Needs Assessment

Needs Assessment for Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is known low cost airfare with excellent customer service.  They stress friendliness and individual pride in their mission statement, as well as providing employees with opportunities for learning and personal growth (Southwest Airlines website).  If training were to be offered to them, the first step is a needs analysis to understand the organizational culture, people targeted for training, and the tasks the training would cover.  Because training is such a broad area, the training focus has been narrowed to the goal of decreasing turn-around-time (TAT).  TAT is the time it takes from when an aircraft lands and docks at the gate to when it is pushed back from the gate and is ready to take off.  TAT a very important metric to airlines, since the more time an aircraft spends in the air, the more money it is making for the company.  Even within TAT, there are many factors to be considered in training:  luggage handling, people flow and movement, cabin readiness, maintenance issues, and flight connections to name a few (Leib, 2010).

Initially, the consultant would want to have conversations with key stakeholders and obtain their support for working with their teams in effort of reducing TAT.  The stakeholders would include:  the person who is championing (and paying for) the training and performance improvement activity and the directors of the respective departments baggage handling, gate representative, flight attendants, maintenance, and logistics.  Customers are also an important stakeholder and can provide information on improvements and the effects of training.  In the initial meeting, the consultant should review the charter and ask what each of the department’s goals and objectives are for the training and improvement activity to ensure the expectations are the same as yours.  The following questions should be asked so an understanding of the culture and each organization’s needs are met:

• What are the expectations for the organization?
• What regulatory policies and constraints exist?
• Are all policies the same between airports, gates, and unions?
• What competencies, skills, and constraints exist in hiring?
• Are there any upcoming changes to the organization or technology used?
• What are the workforce demographics?
• How should the training or performance improvements be conducted? 
• • Who should do the training – internal or external?
  • What should be included?
  • Where the intervention should be held?
  • How long is available for training?
  • What are the ultimate goals?
  • Is there job progression available to employees?

After gaining a basic understanding of the culture, which should also be supplemented with research from articles, websites, and customer experiences, the following plan (with modifications as needed based on the previous conversation) could be proposed:

1.   Send surveys/questionnaires to the departments involved in the training and performance improvement activity.  This will be a quick and effective way to gather data from employees, especially if done electronically.  One of the downsides is a low rate of return and potentially only employees who are at one extreme or the other will return them (Noe, 2010).  Surveys should include the following topics with questions a mix of ranked, multiple choice, and short answer types (Morrison et al., 2007).

          a.  What issues exist with performing to expectations?
          b.  Do documented tasks exist and are they sufficient?
          c.  What motivates them to meet goals and expectations?

2.   Review the following data and records:
          a. TAT metrics and definition how it is measured
          b. Employee morale data
          c. Customer satisfaction metrics
          d. Lost luggage metrics
          e. Customer loading/unloading metrics
          f.  Value Stream Maps or past Process Maps
          g. Previous improvement activities
          h. Current training materials
          i.  Training records

3.  Perform interviews with limited people in each department.  The goal is to draw out answers through conversation and see if the employees offer additional insights, concerns, hypotheses or best practices throughout the conversation.  By allowing off-subject wandering, providing the original questions are answered, more data and information can be discovered that you wouldn’t have typically uncovered by sticking to a script or survey (Noe, 2010).

4.  If time is available, observation of people and tasks would be a great addition to understanding the organization, people, and tasks.  Observing the gate attendants, maintenance crews, customers, and watching the attendants ready the plane for the next trip could provide invaluable information.  The interactions between employees within the same department, working alongside other departments and with the customer provide information on the organizations culture and processes in addition to tasks.

Overall, the analysis phase of training and performance improvement is extremely important to the success of the intervention.  Without delving into the current and desired state analysis, the Instructional Designer (ID) will not have a clear roadmap of where the organization is and where it wants to get to.  The interventions, whether training, process re-engineering, ergonomics, or some other method, will not provides the turn-by-turn guidance or steps needed to move closer to the desired state.  Both Stolovitch (2002) and Noe (2010) stress the importance of understanding where you are and where you want to be.  Without analysis of people, culture, and process you won’t be able to select the correct intervention appropriate to the situation (Noe, 2010; Beach, 2005).  In training, there is no “one size fits all” solution.  Careful analysis is needed to obtain beneficial results.

References

Beach, L. (2005).  Leadership and the Art of Change:  A practical Guide to Organizational Transformation.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Leib, J.  (2010). “Southwest Airlines hustles to reduce turnaround times”.  The Denver Post.  Retrieved July 5, 2011 from http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16175981

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. 

Southwest Airlines.  Website retrieved July 5, 2011 from www.iflyswa.com

 

Stolovitch, H. D., and Keeps, E. J. (2002). Telling ain’t training. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.