Virgin Atlantic was launched in the year 1984 (Balmforth 2009). Its headquarters is situated in Crawley, United Kingdom. At the beginning, the company was dedicated to offering flight services between London and Falkland. Over time, the company has expanded into various global destinations.
Currently, Virgin Atlantic is one of the biggest companies in the United Kingdom in terms of market value. The company has succeeded in offering high quality services to millions of passengers at lower prices.
The services are considered among the most competitive in the airline industry. In the last few years, the company has enjoyed financial success. In the proposal paper below, the company is analysed with respect to its HRM practices of employee involvement and employee engagement.
The company has been chosen in the proposal because of its past successes. As such, successful companies have become prosperous and competitive by adopting appropriate HRM practices of employee involvement and employee engagement (Armstrong & Taylor 2014).
The practices enable the company to be effective and innovative irrespective of how the economy is performing. Given that Virgin Atlantic has recorded successful business performance in the past few years, the company must have enhanced the practices in a bid to remain competitive in the global markets.
By analysing the company, the exact elements that enhance employee engagement in organisations will be established (Boxall & Purcell 2012). The study will also reveal HR practices that can boost employee engagement in organisations.
Airline services are lucrative ventures. However, with increased competition and operation costs a number of airline companies have recorded poor business performances. The affected companies may recover, stagnate, or close down depending on the strategy adopted in such tough situations.
With respect to Virgin Atlantic, they are required to enhance their employee involvement and engagement practices to remain competitive in the global market. Employee involvement and engagement practices are of relevance and interest to Virgin Atlantic for a number of reasons.
In the future, the airline industry is expected to face intense competition from new rivals (Gregory 2014). New rivals in the industry have designed low-cost services that are attractive to clients. Similarly, new state airlines such as Air Emirates have increased competition for long-haul services.
Apart from competition challenge, it should be noted that Virgin Atlantic, just like any other global airline company, is susceptible to outside shocks. Threats such as terrorist assaults and the outbreak of Ebola diseases can affect the company’s business performance because its flight to some destination will be limited.
Therefore, to maximize profits in an era of increased competition and external threats, the company has no other option but to adopt employee involvement and engagement practices.
Globally, all human resource managers agree that employee involvement and engagement are beneficial to organizations. The practices have been associated with a number of optimistic results at the personal and structural levels.
Involved and engaged workers offer increased performance, lesser nonattendance, lower turnover, and increased customer services. By adopting the appropriate employee engagement and involvement practices, Virgin Atlantic will record optimistic results with respect to job performance.
Through this, the company will be able to enhance its productivity by ensuring that the clients are satisfied. The approach would enable the company to gain competitive advantage over its rivals. Similarly, the practices enable workers to come up with their own resources leading to enhanced engagement and an optimistic gain spiral.
In addition, the above practices of relevance and of interest to Virgin Atlantic because they will aid in lessening employee turnover. It is a fact that engaged and involved workers accomplish their tasks better compared with non-involved and non-engaged employee.
In companies where employees are non-engaged, the turnover is high. In companies where employees are engaged, the turnover is low and the workers are more occupied in their responsibilities (Rayner 2009).
Therefore, Virgin Atlantic should enhance the practices to help its employees to be more productive and have a positive perspective about their task to lessen the turnover.
Employee engagement and employee involvement have risen to be common terminologies among human resource managers. However, the terminologies have been defined in numerous ways.
Bratton suggests that engagement in a number of ways can be referred to as individual engagement, occupational engagement, professional engagement, or worker engagement (Bratton & Good 2012). Kahn pioneered the idea of engagement (Daniels, Davis, & Shipton 2008).
He identified individual engagement as the coupling of workers’ personalities to their professional responsibilities. Through engagement, individuals express themselves bodily, cognitively, and enthusiastically in the course of carrying out their responsibilities.
In contrast, Marchington notes that individual disengagement is the disconnection of personalities from professional responsibilities (Marchington & Wilkinson 2012). Through disengagement, individuals pull out and shield themselves bodily, cognitively, or fervently when performing their responsibilities.
Henderson suggests that three mental situations necessary for engagement are emotional significance, emotional safety, and emotional accessibility (Henderson 2011). Emotional significance refers to a sense of profit on investment of personality in role routines.
Emotional safety refers to a feeling of being able to display and use personality without fear of undesirable penalties to self-esteem, position, or occupation. On the other hand, emotional availability refers to a feeling of having the bodily, emotional, and mental resources essential for investing personality in role routines.
Rayer indicates that all human resource managers agree that employee involvement and engagement are beneficial to organizations (Rayer & Adam-Smith 2009). The practices have been associated with a number of optimistic results at the personal and structural levels.
Involved and engaged workers offer increased performance, lesser nonattendance, lower turnover, and increased customer services. Rayer suggests that employee engagement and involvement practices are known to boots innovative work culture.
Satisfied employees are more innovative than non-satisfied employees are, therefore the approach should be enhanced in the company to boost employee satisfaction and innovation.
References
Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S 2014, Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice, 13th ed, Kogan Page, London.
Balmforth, J 2009, Virgin Atlantic. Midland, Hersham.
Boxall, P., & Purcell, J 2012, Strategy and human resource management , 4th ed, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire.
Bratton, J., & Good, J 2012, Human resource management theory and practice, 5th ed, Palgrave MacMillian, Hampshire
Daniels, K., Davis, A., & Shipton, H 2008, Strategic HRM: Building research based practice, Aston Centre for Human Resources, London.
Gregory, M 2014, Dirty tricks: British Airways’ secret war against Virgin Atlantic, Virgin, London.
Henderson, I 2011, Human resource management for MBA students, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.
Marchington, M., & Wilkinson, A 2012, Human resource management at work: People management and development , 5th ed, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.
Rayer, D., & Adam-Smith, D 2009, Managing & Leading People, McGraw Hill, London.
Rayner, C 2009, Managing and leading people, 2nd ed, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.