in the course of being trained for a specific job, the employee learns about the jobs of each other functional group that inter- faces with the job for which he or she is training. The training is there- fore geared toward fostering relational competence. By learning about the overall work process, employees understand where they fit and how their job relates to and supports that of their colleagues.

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Later in their tenure at Southwest, employees learn more about each other’s jobs through job exchanges. Through programs called a “Day in the Field” or “Walk a Mile,” Southwest employees periodically spend a day working in another department to become familiar with other aspects of the work process related to their own jobs, or jobs they aspire to move into. A customer service agent in Phoenix explained:

If we want, we have an opportunity to spend a day in operations to see how they do it. Or with a ramp agent. We do it to gain more knowledge. It’s an optional thing. Still, everybody knows what’s involved because you have to interact with them. If a bag is mis-tagged, we will call down to the ramp supervisor. [Classroom] training doesn’t cover it—but we get it on the job.

Promotion from Within

Most positions at Southwest are filled through internal promotion and through lateral moves across departmental lines, creating a great deal of internal job mobility and therefore opportunities for learning about other parts of the operation. A Southwest station manager explained:

The only jobs we really hire off the street are the frontline jobs—ramp agent, customer service agent, operations agent, provisioning agent, pilot, and flight attendant. Most move up. We look for people who want to move up in the company.

People move across departments a lot here. That helps break down sta- tus barriers between departments. It also helps people understand the whole process. They also have a lot of opportunity to move up in the company. Most of our managers started in frontline positions. I started as a cabin cleaner at Eastern. Neil [my assistant manager] started on the ramp. This helps to break down the status barriers. People at Southwest don’t forget where they came from.

A flight attendant articulated the same perspective:

The tremendous job mobility at Southwest means that people have more respect for the other jobs.

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In effect, Southwest employees learn about each other’s jobs through initial on-the-job training led by a training coordinator, through on-the- job experience, through the training that occurs during a Day in the Field, and through cross-departmental job mobility. The end result of these hiring and training activities is high levels of relational competence in Southwest’s workforce.

Stresses and Strains of Rapid Growth

At one of Southwest’s rapidly growing stations in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, hiring and training for relational competence began to break down. Southern California was one of the first locations to which South- west moved outside Texas. In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, the People Department had difficulty finding enough people who met Southwest’s hiring criteria, resulting in high levels of turnover. This turnover snow- balled due to the failure to hire quickly enough. The more seasoned Southwest employees who had transferred to the Los Angeles station experienced heavy workloads and burnout from the need to constantly train new employees, and began to seek transfers to other, more estab- lished Southwest locations.

Part of the problem was a culture clash between employees coming from Texas, the company’s home base, and employees who originated in Southern California. An operations supervisor explained:

People in California are totally different from Texans. People here feel they have to know you to talk to you.

A customer service agent reported a similar experience:

I’m from Texas and coming here was a real rude awakening. I said HI! Peo- ple would say “hi, do I KNOW you?” A lot of people here are prideful, not warm and friendly.

Southwest’s top management team addressed these problems by infus- ing the Los Angeles station with a high level of resources to break the cycle of failure.8 The People Department set up shop right in the station itself, next door to the station manager, and interviewed new applicants intensively to overcome the staffing deficit while maintaining Southwest’s hiring standards for relational competence and team spirit. Managers

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who were known and respected for their work in other successful South- west stations, including the manager of ramp and operations from Phoenix, came to Los Angeles for several months to give their input into the hiring process, and to help support the training of new hires.

These efforts at turning around the Los Angeles station through intensive focus on hiring and training were ultimately successful. South- west faced a similar challenge in the late 1990s with the Baltimore sta- tion, another place where outsiders believed it would not be possible to find “the Southwest type of person.” Just as in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Southwest’s top leadership responded with additional resources for hiring and training: establishing a local branch of Southwest’s People Department, bringing in highly successful managers from other stations, and overseeing the development of a local Culture Committee.

Southwest managers have heard the argument that the “Southwest type” can only be found in Texas, or in the southwestern region of the United States, but they claim it is misguided. Colleen Barrett notes:

The naysayers said we could never fly to the Northeast because we wouldn’t be able to find employees there who were nice. But we can do it, and we do. Someday, we may go international. And even internationally, we can main- tain our culture if we go after people’s hearts and grow our community.

Benefits of Hiring for Relational Competence

Relative to the other airlines included in this study (United, Continental, and American), Southwest placed far greater attention on hiring for rela- tional competence.9 This study, which was outlined in detail in Chap. 3, included two American Airlines sites, two Continental Airlines sites, two Southwest Airlines sites, and three United Airlines sites. A statistical analysis of hiring practices suggested that hiring for relational compe- tence contributes to higher levels of relational coordination. Hiring for relational competence also contributes to improved flight departure per- formance, particularly faster turnaround times, greater staffing pro- ductivity, fewer customer complaints, fewer lost bags, and better on-time performance.10 To observe the effects of hiring practices on relational coordination, we can plot hiring practices for each of the nine sites against relational coordination. Exhibit 7–1 suggests a clear impact of hiring practices on relational coordination.

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Hiring and Training at United Airlines

The United Shuttle was the one other site in this study where employees with teamwork ability had been deliberately attracted in large numbers, but here it happened primarily through self-selection, rather than through deliberate selection by the organization. Shuttle employees came largely from United’s traditional operations, by electing to bid for Shuttle jobs. Because the Shuttle was publicly premised on cross-func- tional teamwork, “people only came here if they weren’t snobs,” said a customer service agent. Employees from United’s non-Shuttle opera- tions who were adamantly opposed to the cultural changes at the Shut- tle, particularly to the interactions with lower-status functional groups, chose not to bid for Shuttle jobs. Signals about the importance of team- work on the Shuttle were received loudly and clearly and were under- stood to be a condition of entry.

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* Each circle denotes one of the nine sites included in the study. Hiring for relational com- petence is measured as the number of functional groups for which relational competence is an important hiring criterion. Relational coordination, coordination carried out through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, is measured as the percentage of cross-functional ties that are strong or very strong, based on an employee survey. Relational coordination in turn has a positive impact on quality and efficiency per- formance, as illustrated in Exhibit 3-4.

Relational Coordination

H ir

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28% 62%

CON1

UAL2

UAL1

AMR2

AMR1

CON2

SWA2 SWA1

UAL3

Exhibit 7–1 Impact of Hiring for Relational Competence on Relational Coordination*

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Shuttle employees received initial training for teamwork when they first started working the Shuttle, further bolstering their relational com- petence. They also learned about each other’s jobs through participation on cross-functional design teams and quality improvement teams. Through these design teams, said a customer service manager:

People are learning what others do. It is good for them. They ask, how does that affect you?

One of the top managers who helped to implement the Shuttle con- cept argued that participation in the design of the Shuttle trained Shut- tle employees in process thinking.

People in the Shuttle tend to look at process because that’s the way the Shut- tle was designed. People were trained to that point of view through the design of the Shuttle. We took this perspective from the start. We integrated all the people. We used smaller teams to develop solutions, then communi- cated that to larger teams. They were all cross-functional, which also rein- forced the process mindset. It’s gotten the flight attendants much more involved in the turnaround.

At work, people physically touch someone who was involved in the design process. We are not trying to formalize it. We are taking the commonsense view that people are the best communicators. They sit down beside each other and get the ideas. Six thousand employees participated in the design and implementation of the Shuttle. There were 100 people on the teams that made the recommendations for the changes. Everybody has a kernel of the idea.

These training opportunities helped the United Shuttle achieve strong relationships between functions in a very short time, even though the Shuttle had emerged out of a hierarchical culture with deep divisions between functions.

Another change was in uniforms. All Shuttle station employees wore the same uniform—even maintenance started wearing the Shuttle polo shirt in the Los Angeles station after about 6 months. Finally, Shuttle sta- tion employees shared a common break room, where they sat around the same table before shifts and during breaks.

As a result of the Shuttle’s hiring and training practices (and other prac- tices that will be highlighted in the chapters that follow), the United Shut-

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tle achieved significantly higher levels of relational coordination compared to United’s non-Shuttle sites (55 percent versus 42 percent of cross-func- tional ties that were strong or very strong). Exhibit 7–1 shows how these higher levels of relational coordination are related to the Shuttle’s hiring practices. The United Shuttle, denoted by UAL3 in Exhibit 7–1, has higher levels of relational coordination than its non-Shuttle counterparts (UAL1 and UAL2), corresponding to its greater focus on hiring for rela- tional competence. Accordingly, the Shuttle outperformed its non-Shuttle counterparts at United, with higher on-time performance (86.5 percent versus 79.6 percent), fewer customer complaints (20.7 versus 24.4 per 100,000 passengers enplaned), faster gate turnarounds (32.6 versus 64.3 minutes), and higher labor productivity (42.1 versus 86.1 employees per 1000 daily passengers enplaned). When these performance measures were adjusted for differences in product characteristics, the Shuttle still showed higher performance, due in part to higher levels of relational coordination that were achieved in the Shuttle operations.11

The United Shuttle benefited from having employees who had self- selected into an operation that was clearly advertised as based on team- work, and from cross-functional design teams that helped to build relational competence. However, the rest of United Airlines did not have this advantage. United’s hiring practices did not put a great deal of empha- sis on hiring frontline employees for relational competence. Instead, they followed the more traditional approach of looking for skills specific to the particular job being filled. According to a United station manager:

Hiring for teamwork is not something we’ve paid attention to in the past. It’s something we need to do in the future. It’s not just work experience and background, but communication skills.

Additional training experiences at United came through efforts to imitate the cross-functional problem-solving teams of the United Shut- tle, and the intensive learning experiences these problem-solving teams had provided for Shuttle employees. These problem-solving teams, called max-mix teams, seemed to result in broader knowledge and changed attitudes. According to a long-time ramp agent in Los Angeles:

There’s an incredible benefit in overall attitudes. I call it the Shuttle attitude because it started there. There are a lot of radicals here but they are starting

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to turn. People still ask, have you been Shuttle-ized? Like brainwashed. It’s changing though. Not such a negativity any more. It’s becoming contagious.

A ramp supervisor commented on these early efforts:

Everyone says it’s a big help because now they know a face, it’s not just anonymous. . . . You can run up and ask, need any help?

However, many of these early lessons from the Shuttle were confined to cities like Los Angeles, where there was a major Shuttle presence. More recently, United has tried to spread these problem-solving teams more broadly throughout the United system. At Chicago O’Hare and San Francisco, cross-functional “Timeline Teams” began to document flight departure procedures, much as the original Shuttle teams had done. Meanwhile in Denver and Washington Dulles, United experi- mented with a program called “Team Based Organization,” a partnership of local management and union leadership responsible for day-to-day problem solving. It was hoped that these problem-solving teams would serve as a form of training throughout United’s system, much as they had in the early years of the Shuttle, providing frontline employees with broader knowledge of the flight departure process and higher levels of relational competence.

Hiring and Training at Continental Airlines

At Continental Airlines, there was nothing in place like the selection process used by Southwest to identify relational competence, or like the self-selection process at the United Shuttle that initially yielded similar results. At Continental, supervisors were in charge of hiring frontline employees, guided only by a checklist. However, some aspects of relational competence were considered. One key item on this checklist was the abil- ity to get along with others. Still, when pressed, it was clear that the larger station at Continental was not actively seeking relational competence in its frontline employees, but rather was focused on functional skills. However, at the smaller Continental station, there was an effort to look for relational competence, particularly when hiring for gate and ramp positions.

Likewise, at Continental’s smaller stations, some training for teamwork occurred through cross-utilization of station jobs. There was a great deal

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of rotation within the ramp, for example, between cabin cleaning and load- ing. “We like to do that here in Boston—cross-training, cross-utilization,” said a ramp supervisor. “There is a lot of switching between ticketing and the gate in Boston too,” said a customer service supervisor.

Like the United Shuttle, Continental’s own experiment with a quick- turnaround operation—Continental Lite—had provided employees with some training in relational competence. Frontline employees were involved in timing gate turnarounds and mapping the work process to understand what each function was doing to support the turnaround, even specifying the communication that was supposed to take place. Interfaces between groups became better understood. Even when Conti- nental Lite was dropped in 1995 in favor of Continental’s high-fare model, some of the learning from Lite was retained by those who had experienced it.12

Exhibit 7–1 shows Continental’s moderate attention to hiring for rela- tional competence relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly lower levels of relational coordination. In addition, we see substantial vari- ation between the two Continental sites, with CON1 showing consider- ably higher levels of attention to hiring for relational competence, and correspondingly higher levels of relational coordination, relative to CON2. These results suggest that local managers can make a difference.

Hiring and Training at American Airlines

At American Airlines, the hiring process deliberately did not seek to iden- tify frontline employees with relational competence. In part, it was a reflection of how the work itself was organized. According to a supervisor:

The work groups are so well-defined that they are not allowed to help out, so we don’t look for that. It would cause problems.

According to a human resource manager:

We would not ask how this person would interface with other groups. I’m not sure interfacing isn’t a better way, but what we have is a chain process.

Because the work was understood to be a chain process, as in a produc- tion line, rather than an iterative, interactive process, the hiring process at American put very little emphasis on relational competence.

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The criteria for ramp, baggage transfer, and cabin cleaning personnel did not seem to be particularly ambitious. In addition to looking for peo- ple who were capable of the physically demanding work involved in load- ing and unloading an aircraft, and who had a history of showing up on time for work, “we look for people who speak clearly and distinctly,” said a supervisor. For mechanics, American Airlines sought people who also had the requisite licensing. For gate and ticketing agents, American looked for people who were comfortable with the computer interface and, if possible, for people who were already familiar with the information systems in place. In addition, as the notion of customer service made its way into organizational objectives, there was increasing attention to hiring gate and ticketing agents who would interact well with customers. However, there was no systematic attention to how these employees would interact with their colleagues in other functional areas. One exception existed, however. At American’s smaller stations, gate and ticketing agents were cross-uti- lized, and as a result they tended to be hired with a view to how well they would work together cross-functionally.

For pilots, American’s hiring practices were notable not just for over- looking relational competence but for running counter to it. In addition to flight training and experience, American Airlines looked for pilots with qualities that they felt would be conducive to the leadership respon- sibilities of a pilot. In the opinion of an employee relations manager:

We look for command presence, the most self-assured arrogant people we can possibly find. Then we teach them to be even more arrogant, so to speak.

The results of this hiring process were problematic, according to this manager:

There is a certain amount of hostility that pilots face from the other employee groups. The personality of the pilot generates that hostility.

This personality was not inherent to pilots, however, but rather was an artifact of the hiring process. And as we will see in Chap. 11, this hiring process for pilots clearly contributed to the failure of efforts at American Airlines to move toward shared accountability for delays.

There were some efforts to move pilots in the direction of greater teamwork through training programs. Along with other airlines, American invested tremendous resources into crew resource management training,

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to encourage pilots to be team players on board the aircraft, and to listen to others. These programs were adopted in response to evidence that some accidents had occurred because the captain was not receptive to informa- tion from other crew members, and because other crew members hesitated to communicate even potentially critical information to the captain because of respect for the “line of command.” However, crew resource management programs did not extend teamwork beyond the cockpit to the flight departure process, where it was seemingly so critical and so underde- veloped. Even flight attendants, for whom such training was available, typ- ically did not take advantage of it, according to a flight attendant manager:

It’s important, but . . . [our] flight attendants do not seek it out. They typi- cally do not like training of any kind. Their mind set is that their time off is their time off. Even though the training time is paid, that’s how they look at it. . . . They complain so much that sometimes it’s just not worth it.

Other training programs were designed to encourage shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect across functional boundaries. American’s Human Resource Department implemented a program called “Walk a Mile” that encouraged employees to trade jobs across functional lines, to understand better the work that was done by their colleagues in other functions. This job training program was also designed to give employees an opportunity to try out other positions for the purpose of job transfers and promotions. In addition, the Human Resource Department designed training programs to address particular breakdowns that occurred in the coordination of the flight departure process. For example, a half-day program called “Commitment to Cour- tesy” was offered systemwide at American to improve communication between flight attendants and gate agents. A flight attendant manager explained the origin and expected outcome of the training program:

Some places have bad relations between the flight attendants and the gate agents. The gate agents sometimes make decisions unilaterally, and tell pas- sengers to start boarding 40 minutes before departure even though there may only be 50 passengers. It is ridiculous. So we just stand there and politely refuse to let the passengers board. It is not good for customer ser- vice. It’s probably confusing for the passenger. But they can’t tell us what to do. We are independent.

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I don’t know how successful the training program will be. It is designed to open up communication, and allows an hour open discussion at the end of the seminar. But the flight attendants at some stations have objected and have said they will not participate.

Clearly, a training program cannot proceed without the cooperation of the participants. In the case of American Airlines, employees had been selected through the hiring process for their ability to perform their own jobs, not for their ability to relate to others who were engaged in per- forming other related jobs. It is difficult to use training to make up for mistakes in the hiring process, though—as we saw at United and Conti- nental—experiential learning through problem-solving teams can be helpful in building new relational skills.

Exhibit 7–1 shows American’s lack of attention to hiring for relational competence relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly weak levels of relational coordination. In addition, we see some variation be- tween the two American sites, with AMR1 showing considerably higher levels of attention to hiring for relational competence, and correspond- ingly higher levels of relational coordination, relative to AMR2. As we also saw at Continental, local managers can indeed make a difference.

Summing Up

In this chapter, we have seen how hiring for relational competence helps organizations achieve higher levels of relational coordination. As we learned in Chap. 3, relational coordination in turn has a dramatic effect on both quality and efficiency performance. The benefits of hiring for relational competence extend beyond the airline industry. In the study of patient-care coordination described in Chap. 4, hospitals differed in the importance they attached to relational competence when hiring nurses, social workers, therapists, and physicians. Some hospitals invested heav- ily in developing techniques to identify relational competence in the hir- ing process. In other hospitals, administrators put little to no emphasis on hiring for relational competence, looking instead for the most quali- fied individual performers. The tendency to neglect relational compe- tence was most pronounced in physician hiring. One result was that hospitals often ended up with physicians who had the kind of “command presence” that may have been effective and necessary in some aspects of

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the physician’s job, but that also tended to undermine working relation- ships that were critical for achieving efficient, high-quality patient care. Some hospitals in the study had departed from the norm and had begun to use relational competence as a criterion for hiring physicians. Those hospitals interviewed coworkers from previous jobs to assess a physician’s likelihood of working well with others, particularly nurses with whom they would have to work closely. In that study, as in this one, hiring for relational competence resulted in higher levels of relational coordina- tion, and in more efficient, higher-quality outcomes.

Increasingly, jobs require not only functional expertise but also rela- tional competence—the ability to interact with others to accomplish common goals. Indeed, people who perform jobs that require high levels of functional expertise also tend to need high levels of relational compe- tence to integrate their work with the work of fellow employees. Orga- nizations like Southwest Airlines that recognize the importance of relational competence, look diligently for employees who have it, then develop it to even higher levels through training, will have a distinct per- formance advantage over organizations that do not.

100 T E N S O U T H W E S T P R A C T I C E S

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