Southwest Airlines

2 Pages 498 Words

How does Southwest continue to grow while other Airlines are diminishing?



Can you imagine if one of your ideas or drawings turned into a multi-million dollar business? That is what Rollin King and Herb Kelleher have done with Southwest Airlines. Southwest has been defying traditional thinking for 30 years and looks like it will continue in that fashion. Even as Southwest grows they are keeping there untraditional behavior.

King and Kelleher believe that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat the customers. Southwest has the saying “do the right thing”. Every employee will be stood behind as long as the employee thinks he/she is doing the right thing. Southwest Airlines believes that employees come first. Employees are never laid off because of cutback. It says right in their mission statement “Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude with the Organization that they are expected to share externally with every southwest customer”.

Southwest is the only airline that is still showing positive income growth, where as every other airline is showing losses also included in that is Southwest is hiring employees, and others are cutting down work force or merging with other Airlines. Employees, who are satisfied at work, are walking advertisement. People inspire people; their positive communication to potential customers has a greater affect than TV commercials or newspaper advertisement. These satisfied employees have families who also are potential customers, who will be attracted to fly southwest.

Southwest does not carry a handbook with rules and regulations. Colleen Barrett, then corporate secretary and then vice president of administrations, now president set a memo to station managers telling managers to let the employees lean toward the customers not away from them. She felt that the managers showed a winning spirit that just the presences of that...