Westjet: Building a High-engagement Culture Essay

Canadian based airline may find it hard to find strong support from US and International customers

This report was made up for the purposes for pursuing our client and make him understand why he should invest in our company. This report will contain a swat analysis, strengths and weakness, vision statement, mission statement. These are going to a sure that we has a company aren’t only advertising our strengths but we will also show our weakness and things that need to be improved. The history of WestJet and the current points will also be shown, from when WestJet was founded and too, what’s WestJet’s main focus now will be shown in this analysis for our client. Another thing west jet wants to represent is all of the financial resources and the finical information for our client and of course a company overview will be provided has well.

“Customer care” is what WestJet Airlines says in their ads. WestJet entire corporate culture has been built around caring for their customers, by providing a great

WestJet Airline’s initial launching was reciprocal and tailored to providing low cost airfares to every traveller that flies onboard to more than 100 destinations across the world. As stated by Clive Beddoe, WestJet founder, is a big advocate of adopting the “Cost Leadership” competitive strategy based on his strong belief that “just because you pay less for your flight, doesn't mean you should get less” (“WestJet”, 2018)).

Ever since its establishment in 1996, WestJet has aimed to operate as a low-cost carrier while employing non-unionized members in a unique organizational culture. In its simplest form this unique organizational culture can be labeled as a labor managed firm. In a labor managed firm employees are owners, and they are affected by the company’s performance through profit sharing. Then it should not be surprising that in labor managed firms, the employees can voice their opinions and actually

Half of the standards at WestJet were not industry standard. No direct connection of IT with their respective business units. IT seems to

• WestJet views its employees as its most valuable asset. Therefore, it aims to ensure that employees’ work experience is fun, challenging and rewarding. Encourages employees to interact positively with customers to try to earn repeat customers.

WestJet’s executive compensation program is administered by the People and Compensation Committee on behalf of the Board. Its executive pay practices are designed to be prudent and well-aligned with our culture and

WestJet is a Canadian low-cost carrier, which was founded in 1996 and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. WestJet is Canada’s second largest airline with high per cent of the domestic market. It provides scheduled and charter air service to 86 destinations in Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. WestJet operates an average of 425 flights and carrying over 45,000 passengers per day. In 2012, WestJet carried 17,453,352 passengers, making it the ninth-largest airline in North America by passengers carried.One of WestJet’s main values is to be positive, passionate and entertaining in everything they do which make them different from any different airlines.

I believe the greatest advantage that WestJet has is a positive image from both consumers and employees, they kind of go hand in hand. Because WestJet has great incentive program for their employees, it helps drive home the idea that great customer service is number one. When your front line workers (the ones that have the most interaction with your customers) are treated well and are recognized for their hard work, the company and customer both win.

WestJet develop their IT operation early and force them get the lead in the aviation businesses. However, as the global economic and the change of people’s demand, the strategic plan of WestJet need to be change to follow the change of the world. Compare with other aviation business, the IT structure of WestJet is small and keeps running on their pervious operation before Smith join into the organization. There are some risks coming out if WestJet continue these IT operations.

For instance, Canada's federal government has delegated the responsibility for airports to local authorities. As a result, many Canadian airports have transformed into brighter, cleaner, and more modern facilities that have become more expensive to operate 3. Canada’s airports have spent more than $9.5 billion on improvements since 19922. According to the CEO of Transat A.T. Inc, “it costs three times as much for an airline to land in Pearson Airport in Toronto as at Charles-de-Gaulle in Paris” 2. Such high landing fees have made Pearson and other major Canadian airports less desirable landing destinations; increasing costs for airlines, and as a result, often increasing prices for consumers. Pearson Airport is West Jet’s “second-largest hub and main connection point in Eastern Canada” and almost half of its destinations are to Canadian airports2, Such high costs of landing in major Canadian cities require that WestJet finds more ways to cut costs and remain the cost leader in its industry.

Air Canada’s early strategy was to grow the business, with minimal concern about their staff members and customers. Without any benefits or rewards their staff felt underappreciated. Their customers felt as though their feedback wasn’t being heard but in the eyes of Air Canada as long as their business was expanding, they were satisfied.

➢ Unique Corporate Culture: The main competitive advantage that WestJet had was their unique culture. Even the executives and pilots help the customer whenever necessary; encourage employees to share suggestions for improvement. They maintained the policy of Care for People.

One of the first things that Cheryl Smith did when she start to work at WestJet, was to bring two performances expects to carry out a benchmarking study with similar companies in the transportation industry. The objective of this study was to compare WestJet’s IT cost, resources and budget to the industry standards. With the results of the study, Cheryl was able to find out that the IT group of the company was technically competent and mostly were since the