How well does BA protect its employees? Essay

Employees from BA’s prospective are an investment and for BA to get a return on this investment they have to protect it. In this section I am going to evaluate how well BA protects its employees I will use evidence from BA sources to back up each of my points. How does BA protect its employees? Bas takes the safety of its employees very well I know this because in the BA report they say â€Å"The safety and security of our customers and employees in the air and on the ground is a paramount to British Airways and at the heart of our business.† This statement suggests that the safety of BA’s customers is the most important part of their business. it also says that the protection of customers and employees is what the business runs around. BA protects its employees in a number of different ways, for example if an employee is working in an office in front of a computer BA will then make sure that the employee gets regular brakes so that the employees eyes do not get damaged too badly. This is one way that BA protects its employees. BA also protects its employees by reducing the risk of them injuring themselves. They do this by putting up hazard signs that show the employees to be careful. An example of this is wet floor signs these signs show employees that the floor is wet and slippery which instructs them to be more careful. Another way that BA protects its employees is by introducing stress management policies. This is because stress is a major factor that may affect an employee’s health. BA has tried to reduce the amount of stress within the business by introducing a â€Å"stress management policy†. Examples of the policies that BA uses to reduce stress is management training, employee involvement programmes etc†¦ It is one of BA’s top priorities to protect their employees if they don’t then this will mean that the employees will start to get de-motivated and not come to work this will therefore create a decrease in the production of work from the employees as they will not be in most of the times. BA protects its employees very well this can be seen in the graph below which shows the amount of days taken off by employees. In this graph you can see that BA has got quite a low amount of people taking days off related to illnesses at work. This therefore shows us that the employees are happy working at BA. BA also says: â€Å"We have a target of reducing the number of days taken of due to work related injuries by 30 % by 2010† The statement above suggests that BA are working on reducing the amount of work related injuries this shows us that BA are very concerned about the safety of their employees. BA spends 120million pounds on the security of their employees this shows us that they are very concerned about the safety of their employees. We can see that this is paying off as less people are taking days off this is shown in the graph above. The table above shows that BA has reduced the amount of injuries within the business therefore showing that BA’s 120 million pounds security investment has been put to good use. It also shows that BA wants to keep on decreasing the amount of injuries that have happened to employees. In the table above you can also see that the working day’s lost per 100,000 people is 4300 days this is a very low amount therefore showing that BA has protected there employees very well as they are coming into work very regularly. An example of a BA employee getting injured is when a cabin crew employee fell from the doorway of a 737 plane. The employee suffered 3 fractured vertebrae. When BA heard of this they then acted on it and tried to reduce the chances of this occurring again. The table above shows that the amount of injuries to employees inside BA has been reducing constantly for the last three years, but there is stillroom for improvement in the serious injury section where the results show it has risen by an extraordinary amount. How do the trade unions implement national and local working conditions? The trade unions within BA have a very big influence on the decisions made by BA, if BA make a decision that the trade unions do not like then they will cause a strike to occur and give BA a bad reputation. An example of where this occurred was the strike that occurred at Gate Gourmet this was because the trade unions felt that the working conditions where too bad. When this strike occurred it meant that BA had to cancel flights this meant a loss in profit and bad publicity, which caused a downfall for the business. BA would not want to get into situations like this. The trade unions can implement the working conditions by arranging strikes like this. These strikes cause the business to think about keeping the working conditions up and to think about the employees before they take any actions. The trade unions do not have to strike to implement anything, this is because the trade unions can negotiate with the managers of the department and discuss what the working conditions are like. by doing this the trade unions can work with the business to get better working conditions for the employees, this way the managers and the employees are happy without resolving to conflict. Overall the trade unions are a big factor that influences the decisions that the business makes. The main way that they implement the working conditions is by working with the business to tell them the conditions that they want. They may also complain if the conditions that are promised by BA are not met.