The Southwest Airlines Way

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C H A P T E R

Bridge the Work/ Family Divide

People at Southwest care about one another’s families. We recognize deaths and births. We help in times of tragedy. You do not see these things at other airlines. We hire people who have worked for other airlines who say they never received anything at home from their former employers, that they were never acknowledged in a personal way.

—Libby Sartain, former Vice President of People, Southwest Airlines

RE L A T I O N S H I P S A T S O U T H W E S T —characterized by shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect—are critical for getting work done effectively, yet these relationships extend beyond the work itself, spilling over into friendships and even taking on some characteris- tics of family ties. A Southwest station manager commented:

We’re kind of a big family here, and families have fun together. The passen- gers are part of the family too, so we have fun with them.1

Employees regularly referred to their work relationships as ties of family and friendship, and management encouraged this view. The vice president of people explained:

With family structures as they are these days, we often help our young employees to grow up. . . . It lends to the family atmosphere here.

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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 04:20:39.

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Hugs were observed to be a common form of greeting, whether in the original Southwest station at Love Field, or at Southwest’s big East Coast station in Baltimore. Indeed, family was more than a metaphor at South- west: many employees reported family ties with other Southwest em- ployees, something the company encouraged as long as those involved were not also in a reporting relationship.

There seem to be powerful benefits to blurring the boundaries between work and nonwork aspects of life, for both organizations and their employees. Traditional organizational practices often demand that individuals disconnect themselves from nonwork aspects of their iden- tity—such as those related to family and spirituality,2 personal pain and tragedy,3 and racial or ethnic identity4—while at work. As a result, indi- vidual attitudes and performance often suffer. Erving Goffman’s classic study of self-presentation chronicles the efforts to which people go to present the correct self for the given context, and the stresses and strains that are involved in doing so.5 Arlie Hochschild’s work on the “managed heart” reports the stress these self-presentation requirements can place on service workers, and the falseness sometimes perceived by customers.6

There is some evidence that people cooperate with an organization and give their best efforts to the extent that they identify with the organiza- tion.7 However, as many of us can attest, it is difficult to identify deeply with an organization in which one is encouraged or required to present a false self. To create healthier and more productive employees, organiza- tions should strive to create more harmony between work and nonwork aspects of life.8

On the other hand, clear boundaries may be needed to protect family time from the ever-encroaching grasp of paternalistic companies that seek to bring their employees’ lives into the service of the companies’ own goals.9 Hochschild describes how work has become the safe haven that family used to represent, while family has come to seem more and more like work. It is a vicious cycle, she explains. When people spend too much time at work, they shortchange their family relationships. Their family relationships weaken, and become more a source of stress than comfort as children and spouses act up to get the attention they need. As a result, employees may use work as a source of community and as a refuge from their dysfunctional family relationships.10

Both sides seem to agree, however, that for better or worse, this blur- ring of the boundaries between work and family can serve as a powerful

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force for building commitment to organizations. Southwest leverages the strength of its employees’ external relationships to build strong inter- nal relationships. However, Southwest also recognizes the hazards of blurring the boundaries between work and life—the organization can encompass so much of a person’s time and loyalty that family and com- munity ties suffer from neglect, thereby becoming useless as a source of strength for the employee or the organization. We will see how South- west managers blur the boundary between work and life, and how they strive to do so by enhancing rather than undermining their employees’ family and community ties.

Encouraging Employees to Be Themselves at Work

At Southwest, employees are encouraged to be themselves at work. As Herb Kelleher once explained:

We try to allow our people to be themselves and not have to surrender their personality when they arrive at Southwest.11

You are not expected to park your personality and true identity at the door. Some of Southwest’s reputation for being funky and fun comes from this expectation. Southwest customers are familiar with flight at- tendants who go beyond the written script for take-off instructions to passengers, and inject their own personalities into the role.

Though being oneself is a concept normally associated with leisure time and not with work, it is an important concept at Southwest, and seems to contribute to easing tensions between individuals and between func- tions. A ramp agent in Phoenix explained:

If the captain thinks he’s better, he’ll make you say everything in detail. You get to know some of the pilots after awhile. The whole concept is to be your- self and to have fun in your job. The relaxed atmosphere around here helps to ease the tension between departments.

A gate agent offered her thoughts on the side effects of having fun at work:

We sing and laugh and play games. Let everyone enjoy their job so they’ll work and make the company profitable, and give the customer what they want at the same time. No one department is any more important than another.

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A customer service supervisor in Phoenix explained why she liked to work at Southwest:

The main thing is that everybody cares. We work in so many different areas but it doesn’t matter. It’s true from the top to the last one hired. People tell me—now I know why everyone is smiling here.

The assistant station manager had a similar perspective:

You have to laugh. Weather affects everything, and puts things beyond your control. We always ask people in an evaluation if they are having fun in their job. If they are, there’s a good chance they are doing well.

Not only does being oneself at work help to reduce stress—some argued that it also fosters employee loyalty and commitment.

Senior people don’t get jaded here. . . . Employees are able to be their own person. This stimulates hard work and loyalty. It really seems to build loyalty. People just don’t quit here. People who do leave will go to other departments.

This personal identification with Southwest sometimes occurs through a personal transformation experienced at work. A flight attendant base manager described his experience:

This may be a cult, but I believe I never had a job where I wanted to go to work. This company is geared for families. We dress up on Halloween and Christmas. My life has changed 180 degrees from what it was 8 years ago. I have a career mindset. I have learned to set goals. I met my wife here. I could get real mushy.

This company has offered me something completely different from what I had—honesty, openness, sharing of information. I take it for granted. Only when we’re here talking do I realize how fortunate we are.

From the perspective of an operations agent:

There is an opportunity to find yourself in this company.

On a similar note, a customer service agent credited Southwest with a personal transformation in her life:

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Southwest has helped me make a wonderful contribution in my world. . . . We belong to this company.

Recognizing Personal Pain and Triumph

One way Southwest encourages employees to be themselves at work is by openly recognizing major events in the lives of employees and their fam- ilies. According to Libby Sartain, former vice president of people:

To help in times of personal catastrophe, Southwest has a Cata- strophic Fund. During a meeting with the Phoenix station manager, he received a phone call from Southwest’s Catastrophic Fund. On the other end of the phone were the Director of Special Projects, the Direc- tor of Inflight (flight attendants), and several others from Southwest’s headquarters. They had received a request for help from one of South- west’s Phoenix employees. The station manager told them what he knew of the employee’s history, and they talked at length about what kind of help would be needed. Then they said good-bye and the station manager resumed his meeting. The station manager acted as though making arrangements for the care of an employee in need was an unre- markable part of his workday. Similarly, Southwest President and Chief Operating Officer Colleen Barrett once discovered that a long-time employee whose work performance had inexplicably declined was fac- ing $1800 in legal bills due to divorce and custody proceedings. Barrett immediately sent the needed sum of money from her own account, recalling her own experience as a single mom.12

Through the recognition of its employees’ personal tragedies and tri- umphs, Southwest brings the organization into the personal realm, and the personal realm into the organization. When people disguise the pain they are experiencing in their personal life from their colleagues, they can experience a lack of internal connectedness.13 Recognition of their

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pain allows individuals to have more holistic identities at work, facilitat- ing both their own personal health and their productivity.

Employee and Family Identification with the Organization

As a result of being themselves at work, employees identified strongly with Southwest Airlines and talked about the organization as though it were an extension of their own families. A ramp supervisor in Phoenix explained his responsibilities:

I have a responsibility for a family, a house, and for this company. The idea is to keep customers coming back. The goal is for you to come back and fly on Southwest.

Likewise, the families of Southwest employees also tend to identify strongly with Southwest Airlines. Libby Sartain, former vice president of people, explained:

Kids and spouses feel the same way we do when they see a Southwest air- plane. When we talk at company events, family members talk about South- west as “we.” If you get involved, you have to make sure family members become part of that or they get jealous. We encourage people to bring their kids to work to show them what work is.

The Culture Committee

The Culture Committees, started by President and Chief Operating Officer Colleen Barrett in the early 1990s to ensure that Southwest’s rapid growth would not result in barriers between functions, also helped to blur the boundaries between work and life. The systemwide Culture Committee included frontline and management employees from all over the Southwest system. It included members from each of the func- tions, including pilots, flight attendants, gate and ticketing agents, mechanics, and so forth. Members met quarterly at headquarters with Barrett to brainstorm ideas for maintaining and strengthening South- west’s culture. In addition to the systemwide Culture Committee, each individual station had its own Culture Committee that met monthly to

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plan social and charitable events. An operations agent from Baltimore explained:

Each station has its own Culture Committee. The station manager puts out a letter asking who wants to be on it. They organize fund-raisers and parties. We usually have a spring party, a summer party, a fall party, and a Christmas party. We raise money doing other things so the parties are free, or maybe $10 to get in.

Local committee members planned social events such as summer bar- becues, Christmas formals, Casino Nights, and carnivals that included employees and their families. The Baltimore station’s summer event, organized by its Culture Committee, has typically been a moonlight cruise on Chesapeake Bay. The walls of Southwest stations and headquar- ters are then adorned with candid photographs of Southwest employees and their families taken at these social events, bringing family and other personal relationships into the workplace in a highly visual way.

Giving to the Community

The local Culture Committees also plan ways for Southwest employees to give back to the community; for example, by preparing and delivering meals to the local Ronald McDonald House, a residence provided to families while their children are undergoing treatment for cancer. South- west’s relationship with the Ronald McDonald House has been central for Southwest and its employees for many years. The Ronald McDonald House was supported by each of Southwest’s local Culture Committees as well as by the pilots’ union. As one gate agent told me with pride:

Did you know about Southwest and Ronald McDonald House? We are the Ronald McDonald House.

In a meeting of the Baltimore Culture Committee, a serious discus- sion ensued among committee members regarding how to serve the next monthly meal to Ronald McDonald House residents without dis- rupting the quiet needed by the families in residence. At the Phoenix station, an administrator regularly made popcorn, sold it for 50 cents a

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bag to employees throughout the station, and sent the proceeds to the Ronald McDonald House.

Efforts to Bridge the Work/Family Divide

Southwest does not just encourage its employees to give back to the community. Southwest also has a long tradition of seeking to accommo- date the needs of families, so as not to burn out this important source of employee commitment. Southwest’s biggest contribution to strengthen- ing the family ties of its employees is the flexibility of scheduling the company offers to employees. According to Libby Sartain:

We are a work- and family-friendly place. We’re very flexible with schedul- ing, for example. But it’s more of a flexible attitude here than formal policies. For instance, we don’t officially have flextime and other family programs, but there is a lot of leeway for employees to trade shifts and so on.

Indeed, Southwest has been recognized for its innovations in achiev- ing scheduling flexibility for frontline employees through shift trading. In effect, this approach to achieving scheduling flexibility requires employ- ees to use their workplace relationships to negotiate flexibility with each other, further integrating workplace relationships with family ties. South- west’s shift-trading approach to achieving flexibility also reduces the administrative burden associated with flexibility and instead places it in the hands of employees to negotiate with one another.

Southwest recognizes this scheduling flexibility as a major benefit for both the organization and its employees, enabling employees to meet their family commitments without neglecting their work commitments. As a result, Southwest has foregone workplace innovations that may have helped performance in principle but that would have reduced employees’ ability to schedule their work around family obligations. For example, some airlines have attempted to schedule the same employees to work together on particular flights over the course of an extended period, hop- ing to build more permanent teams. But Southwest decided against such scheduling practices, not wanting to reduce the scheduling flexibility enjoyed by Southwest employees. In effect, Southwest did not want to sacrifice the family relationships of its employees to build stronger work-

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ing relationships. Southwest looks for synergies between family and work relationships and tries to avoid trading off one for the other.

Pilots and flight attendants have unique challenges staying in touch with their families when they are away on trips for multiple days. An administrator for the pilots at Southwest explained her role in keeping them connected:

Part of my job is to take calls from them and from their families. Let them know what’s going on. We help keep them connected.

Preventing Work from Overwhelming Family and Community

Southwest recognizes the strength of the working relationships and the potential for these relationships and commitments to overwhelm family and community relationships. Particularly for top managers, who have no contractual limits to their time at work, this has been a challenge. According to Jim Wimberly, executive vice president of operations:

It is an intoxicating business. We love the business and this company. We all need to make sure it stays intoxicating and not addictive.

Managers attempt to use peer pressure with each other to keep their family commitments as well as their work commitments. For example, Libby Sartain revealed:

Joyce, our head of marketing, told us how much she appreciated that we encourage her to be a good mother, as much as a good employee. We make her take a vacation.

Summing Up

Southwest’s approach to work/family issues is to recognize and encourage the energy that good family and community relationships bring to the workplace, and the energy that good working relationships bring to fam- ily and community life. In addition to energy, organizations that encour- age their employees to care for others at home and in the community will ultimately benefit from higher levels of relational competence in the

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workplace, as employees exercise their relational skills both at home and at work. Indeed, as work/family expert Joyce Fletcher has argued:

Organizations intent on developing relational skills in their workers might do so through the systematic encouragement of all individuals to be involved in some sort of care-taking experience. . . . [There are] organizational bene- fits of relaxing the boundary between work and family and/or community as a way of developing relational competence in workers.14

The energy and learning that employees gain from building strong family and community ties can be brought into the workplace and lever- aged to achieve stronger working relationships and better organiza- tional performance. Organizations should therefore be vigilant to ensure that relationships at work do not overwhelm and undermine the family and community relationships that are needed to sustain strong working relationships.

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